Dr. Emer Begley:

I thank the Cathaoirleach for her question. One of the issues around reasonable accommodations that I mentioned was that funding is available for people to access assistive technology in the workplace but they may not know what assistive technology is needed to support them. In addition, their employer may not be aware of it and there is no obligation on the employer. It is on the individual to access the technology. While there is funding available, there is low uptake of those reasonable accommodations because there is no infrastructure for assessment of changing needs. There is also an issue with ease of access to assistive technologies. If you are in employment, you have to get your own assessment, you have to access the AT yourself and you have to know what is appropriate for you. If there was some infrastructure to support people in accessing assistive technology both in employment and in education, that would go some way towards addressing that massive gap.

I will refer to Dr. Raley around this as well but, under the UNCRPD, there is an obligation on the State to support the political participation of disabled people. We are still seeing structural barriers to participation. One of these is the cost to get a medical certificate to get a postal vote. That is another cost-of-disability aspect. While some measures have been taken to make the physical environments more accessible for people, they still tend not to be fully accessible. There may be a ramp into a building but the built environment does not fully allow people to vote in private. There is also a lack of disability awareness among polling station staff.

There have been very significant advancements in assistive technology and in AI that can support people in employment but the system is not keeping up with that in letting people know they can access things that could support them and in assessing their needs.