Ask the Experts

Why can’t I get the same insurance cover as before?

Q I wonder if you could get one of the experts to look at a problem I’m having with my bank. I have a Privilege account, for which I pay a monthly fee. One of the privileges I get for this is travel insurance to cover me for worldwide travel.

About a year ago my bank, the Co-operative, decided to change insurers from Aviva (previously Norwich Union) to Axa. With Aviva my pre-existing medical condition was totally covered, even for travel to the North American mainland.

When I rang Axa to be put through to their screening advisers, I was immediately turned down because I’d had a coronary bypass in 1992.

After much arguing with Axa and the bank, I was able to get cover on the same terms as Aviva, but only for one year.

The question I want to ask is: was the bank in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act by not ensuring that its disabled customers got the same treatment as they did with Aviva.

From what I can gather from talking to bank staff on the phone, it’s not only me but possibly hundreds of disabled customers that this has affected.

The issue isn’t one of age, because the terms apply till you’re 80. It’s wholly a case of discriminating against disabled customers.

Another thing I was advised was that this move was made on a purely financial basis. In other words, Axa was cheaper than Aviva.
Denis Shaw, Whitby

Andy Wright replies:

As this question is concerned with insurance I have to be very careful how I answer, given the situation with new Financial Service Authority (FSA) rules and regulations etc.

What I can say is that while I sympathise with you and can see how you might feel that you’ve been unfairly penalised, this is not an example of a disability discrimination situation.

Insurance companies are quite within their rights to load premiums for what they perceive to be high risk individuals, as dictated by their underwriters, and therefore do so, more often than not. High risk to an insurer will be anybody who suffers from heart- or breathing-related conditions, as well as cancer.

I’d suggest that you were very lucky with your previous insurer, but that's certainly not the norm, and the new insurer is acting as I’d expect most insurance companies would do in a similar situation.

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Can voice recognition software navigate complex website forms?

Q As a user of voice recognition software, I was very pleased to learn that it’s now possible to contact Disability Now via your website and comment on your web content.

However, I found that the form for doing this is very difficult to use with my access software. Is there voice recognition software available that can be used for form filling?

It’s frustrating to be able to navigate round a whole website but then not be able to make contact using the form. This means the internet isn’t fully accessible to me and someone has to sit with me.

Have other people run into this trouble? I would have thought that a disability magazine would have taken steps to ensure that it was accessible.
Margaret Ferry, by phone

Léonie Watson (who isn’t responsible for our web design) replies: The contact form on the Disability Now website is reasonably well built and mostly follows accessibility best practice.

Most popular speech recognition programmes include the ability to use web forms. Dragon Naturally Speaking has it as a key feature and so does the speech recogni­tion application that comes with Windows Vista/Windows 7.

The trouble is that most web forms are badly built. Creating an accessible web form is not difficult but the right techniques are rarely taught to budding web designers. Even when web forms are built well, speech recognition programmes can struggle with them. Forms are often complex, and contain large numbers of fields that a speech recognition programme can find difficult to negotiate.

What can be done to help? Here are some suggestions:

1 Use up to date speech recognition software. As speech recognition technology improves, the easier it becomes to interact with things like web forms.

2 Train your speech recognition software properly. The more accurately the speech recognition application understands your voice, the easier it will be to use.

3 Contact website owners. Let people know when you find it difficult to use their web form and point them to best practice guidance for creating them.

The various software manufacturers are:

• Dragon Naturally Speaking: www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking

• Windows Speech Recognition: www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsvista/features/speech-recognition.aspx

• Accessify (better accessible forms): www.accessify.com/features/tutorials/accessible-forms