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Royal Mail and disability
Royal Mail is proud of its strong commitment to make services, jobs, buildings and facilities accessible to all. It is fully committed to providing equality of opportunity. All employees of Royal Mail are required, under our business values and goals to create an environment in which everyone is treated with respect and can make the most of their abilities.
Royal Mail has been at the forefront of change for many years, working with groups, companies and charities connected with disability. It introduced reduced postage rates for the blind in 1906, is pioneering technological innovations throughout post offices and has enshrined the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act into its equal opportunities policy.
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Information technology disability alliance
Royal Mail provided initial funding for the Information Technology Disability Alliance and also provides the ITDA's Secretariat. It was formed by a group of key players in the IT industry, disability groups working with technology, the Employer's Forum on Disability and the National Disability Council.
The ITDA's first two projects, funded by Royal Mail, both focus on accessibility. The first, the Design for All Handbook is published as a 'consultative standard' to provide manufacturers and standard setting bodies with practical guidelines for ensuring accessibility for IT hardware and software. The second initiative is the Disability Index web site, which is being developed as the first disability-specific web site index, constructed on a global basis.
The ITDA aims to act as a catalyst to bring industry, the public sector and users together. It continues to promote standardisation and the expansion of the market to the benefit of all.
Royal Mail disability advice centre
The Disability Advice Centre (DAC) is a "one-stop-shop" available to all employees. It seeks to improve understanding of ability and disability and to provide advice and help.
Established in 1993, the DAC provides an assessment and advisory service for all
Royal Mail employees as well as employees' relatives with disabilities. All
enquiries are dealt with on a strictly confidential basis.
People — both disabled and non-disabled — frequently underestimate what disabled people can do and rarely know what help is available. Often a fairly small adjustment at the workplace can make a tremendous difference. The Disability Advice Centre can liaise with an employee's department to adapt a workstation to suit an individual or suggest a wide range of adaptive environmental and technological solutions.
Royal Mail and the visually impaired
Royal Mail's help for visually impaired people goes back to the beginning of the century when the first blind Cabinet Minister, Henry Fawcett, was also Postmaster General. He was instrumental in the introduction of legislation in 1906 which gave blind people reduced postage rates, because Braille meant choosing heavier weights of paper, making correspondence more expensive. Since 1965, Royal Mail has spent several million pounds each year providing free postage for blind people.
Royal Mail is also paying for all MPs to use the Royal National Institute for the Blind's Braille transcription service to correspond with visually impaired constituents for the first year of the new service.
Comm.unity
Royal Mail is a partner in the Comm.unity campaign, organised by Business in the Community and launched by DTI Minister, Barbara Roche, in December 1998.
The campaign seeks to inspire and mobilise business knowledge and resources to promote flourishing communities, as well as developing partnerships to stimulate social and economic regeneration. One of its primary aims is to promote inclusion in accessing and using new technology.
The Comm.unity plans for 1999 include the development of a volunteering database for the use in employee volunteering throughout the UK, the recruitment and placement of technically skilled volunteers to provide support to voluntary organisations and the provision of computer 'buddies' for disabled people.
Employers' Forum on Disability
Royal Mail is a gold card member of the Employers' Forum on Disability. The Forum is the UK's national employers' organisation focused on disability. Funded and managed by its members, the Forum makes it easier to recruit and retain disabled employees and to serve disabled customers.
The Employers' Forum offers a helpline for all employees of members companies, publications, a regular legal briefing and update as well as briefings and an Annual Event which was sponsored by Royal Mail in 1999.
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995
Introduced in 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act, made it illegal to discriminate against employees, or prospective employees, on the grounds of disability. Royal Mail has enshrined this legislation in its equal opportunities policy and actively promotes the DDA throughout the corporation.
Working in partnership with its Disability Advice Centre, Royal Mail continues to strive to become an accessible company, adapting its facilities, equipment and buildings and fully complying with the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act.