Apology to two councillors with visual impairments let down over accessible reports

The departmentr also broke its promise to meet with two south and west area committee councillors with visual impairments before the meeting to go over information - potentially impacting their ability to do their job.

For years, the service has struggled to provide fully accessible reports for councillors. The educational outcomes report that was presented to the south and west area committee Wednesday was no different.

“It’s well and good to apologise but if we can’t read any or all of the report, then we can’t scrutinise it or ask any questions which prevents us from doing our job,” said Councillor Conner Young (Conservative for West Fife and coastal villages).

Stuart Booker, an education service officer, explained that it has been struggling for years to make their reports fully accessible for visually impaired councillors.

“I want to start with an apology for the fact that this paper is not fully accessible. I do recognise that it’s not an acceptable position to be in,” Mr Booker said. “We have identified a solution and we are close to implementing a process to deal with that but I apologise that this particular paper hasn’t benefited.”

Committee Convener David Barratt (SNP for Inverkeithing and Dalgety Bay) was aware of the accessibility issues at a pre-agenda meeting, but he was under the impression that the department would reach out to councillors with visual impairements to make sure there was an opportunity to look at the paper in more detail before the meeting.

Councillor Graeme Downie (Labour for West Fife and coastal villages) added: “I can understand the difficulties with technology, but in the short term I’m really quite disappointed and a bit angry that pre-meeting did not take place as agreed because it means that two of our councillors are not able to engage in what is a really important discussion about education in our area."

Cllr Young agreed that a pre-meeting would have been better because it would have given him time to formulate questions and scrutinise the report.

“I appreciate the offer of having a meeting and I will take you up on that offer but could that not have been done before the report?” he asked.

Cllr Barratt and Cllr Downie both emphasised that inaccessible reports will no longer be presented to the committee in years to come.

“We’ve been doing this long enough and raising [the issue of accessibility] for many years,” said Cllr Barratt.

“It's at the point where we may need to be the gatekeepers and reject reports if they're not accessible. Hopefully this time next year this report is accessible. If it’s not, then it won’t be seen at this committee until it is.”