Farron Leads Fight to End Deaf Discrimination

4.22.47pm BST (GMT +0100) Thu 17th Jul 2008

Local MP Tim Farron has called on the Government to help deaf people across the country by offering them a text messaging service to organise appointments with Government departments.

Mr Farron tabled an Early Day Motion to raise awareness about the problems deaf people encounter when trying to organise interviews with government departments and utility companies. Most departments and companies depend on the phone for arranging face to face appointments, yet services specifically for deaf people such as Minicom and Typetalk have not always provided an effective alternative.

Mr Farron asked the Government to encourage it's departments to use text messaging to deliver deaf people with "text alerts" providing details of their appointments.

Commenting Mr Farron said:

"In today's world so much business is conducted by phone. For deaf people, having to contact a utility company or a government department can be a frustrating and upsetting process.

"The Government has yet to provide any suitable, effective alternative to the phone. Text messaging is a cheap, accessible service which caters specifically to the needs of deaf people.

"It's time the Government ended this discrimination and ditched the telephone for text messaging".