Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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210. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the first- and full-year cost of increasing support for social welfare applicants struggling with literacy or accessibility. [31205/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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My Department administers more than 100 separate schemes and services, which affect the lives of almost every person in the State. We are fully committed to ensuring that members of the public are fully aware of the welfare supports and services available, and to ensuring key changes are communicated to them.

Public information campaigns, publications, content on gov.ie, and our online portal MyWelfare.ie all play an important role in this. All this content is developed using the principles of plain English, and universal design to ensure that it is accessible. We also provide translations and interpretations services to customers, free of charge, to support their engagement with us.

My Department has developed the MyWelfare platform as the online home of welfare services and is committed to making the information on MyWelfare accessible to all, regardless of ability. In order to achieve this, we have designed MyWelfare to follow guidelines set out by the W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium. The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative produces accessibility guidelines that are an internationally recognised benchmark of accessibility.

My Department is committed to inclusive design, enabling websites which can be used by all users including those who may have cognitive or physical impairments, such as blindness. The design of MyWelfare supports cognitive and visual impairments such as dyslexia, colour blindness or those short of sight, to ensure for all users that there is a smooth journey and experience through the site. In designing new services for MyWelfare, the Department continues to engage with customers and stakeholder groups to assist in the design and testing of prototypes to help shape online services in a customer centric manner.

MyWelfare’s accessibility statement includes a statement of commitment, and a compliance status statement as required under the European Union (Accessibility of Websites and Mobile Applications of Public Sector Bodies) Regulations 2020.

My Department also funds the Citizens Information Board, which is a statutory agency tasked with providing independent, impartial, confidential, and non-judgmental information, advice, money advice and advocacy. The Citizens Information Board also acts as a signpost for people including vulnerable groups and older people and provides information in local Citizens Information Centres and through the Citizens Information website as well as periodicals and publications.

Officials from my Department directly engage with stakeholders, including groups which represent lower paid, older and vulnerable communities. Feedback from stakeholders continues to inform our work and improve our communications.

Supporting customers struggling with literacy or accessibility needs is multifaceted and improvements are made continually. It is not possible to estimate the cost of increasing these literacy or accessibility supports separately as that is included in the overall cost of the provision of these services generally.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.