Identifying a package of services for vision impaired customers 106-01030010

Services Australia must ensure that customers are aware of their eligibility for payments or services, and obligations. This includes informing them of the types of assistance and choices available to them, and the types of referrals that can be made in order to meet their individual requirements.

By presenting customers with an individually tailored service offer, Services Australia is able to provide customers with a selection of products and services that have been put together in response to the customer's current life situation and delivered in a way that meets their needs and expectations. The ability to deliver a tailored package of services to our customers underpins our commitment to the Service Delivery Model.

Some examples of the services available to customers who are blind or who have low vision:

• Age Pension (Blind) or Disability Support Pension (DSP) (Blind). To qualify the customer must be permanently blind
• Pensioner Concession Cards (PCCs). All PCCs issued to blind customers, including replacement, new grant and annual renewal cards will have a tactile indicator. This is a small hole drilled in the lower left hand corner of the card
• Vision Australia provides audio tapes and ASCII discs (used with personal computers with voice synthesisers) for people with sight impairments
• Age Pension (Blind) and DSP (Blind) customers may be eligible for a Medicare levy exemption or reduction
• Age Pension (Blind) and DSP (Blind) customers are not affected by income and assets tests unless they are claiming Rent Assistance (RA) or Family Tax Benefit (FTB). If claiming these payments, Age Pension (Blind) and DSP (Blind) advise of income and assets
• If not claiming FTB, RA is assessed under the pensions income and assets tests
• FTB, and any RA that is paid with FTB, are assessed under the income test for family assistance payments
• Age Pension (Blind) and DSP (Blind) customers can choose to receive their letters from Centrelink in one of the following formats:
• read over the telephone
• converted to a larger font
• converted to Rich Text Format and sent on a computer disk
• converted to Braille

At this stage the service is restricted to letters only, including the Reporting and Income Statement (RIS), not forms or flyers.

Customers interested in this service should phone the Centrelink Disability, Sickness and Carers line or the Seniors line during office hours. The Resources page contains a link to 'Phone us' contact information.

An administrative requirement of the process is that a customer must agree to have the 'Accessible Letters Manager, P.O. Box 7833 Canberra BC ACT 2610' recorded as their postal address. This arrangement is required to enable relevant customer's letters to be identified. Once identified, letters can be reformatted as requested by the customer. The Accessible Letters Manager has no legal authority regarding the customer's payments or eligibility; it is purely an administrative solution to allow Centrelink to provide this service.

Mobility Allowance customers selected for a Review of Mobility Allowance can request to have a fillable form issued to them. See Process page in Mobility Allowance (MOB) Employment/Training Reviews for instructions on issuing an electronic version (MA003Y) of the Review of Mobility Allowance form.