7. How does the Senedd estate accommodate people with photosensitive epilepsy? OQ59354

Thank you for your question. We do strive to be a Parliament that is accessible to everyone who works on or visits our estate. The designers of the Senedd building worked closely with disability access groups to ensure that the building complies with the best practice for accessibility. A comprehensive health and safety risk assessment is undertaken for on-site events and activities, for staff using computer monitors and screens, and as a core part of equality impact assessments for improvements and refurbishment across the estate.  

Diolch. Through the Equal Power Equal Voice programme, I'm mentoring a fantastic campaigner from my region, Becci Smart, from Coytrahen in Bridgend. Becci has organised an event I'm sponsoring at the Pierhead building next month to raise awareness about premenstrual disorders, and she is also a long-standing campaigner on epilepsy, a condition she herself lives with. The point of the Equal Power Equal Voice programme is to break down barriers to democratic participation, and increase diversity of representation. The Senedd estate itself therefore must play its part if the Commission supports these aims.

Becci has photosensitive epilepsy, which means she can experience seizures triggered by flickering or flashing lights. To ensure equality of access to buildings for people like Becci, LED panel lights need to be used in buildings like the Senedd, as opposed to other forms of lighting, whose flicker can also cause problems for some autistic people and migraine sufferers. The Senedd Commission could also help by ensuring any defective lighting be switched off as soon as a fault is noted, to ensure the continued health of susceptible visiting public, and replaced as soon as possible, and also that all videos created or funded by the Senedd Comission don't contain flashing images.

Will the Senedd Commission commit to implementing these steps, and engage with epilepsy campaigners like Becci to see what additional measures can be taken to make the Senedd estate more inclusive?

Thank you very much. Anything that we can do, and any information that we can have to help us be better able to support and encourage those people, whatever conditions they have, sharing that information with us, to our advantage, is more than welcome. The majority of the lighting is LED downlighting in the Senedd, and estates and facilities management are currently exploring options to replace the last remaining fluorescent strip light that is in the Senedd security area, and also the Pierhead main hall, which is the point of your question. I will have conversations, and if we can have more information on that event and facilitate that change, we certainly will. We don't have any flashing or flickering or strobe lights or geometric patterns, and we don't have any festive lights, or lights at festive times, that flicker. We do use flat-screen tvs and monitors. So, we're doing an awful lot of work in this space, but if there's more work that we can do, and are able to do, of course we welcome those conversations and I'll work with you to that end.

I thank all of the Commissioners.