Personal Independence Payment: Visual Impairment

(asked on 24th February 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the process is for the provision of accessible formats to people with a visual impairment making a claim for personal independence payment; and on how many occasions have claimants with visual impairments been issued with (a) an audio description (b) Braille (c) large print, (d) Moon and (e) telephone assistance in each of the last 12 months.


Answered by
Justin Tomlinson Portrait
Justin Tomlinson
This question was answered on 27th February 2020

Claimants can ask for a variety of alternative formats during the initial call to claim or at any time during their claim via letter, email, phone call or via the video relay service. We offer various alternative formats suitable for those with a visual impairment. These include, Large Print, Extra Large Print, Braille, Moon, Audio CD and Email for those who use specific software’s i.e Jaws or Dragon. We also offer telephone assistance and Visiting Officers to assist the customer on the PIP journey.

Unfortunately, we do not have a breakdown of figures for each alternative format as there are several teams throughout PIP Regional Benefit Centres and Alternative Format Teams who record volumes of work not specific formats. To provide this information would be at a disproportionate cost to the Department.

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