Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to help ensure the accessibility of her Department's digital services for elderly claimants.

Digital accessibility is no different for elderly people than for any other disabled people. We aim to comply with the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations (2018), which means that services must conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to AA level. All services are tested to ensure that they work with assistive software, particularly with screen readers, screen magnifiers and voice recognition software.

ONS data shows that disability prevalence increases significantly as people get older. In the UK 2021 census, approximately 23% of working age adults identified as disabled. This rose to just over 40% of 65 to 70 year olds and almost 60% of people over the age of 80.

The types of disability that affect older people’s ability to use digital services include

• dexterity impairments (35% of 65+) which make using a mouse more difficult;
• memory impairments
• (13% of 65+) which make following complex processes more difficult; and
• vision impairments (13% of 65+) which make reading and inputting information more difficult.

Meeting the legislation for digital accessibility mitigates all of these issues to the extent that it is possible. Our citizen-facing services that are aimed at elderly claimants, such as Pension Credit, Get Your State Pension, Pension Tracing Service, bereavement related services and Carer’s Allowance are all compliant.

All citizen facing services in Retirement, and Bereavement and Care are 100% compliant and work with all the main assistive software types.