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Last year, hundreds of deaf people and people with hearing loss shared their experiences of Access to Work with us. Their responses painted a worrying picture of a system that was becoming harder to access and less effective at providing the support people need to do their jobs.
Today, we’re launching our 2026 Access to Work survey. We want to hear from anyone who has used Access to Work in the last 12 months for support related to their deafness, deafblindness, hearing loss or tinnitus. This is so we can help people access the support they need through an accessible service that removes barriers rather than creates them.
The survey is open until Monday 7 December 2026.
What is Access to Work?
Watch in BSL
Access to Work is a Government scheme that can pay for adjustments to help you get into or stay in work, if you have a physical or mental health condition or disability. For people who are deaf or have hearing loss, an Access to Work grant could help pay for assistive devices or communication support they need at work.
Why we want to hear from you.
Following our previous Access to Work survey in 2025, RNID and DeafATW published research highlighting widespread failings within Access to Work, particularly for deaf BSL users. Many people told us that they had experienced barriers in accessing essential workplace support, such as BSL interpreters.
The findings showed that people were experiencing changes to their awards despite no change in their circumstances. Delays and changes to awards were having a direct impact on people’s working lives, with people reporting they attended fewer meetings and events, and missed training and development opportunities, because their award no longer covered the support they needed.
Now, we want to understand whether people’s experiences of Access to Work have changed. The experiences you share through this survey will help us continue our discussions with Access to Work, influence government decisionmakers, and advocate for the changes needed to ensure the scheme works for everyone who relies on it.
What we have done since 2025
Since publishing that report in 2025, we have been working to ensure the experiences of deaf people and people with hearing loss are heard by decisionmakers.
Following our previous survey, RNID and DeafATW met with Sir Stephen Timms, Minister for Social Security and Disability, to share the findings and lived experiences of people who use Access to Work.
Since then, we have continued to engage regularly with Access to Work officials to better understand the reasons behind changes to awards, highlight the impact they are having on deaf people, and push for improvements.
We have also supported deaf people and people with hearing loss in sharing their experiences directly with their MPs, helping to build parliamentary awareness of the barriers people face and support for a more accessible Access to Work scheme.
Your experiences matter
While we have had positive ongoing engagement with Access to Work on improvements, we continue to hear from people whose awards are not meeting their needs, as well as people facing barriers when trying to contact the service or resolve issues with their support.
We know that experiences can change over time. Some long-standing problems may have improved, but new challenges may have emerged.
Repeating this survey helps us track whether concerns raised previously have been addressed, identify emerging issues, and build a clear picture of how Access to Work is working in practice for deaf or deafblind people and people with hearing loss or tinnitus.
By demonstrating that many people are experiencing the same problems, we can provide powerful evidence that action is needed.
Take the survey
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If you are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus, and have used Access to Work in the last 12 months, we’d like to hear from you.
Your experiences can help drive the changes needed to make Access to Work more accessible, more responsive, and better able to provide the support deaf people need to succeed at work.