Afew weeks ago, Labour’s shadow disabilities minister needed to give a parliamentary response to the government’s proposals for its new work and health programme. But the MP in question, Marsha de Cordova, couldn’t read it. This MP for Battersea in south London is registered blind and needs all documents in large print. But the large-type version didn’t reach her office until late evening, long after the issue had been debated.
The irony of this, given that the government paper outlined plans to help disabled people find work, does not escape de Cordova when we meet in parliament later that day. “I have a lot of work to do, don’t I?” she says, of her role both in representing her constituency and highlighting the need for more support for disabled people. The government paper revived a manifesto pledge to get one million more disabled people into work over the next 10 years. But de Cordova points out that the Conservatives have dropped a 2015 pledge to halve the disability employment gap by 2020. She says: “To me it is all empty words, there’s no concrete plan in there. They talk about pilots – but we don’t need any more pilots, we need high-quality, impairment-specific employment support for disabled people.”
A week after we meet, chancellor Phillip Hammond suggests that Britain’s poor productivity could partially be due to an increase in disabled people in the workforce. “It’s disgraceful, I can’t describe how incensed I am that he should make such a comment,” de Cordova tells me when we talk days later. “If he doesn’t apologise he should go. Nobody deserves to be in a job where they are blaming disabled people for their own failed austerity policies of the past seven years.”
De Cordova’s typical working environment in parliament highlights some of the issues facing the 360,000 registered blind or partially sightedpeople in the UK. Large-print versions of government documents typically arrive later than standard issue papers, according to de Cordova’s parliamentary team. While her colleagues rushed to pick up copies of the autumn budget paper immediately after the chancellor announced it in parliament last week, De Cordova’s readable version wasn’t ready until the next day. Her office was still waiting, eight days in, for a large print copy of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s response statement.

Such delays make a concrete difference to the amount of time she has to prepare. “I’m at a disadvantage to my non-disabled colleagues, there’s no question,” de Cordova says, adding that she has had to work harder and longer hours throughout her career. “Everything requires more work and more prep – and there are things we don’t even know about that other people are benefiting from.”

As we stroll through the House of Commons, de Cordova, who works with a sighted assistant, points to other access issues: she can’t read the numbers on meeting room doors, or use the glass carousels at some of the entrances to parliament. She can’t read the menus or till figures in the cafes at Westminster’s Portcullis House, where MPs’ offices are located.
 

She’s going to need a stopwatch when making parliamentary speeches, because they are timed and she can’t see the clock on the Commons’ chamber wall. Meanwhile the glass-roofed atrium at Portcullis House dims as it darkens – earlier during these winter months – making visibility even more of an issue for the sight-impaired. De Cordova’s office is relatively close to the Commons’ chamber and she has memorised the route so she can swiftly make it to votes.

Labour’s new MP for Battersea wants to make parliament more accessible: “It has to get better, or no one will want to come here,” she says. “I’m having to experience and go though this so anyone who comes behind me doesn’t have to – if that’s what it takes, that’s what I’ll do.”
De Cordova is one of six children raised by a single mother in Bristol. Born with nystagmus, an involuntary movement of the eyes causing severe short-sightedness, she studied law at South Bank University and then worked with charities focused on rights for the blind and partially sighted, before setting up the charity South East London Vision in 2014. That year she was elected a Labour councillor in Lambeth, south London, and was already representing disabled workers on behalf of Unite the union. De Cordova was still working for disability charity, the Thomas Pocklington Trust, when she was selected as Labour candidate for Battersea, a seat that had an 8,000 Conservative majority and was considered unwinnable. “My boss said he was happy I was standing and that he’d see me after the election,” she says.
 

Of course, issues of equal rights and accessibility go beyond parliament and are pressing at a time when disabled people have been hit hard by this government’s austerity cuts. De Cordova points out that it isn’t just benefits cuts that are having such a negative impact. “One-third of social care goes to disabled people and that isn’t really talked about, but it allows people to stay in their own homes and live independently,” she says, of funding that has been slashed by a third since the Conservatives came to power in 2010. She says Labour would reverse cuts to employment and support allowance.

De Cordova, who supported Jeremy Corbyn during both Labour’s recent leadership elections, says closing the employment gap for disabled people is one of her priorities: “I want to see employer attitudes changed and shaped,” she says. “I meet disabled people all the time who would love to be working and they’re not – but it is not for want of trying.” Recent research from disability charity Scope found that disabled jobseekers need to apply for 60% more jobs than non-disabled people, leading the charity to warn that disabled people are being “shut out of the jobs market”.
 

Transport is a key component – but as de Cordova points out, the Access to Work initiative, which provides means-tested workplace support including a transport allowance, has been capped, leaving claimants “terrified” for their future. De Cordova notes that many employers don’t know about this scheme, which she describes as “one of the best forms of employment support” if properly funded.

 Why is the government waging a war against disabled people?

One way of doing this, she says, is “to have disabled workers leading a public awareness campaign with employers, or to use the disability forum to explore how we can work with and encourage employers, demystify myths and also make it easier to get on to the Access to Work scheme - even make it part of the recruitment process.” Locally, she wants all the train stations in her constituency to have step-free access.

De Cordova worries that Brexit may make things even worse for disabled people, not just because of the funding that currently flows from the EU into accessibility and employment support, but also because many disability rights are currently protected under EU legislation. And de Cordova explains that the EU Accessibility Act would set new accessibility standards across Europe for ticketing and check-in machines for bus, rail and air travel, as well as for computers, ebooks and ecommerce.
If we’re not part of this whole directive, we could actually be going backwards, because we won’t be meeting those standards,” she says. “There won’t be a requirement to, unless we introduce our own legislation. And frankly I’m not sure that’s going to happen.”
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/12/marsha-de-cordova-disabled-minister-equality-battles