The service changes will support the introduction of a new performance measure to be introduced later this month and it will be based on the patients' clinical needs. Wales will be the first UK nation to introduce a measure of this kind for eye care patients alongside the existing referral-for-treatment target. The challenges facing ophthalmic services are well known. Nick Ramsay pointed out a number of them.

The number of people with sight problems is set to increase dramatically, and as such obviously the burden on current services will also increase. As the video is very dramatically showing us, and quite rightly so, currently nearly 107,000 people in Wales are living with sight loss, and this is predicted to double by 2050. Improving access and speeding up diagnosis are vital to ensure eye care services are fit for the future. We absolutely recognise that some waiting times are too long and there is a much needed system change for eye care—that is why the Cabinet Secretary for health is announcing these. We do need to find new ways of working alongside the community. 

The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services has also emphasised that we expect all patients to be seen as quickly as possible and in order of clinical need. As Nick Ramsay says, we are rightly proud of the fact that we're the first Government in the world to have an eye care delivery plan and are now the first in the UK to introduce a performance measure of this kind for eye care. These changes are in line with our long-term vision for the NHS in Wales to transform the way services are delivered and provide quality care closer to people's homes.

We are also bringing forward new patient pathways to prevent sight loss and better support people to live independently in the community. Since 2001, the NHS Wales eye care service has enabled optometrists and ophthalmologists, so primary and secondary care tiers, to work at the top of their licences to reduce the number of patients being referred to hospital eye departments. The service works to firstly preserve sight through the early detection of eye disease and then to provide help to those who have visual impairment for which further treatment is not appropriate. 

Two ophthalmic services are unique to Wales and are providing high-quality services and support to people with eye problems. They are the eye health examination service, which enables people to access services in their local optometry practice instead of their GP surgery or hospital department, and the diabetic eye screening Wales service, which screens all patients with diabetic retinopathy to help prevent them going blind unnecessarily.

As well as improving patient pathways, Nick Ramsay rightly also brought up the issues around essential work that needs to be done to ensure that we support independent living. The Government is incredibly proud to be able to promote the social model of disability. That is to say that we recognise that there are organisational, attitudinal and environmental barriers to equality and inclusion that must be removed to create a level playing field and to ensure any person living with a disability has access to the same opportunities as everyone else. We obviously also take this approach with sight loss.

A third eye care service, also unique to Wales, is the low vision service. This enables people living with sight conditions to make the best use of the sight they have by prescribing low-vision aids and enabling them to live as independently as possible. Working with the low vision services for Wales, we are working to ensure effective referrals to social services and the third sector to offer vision impaired individuals help to establish the support they need and wish to achieve.

We'll shortly publish a new framework, entitled action on disability, the right to independent living, in October of this year—in fact, in this month of this year. The new framework will continue to be rooted in the social model of disability. We've been extensively engaging with disabled people and their representative organisations over the last year to identify areas of inequality that matter most to disabled people of all ages in Wales, together with their potential solutions. 

Our ambition for the low vision service is one of many actions in the framework's action plan tackling some of the key barriers identified by disabled people themselves. These key barriers will be no surprise to Members to hear. Nick Ramsay pointed out many of them. They are: accessible information, access to buildings, access to shared space, including active travel routes and street clutter issues, and access to public transport. I think you highlighted all of those in your contribution, Nick. 

We also introduced the all-Wales standards for accessible communication and information for people with sensory loss in December 2013. The aim of the all-Wales standards is to set out the standards of service delivery that people with sensory loss should expect to receive when they access healthcare in Wales. The key part of the all-Wales standards is the requirement that every patient or service user who requires communication support should have this need met.

As a result of this requirement, the new accessible data information standard has been issued to meet the need to provide communication support. This is a national project, led by the Welsh Government in partnership with the Centre for Equality and Human Rights, health boards, NHS trusts, the NHS Wales Informatics Service, and third sector partners. The standard enables GP surgeries to capture, record, flag and share the communication information needs of patients with sensory loss. It is a tool, or an enabler, to help GP practices and healthcare professionals meet their legal duty under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments for those with a disability. It also enables GP surgeries to do this in a consistent manner across all health boards. And, in addition, a Welsh health circular has now been issued with an implementation plan giving details of this new accessible data standard.

One of the other areas I also want to mention—and, again, Nick Ramsay raised this—is access to employment opportunities for people living with disabilities, including impaired vision and sight loss. Seventy-five thousand disabled people in Wales are either actively seeking work or would very much like to work. Just 45 per cent of working-age disabled people are currently in employment, compared to 80 per cent of those not disabled, which is a really pretty shocking disability employment gap of around 35 per cent.

We've been working very hard in this sector to identify these barriers because they're very often beyond the control of the disabled person. So, organisational systems, attitudinal, physical and environmental barriers. Many of the commitments set out in our employability plan are aimed at tackling this disability employment gap. We work with partners to address the issues, including employer attitudes, job design and working practices.

I was very pleased to speak at an employability inclusion summit in Swansea last Friday, where I had the privilege and pleasure of meeting a large number of disabled people and talking to them about some of the barriers they had encountered, but much more importantly, and optimistically, about some of the available assistance to employers, and there were a large number of employers there who were very able, eager and willing to look at some of the small adjustments that they could make to ensure that they could continue to employ people with disabilities.

We've also established an officials working group on equalities and employment, which includes driving forward actions on disability in employment, to supporting our commitments within our employability plan to increase the number of disabled people into work. In partnership with disabled people, we are working to develop a meaningful target that will reflect their needs and wishes and that will be ambitious and achievable. We hope this will provoke the step change necessary, both within workplaces and society, to break down the barriers faced by disabled people and those with long-term health conditions while seeking employment.

I just want to say, Dirprwy Lywydd, at this point, that we know that in trials where personal characteristics are stripped out of application forms, employers are often shocked then to discover that the person that they previously said wasn't acceptable to them actually has all of the qualifications necessary. We know that this employment gap exists at all levels of skills. So, disabled people with a PhD are less employed than other people with a PhD, and all the way down there's a skills gap. So, it's very much the social model: it's around us accepting that disabled people very often, if not always, have the skills available to them and, actually, what we need to address is the inclusivity of our employment practices, both in the public and private sector in Wales.

Our business skills gateway webpages have now dedicated pages setting out the support available to employers and individuals to assist them to employ disabled people, and we're working with the DWP to help develop an employer pack of information about access to work, which will include further information to help employers seek specialist advice to help with the recruitment of disabled people. Lastly, a new disability action plan for apprenticeships will be published in autumn this year, focusing on practical actions to break down barriers to disabled people accessing apprenticeships.

The question was asked in Nick Ramsay's contribution: how can we remove the barriers to equal participation in society of blind and partially sighted people? And the answer is that we can do that by improving patient pathways; using the social model of disability; listening to the community and taking action on the issues that matter most to them, such as accessible information, employment, and the clinical pathways that Dai Lloyd also emphasised. So, I'm very grateful to the Member for raising this important point and I think that, together, we can continue to make Wales an exemplar in this field. Diolch.