Consultation on updated guidance for Returning Officers: Assistance with voting for disabled people

This consultation is open from 4 August 2025 until 26 October 2025.

You can respond by:

• filling in our online form
• emailing your views to [email protected]

or

• writing to us at:

  Legislation, Strategy and Coordination team

  The Electoral Commission

  3 Bunhill Row

  London EC1Y 8YZ

If you have any questions or require any help to be able to respond, please get in touch on 0333 103 1928.

To help inform drafting of amendments to the current guidance, we have engaged with a range of civil society, charity and third-sector organisations across the whole of the UK. These represent people with physical and learning disabilities, mental health conditions, and invisible disabilities. We asked them about:

• the experiences of disabled voters
• anything else they would like to see covered by the guidance and any areas that can be strengthened
• any amendments to the list of equipment for polling stations that should be considered
• any examples of good practice.

We also shared information on the consultation with members of the UK Government’s Access to Elections working group, and encouraged them to share any evidence or feedback from experiences from polls since 2023.

We have also drawn on the evidence gathered as part of our monitoring and evaluation of the four sets of elections which have taken place across the UK since the changes were first introduced.

In addition, we have provided information about the changes we have made to representatives of the Wales and Scotland Electoral Management Boards, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (Solace), the Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA), and government officials.

The guidance covers:

• Understanding and identifying the barriers that make it difficult or impossible for disabled people to vote
• The legal framework of rights and protections for disabled people within which the guidance sits
• Providing accessible information about what to expect in a polling station, how to vote in a polling station and what support is available
• The equipment that should be made available as a minimum at the polling station, and what other equipment or support might also be helpful
• Providing specific accessibility training for polling station staff, and what that training should cover
• Working with civil society, third sector and charity organisations to raise awareness of and communicate the support and equipment that is available to disabled voters.

The guidance also identifies the polling station equipment that could have a significant impact in enabling or making it easier for disabled people to vote independently and in secret. ROs should provide this equipment as a minimum. It also identifies additional equipment and support that ROs should consider making available.

View our guidance.

You can also read a guide to our guidance in easy read.

This guidance supports ROs to perform their statutory duties and the equipment identified aims to assist ROs in meeting this duty.

ROs will be required to have regard to the guidance when deciding what polling station equipment to provide locally, but they are not required to follow our recommendations. The law does not give us the power to prescribe a list of items or equipment that ROs must make available in each polling station. It is for each RO to decide the appropriate arrangements and equipment that might enable disabled voters in their area to cast their vote independently and secretly. Factors that are unique to a local area – including the size and scale of polling stations or specific requirements of the local electorate – may shape the approach that ROs decide to take.

ROs should regularly review and assess the needs of people in their local areas and on this basis determine what may be reasonable to provide in individual polling stations.

We will continue to monitor how useful this guidance has been in helping ROs and Electoral Registration Officers to support disabled voters.

During our conversations with stakeholders as part of our pre-consultation work, the following themes emerged.

Support for ROs to understand their equality duties

• Support is needed to improve RO understanding of their duties under the Equality Act, including the anticipatory duty.
• More proactive work to understand the needs of voters and the barriers they face when voting in polling station should be encouraged.

Equipment provided in polling stations

• Although the list of equipment currently provided was agreed to be helpful to disabled voters, suggestions were made for additional equipment and support that could be considered. For example, further help for blind or partially sighted people so they can vote independently and in secret with the use of different audio solutions, and additional guidance for supporting clinically vulnerable voters.

Polling Station Staff Support

• Polling station staff are not consistently able to support disabled voters or voters with health conditions confidently to cast their vote independently and in secret.
• Improved support and training is needed to help polling station staff understand their role in making voting accessible for disabled voters.

Communications

• Improved communication strategies and approaches are needed to raise awareness of accessibility support available in polling stations.
• Communications to disabled electors need to be consistently accessible and the approach to engaging and sharing information with different voters needs to be more inclusive. 

These themes were consistent with our findings and recommendations in our annual post-poll reports.

Building on the feedback received in our pre-consultation engagement, and our own research and recommendations, we have made a number of changes to strengthen our accessibility guidance ahead of the elections in 2026, which include the scheduled Scottish Parliament and Senedd elections. These changes include the following:

Returning Officer Duties

We have updated this section to cover the new legislative provisions so that the guidance is applicable to all polls across the UK. We have also strengthened the wording around the duties of the RO, to draw out links to the Public Sector Equality Duty.

We have also highlighted the importance of ROs considering the wide range of equality responsibilities when making decisions and of being proactive in contacting electors and local groups to support making informed decisions about the provision of appropriate equipment.

Equipment and support in the polling station

We have not made any changes to the list of equipment that should, as a minimum, be provided in the polling station, as the evidence from previous polls does not suggest that changes are needed.

However, in response to feedback received after the 2024 UKPGE and in our pre-consultation engagement work, we have updated the list of equipment and support that ROs may also provide to reference the range of audio solutions available to blind and partially sighted electors This now includes:

• the provision of a combined audio tactile device
• the provision of recordings of ballot paper details accessed by a QR code or telephone helpline, either accessed in the polling station or beforehand, used in conjunction with the tactile voting device, or other equipment.

We have also made specific reference to the provision of face masks and additional support that can be provided to clinically vulnerable people when managing any voter ID requirements in the polling station.

Staff Training

We have updated the guidance to emphasise the importance of staff being approachable and professional for voters, and that training needs to specifically cover what support they can provide to disabled voters, how to use the equipment that has been provided, and making sure the equipment is readily available for voters when they come to vote.

Public Awareness

We have emphasised the importance of ROs providing information about what help is available in polling stations, making sure that communications are accessible and inclusive and have stressed the need for communications plans to be part of both early planning and post-election review, with a view to continuous improvement.

Resources

We have also updated the guidance to link to resources to support voters in accessible formats. We have commissioned, or endorse, a range of voter-facing resources by disability charities including United Response, RNID and RNIB with disabled voters. These include information on how to register to vote, the voter ID requirement (where applicable), what to expect at the polling station, and what support is available to disabled voters throughout the voting process. We will continue to add to this suite of resources to support ROs.

We are also intending to create an additional resource highlighting examples of successful approaches taken by ROs.

We have created a BSL version of the consultation and a BSL version of the consultation with subtitles.

We have also created an easy read version of the consultation: