Our vision is for a Scotland where deaf people and people with hearing loss are fully included, and treated with respect, dignity and understanding.
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To achieve this, we are calling on the next Scottish Government to adopt our four key asks. Download our full manifesto (PDF 3mb) to explore in detail, or you can read a summary below.
1. Ensure consistent access to quality audiology services across the NHS
With an ageing population, the incidence of hearing loss is rising, and the need for timely access to audiology services has never been more acute. The next Government must take urgent action to address the crisis, and provide audiology services with the resources and governance needed to make change. They should:
Fully implement the recommendations of the Independent Review of Audiology Services, providing audiology services with the financial resources to ensure that people receive timely access to care.
In December 2023, the Scottish Government accepted all 55 recommendations of the IRASS report, committing to improve audiology services for people who are deaf or have hearing loss. Yet progress has been far too slow, and, more than two years on, many of the report’s recommendations remain undelivered. It is clear that audiology has been deprioritised by the Scottish Government.
Responsibility for meeting the review’s recommendations has now been moved to NHS Scotland – but with too little oversight, and no ring-fenced new funding for services from the Scottish Government.
In December 2024, the Scottish Government published a report updating progress on the IRASS and streamlining its recommendations. However, there is no clear evidence of fulfilment of some of the recommendations that have been marked as complete, nor is it clear how other recommendations will be reported on or seen through to delivery.
Urgent areas for change include addressing service waiting times, the publication of performance against safety and quality standards, and addressing audiology workforce shortages.
Ensure routine and transparent public reporting of audiology referral-to-treatment waiting times for NHS Scotland’s Health Boards, alongside clear targets for improvement.
Waiting times are a key indicator of quality of any NHS service but the NHS in Scotland does not currently make waiting times for audiology services public. RNID community members report routine waits of 6-18 months from audiology referral to initial assessment – with some individuals waiting years. It’s a situation that can cause significant disruption and difficulty to those affected.
Until 2019, the NHS in Scotland published monthly waiting times, from initial referral to treatment.
The Scottish Government must now reinstate open publication monthly audiology referral to treatment waiting times for NHS Scotland’s Health Boards, as recommended by the IRASS, alongside clear performance indicators and targets for improvement. This transparency is essential to monitor progress and ensure equitable access to timely hearing care.
Ensure that sensory policy is prioritised within the Scottish Government, appointing a policy lead for audiology, and implementing the promised update to the “See Hear” strategy, the framework for meeting the needs of people with sensory impairment in Scotland.
The Independent National Audiology Review found that audiology had a lack of profile, highlighting an absence of national leadership and strategic planning.
Yet in recent years audiology has had no single policy home within the Scottish Government, whilst input from the third sector and people with lived experience has been sidelined.
The Scottish Government must appoint a dedicated National Audiology Lead to provide strategic oversight, drive implementation of the IRASS recommendations, and ensure audiology is treated as a clinical priority. A single policy lead for audiology within the Scottish Government would address the current lack of coordination, improve national accountability, and enable meaningful engagement with the third sector, ensuring safe, effective, and sustainable audiology services across NHS Scotland.
In addition, the Scottish Government should publish the previously promised revision to the “See Hear” strategy, Scotland’s national framework for meeting the needs of people with sensory impairments. This update would help to reflect the current needs of the community, embed lived experience, and ensure cross-portfolio accountability.
2. Ensure equal access to the NHS for deaf people and people with hearing loss
The Scottish Government must ensure that people who are deaf or have hearing loss have safe and equal access to NHS services, through ensuring that all NHS staff are aware of their obligations to provide accessible healthcare. The next Government should:
Introduce new guidance and staff training for NHS Scotland’s Health Boards on how they should meet people’s communication needs, supporting Health Boards to meet their legal obligation to provide equal access to healthcare.
The Scottish Government have stated that Scotland’s public bodies want more practical support and guidance, informed by lived experience, to help them meet people’s communication needs. This is also supported by research by the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (the ALLIANCE).
RNID strongly support the ALLIANCE’s wider “More than Words” campaign, which calls for the provision of inclusive communication by all public bodies in Scotland as a human right, and for legislation and training to enforce this. From RNID’s own research, we know how vital it is that NHS staff are supported by specific guidance and staff training setting out what action health services need to take to provide inclusive communication to the patients who need it.
In England, NHS services are subject to the Accessible Information Standard – a document that sets out people’s rights to equal healthcare under the Equality Act, including what must practically be done to make NHS and social care services accessible to people with disability and sensory loss. In Wales, the equivalent guidance is the All Wales Standards for Accessible Communication and Information for People with Sensory Loss.
But in Scotland, no such specific guidance exists for health services to help them meet the communication needs of patients with sensory loss and other disabilities.
Without clear, enforceable guidance and mandatory staff training for the NHS on the provision of inclusive communication, as exists in other UK nations, Scotland’s health boards are unlikely to be able to meet people’s needs.
Introduce a new public sector equality duty on inclusive communication, which would strengthen the right to equal healthcare under the Equality Act 2010.
Currently, the Equality Act 2010 is not working well enough to protect the rights of people in Scotland to inclusive communication when accessing the NHS and other public services.
In 2021, the Scottish Government began to consider the need for improvements to the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) in Scotland. The PSED is a duty in the Equality Act on public bodies like the NHS to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination and promote equality.
In 2023, recognising the vital importance of sharing information in a way that everybody can understand, the Scottish Government committed to creating a new Scottish Specific Public Sector Equality Duty that sought to ensure inclusive communication is embedded across the work of listed authorities, like NHS Scotland boards.
But in 2025, this important promise was dropped, despite acknowledgement from the Scottish Government that feedback on this proposal had been overwhelmingly positive from public bodies and the equality sector.
RNID believe it is essential that the next Scottish Government take action to strengthen the legal right to inclusive communications across healthcare and other public services, including for people who are deaf or have hearing loss.
3. Guarantee equal opportunities in the workplace
The next Scottish Government needs to reinvigorate its commitment to halve the disability employment gap by 2038 and lead the UK in creating a system where tailored, localised employment support is easily accessible for deaf people and people with hearing loss and guaranteed for a better future.
Create an accessible, centralised Employability Hub that connects all available employment support in Scotland into one single resource for deaf and disabled jobseekers, employers, and support services.
We know that more deaf people and people with hearing loss could benefit from the employability services in Scotland. A centralised Employability Hub that brings together resources for jobseekers, employers, and support services would improve awareness and accessibility of a currently disjointed system.
For deaf people and people with hearing loss, an Employability Hub would provide a full picture of available programmes and schemes, clearly signposting how to access support in their preferred communication style. The hub would serve as a one-stop shop for potential service users, no matter how they begin the process of seeking support or what type of support best suits their needs.
A centralised Employability Hub would also extend the benefits of the Fair Work Tool. The hub would support employers with guidance to meet their legal obligations regarding disabled staff and provides examples of best practice in building inclusive workplaces. Free access to guidance on hiring, retaining and developing disabled staff would address negative employer attitudes and behaviours stemming from a lack of experience or knowledge about working with disabled people.
An improved Employability Hub would also share information on programmes and contacts across different local authorities, to increase awareness of best practice in employment support services. A central resource would support knowledge sharing and oversight of a more consistent and transparent provision of programmes across the different localities.
Move towards a more sustainable funding model to ensure employment support services are able to operate for Scotland’s future.
The Scottish Government’s annualised funding model for employability services has created significant challenges for staff recruitment, strategic planning, and service delivery. Introducing guaranteed funding periods of three to five years would provide stability, enable long-term planning, and ensure services can continue supporting people into employment.
Extending funding periods would reduce risks for both service users and third-sector providers. Under the current system, uncertainty has at times forced providers to suspend support, undermining the quality of services, particularly for those furthest from the labour market who often require assistance beyond 12 months. Some providers cannot operate under such financial risk, reducing the availability of specialist services. Others struggle to scale programmes or deliver wrap-around support, limiting progress toward closing the disability employment gap.
A sustainable funding model would create a stronger environment for specialist employability services, enhancing the “No One Left Behind” programme’s ability to reach those most in need.
4. Work with the British Sign Language (BSL) community to transform their life chances
Despite being a national leader for sign language access, Scottish deaf BSL users continue to face barriers accessing services and information in BSL.
The next Scottish Government must improve implementation of the BSL Act, and ensure that BSL users are involved in implementing BSL Plans.
The Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee inquiry into the BSL Act described the progress that the Act has achieved as “uneven” and found that substantial inequalities remain. Their report agreed that there had been inconsistencies in implementation of the BSL Act across listed authorities, and recognised concerns around how listed authorities are held to account.
Furthermore, the report highlighted how insufficient funding has been set aside to support the delivery of the second BSL Plan. With listed authorities already facing budgetary pressures, respondents to the Inquiry expressed concern that BSL activities risk being deprioritised and the progress that has been made in improving equality is lost.
We want to see the next Scottish Government ensure that deaf BSL users are involved in the development and implementation of BSL Plans at both the national and local level, and that implementing the plans remain a priority. The Government must support listed authorities to meet their obligations under the plans and encourage them to share best practice to help even the access to BSL across Scotland. Only with continued support, will improvements continue to be made under the BSL Act.
The next Scottish Government must prioritise implementing the recommendations from the 2019 Landscape Review and develop greater opportunities for training BSL interpreters in Scotland.
The Scottish Register of Language Professionals with the Deaf Community (SRLPDC) reported in March 2025 that there were 61 registered BSL/English interpreters in Scotland, along with 2 deafblind manual interpreters and 8 trainee BSL/English interpreters.
In contrast, there were 2,619 people who reported in the Scottish Census that they used Sign Language as their main language.
Interpreters are vital for helping deaf BSL users communicate and understand information, and limited access to them can have a detrimental effect on deaf BSL users’ ability to access services. Additionally, ensuring there is a sustainable supply of interpreters being trained in Scotland will strengthen Scottish dialects of BSL, and reduce reliance on the interpreters based elsewhere in the country who may use slightly different signs.
The 2019 Landscape Review of Interpreting in Scotland made recommendations on how the Scottish Government can do more to improve access to services, including increasing the training and provision of interpreters and enhancing the standard of interpreter training. However, the latest BSL Plan does not include any actions for increasing interpreter training, and instead relies on increasing access to virtual interpreter services. This is not appropriate for all contexts, will contribute to the over reliance on interpreters based elsewhere in the UK who may sign with a different dialect of BSL, and risk erosion of the Scottish BSL identity.
The next Scottish Government must revisit the recommendations in the Landscape Review and take action to address the shortage of interpreters.
Our 2026 manifesto for the Scottish Government
Our manifesto document is accessible for screen readers, but if you would like this document in another format please get in touch: [email protected].