Please sign a joint letter calling for accessible news for people with a learning disability – deadline 28 May

At Disability Equality Scotland (DES), we want to work with our members to highlight the need for accessible news coverage in the UK. Accessible news is designed for people with a learning disability and anyone else who needs or prefers easy to understand language.

We are inviting our members to support this work by co-signing a joint open letter to the UK Government calling for accessible and inclusive news coverage.

Our ask 

Please join DES in co-signing an open letter to the UK Government. The letter explains what accessible news is, and why the UK needs it. You can view the draft letter here. The letter is written in Easy Read.

To sign up, please complete this form with your details, before 5pm on Thursday 28 May.

Why this is important

At DES, we recognise that UK broadcasters do not currently make accessible news – and we want this to change.

In many European countries, broadcasters do make accessible news. We think accessible news would make a big difference to many people living in the UK.

You can find out more about this by reading this excellent research report by William Kramer, who is a BBC broadcast journalist. William’s professional experience and lived experience have led him to become a passionate advocate for accessible news, and he spoke to Disability Equality Scotland members and staff about this at our 2025 Annual General Meeting.

The letter

We have written an open letter to the UK Government Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy MP. We have deliberately chosen to write this letter in Easy Read, as a demonstration of accessible communication. The letter has been written by DES with a group of accessibility experts and journalists; all the group have experience working with people with a learning disability.

What you need to do next

1. Read the joint letter to the UK Government Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy MP.
2. To co-sign the letter please complete this form before 5pm on Thursday 28 May 2026. Please note that we cannot make any changes to the letter at this time.
3. If you do not want to sign the letter, you do not have to do anything.
4. The letter is not available to the public yet, so please treat it as confidential. Please do not share the letter with anybody outside your organisation.

What we will do next 

• We will send the co-signed letter to Lisa Nandy MP in early June.
• If you have signed the letter, we will send you a copy of the letter by email.
• We will publish the open letter on our website and share it via social media.
• We will send you a communications pack so you can share the letter too.

If you have any questions, please email our training team at training@disabilityequality.scot before Wednesday 20 May 2026.

If you want to sign the letter, the deadline is 5pm on Thursday 28 May 2026.