MINICOM SERVICES FOR PEOPLE WITH HEARING IMPAIRMENTS

Early day motion 888, tabled 5 March 1998 by Tom Levitt (Labour). Signed by 98 members.

That this House notes that there are 8.7 million people in Britain with a wide variety of hearing impairments, representing one adult in every six; notes that the minicom or text telephone is increasingly popular and can enable deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people to communicate effectively, especially through the BT/RNID Typetalk service; welcomes the pilot project organised by RNID and funded by BT to equip 100 honourable Members' constituency offices with minicoms to allow those honourable Members to be more accessible to their deaf constituents; and calls upon the authorities of the Houses of Parliament to provide a minicom service to enable deaf members of the public to seek general information.

Signatures by party: Labour 67, Liberal Democrat 19, Labour/Co-operative 6, Conservative 5, Plaid Cymru 1.