What would you call a system that can (and does) exclude members of society from access to a particular right or privilege, based on physical characteristics alone? Without further detail, you might imagine that the term prejudice would be the best possible way of describing this. However, what if the process of exclusion wasn’t deliberate?
A government department decides to filter out certain people who, in this case, should otherwise be able to obtain a UK passport. This filtering process turns on the basis that some people (disabled people, in this case) can’t satisfy the criteria applied to getting a suitable photograph. This particular kind of photograph uses facial recognition technology, as part of the means of assessing its suitability for inclusion in the finished passport. It doesn’t stop there (goodness alone knows it should) and the other half of the systemic injustice involves the implementation of the facial recognition criteria, in a way that is inflexible. It’s just possible that you believe that this kind of thing couldn’t happen here and, of course, it shouldn’t. The fact that it is happening is a good reason for it to be stopped.
In my own (personal) case, I discovered that it was impossible to use a local photo booth to obtain a suitable photograph, in the process of my passport renewal. I am certificated as somebody living with a severe sight impairment (used to be called something easier to say, Registered Blind). This means I wear some very high prescription spectacles that have more than a tendency to reflect light within them and also make my eyes appear smaller than they really are. If I take these glasses off then my eyes do not look in the same direction as each other, neither are my eyes likely to look directly at a camera, for the good and simple reason that I won’t be able to see it.
When I couldn’t get the photo booth to accept any photographs that it took, I selected the best of a bad lot and submitted it, along with my passport application form (for renewal) on the understanding that there was a section of this application form that enabled me (or so it claimed) to include reasons why I had submitted a sub optimal photograph. Up until this point, I saw no reason why the application process shouldn’t be given a fair wind. After all, I had tried to get a suitable photograph, the odds of being able to do this were clearly stacked against me (by the use of some facial recognition software that, plainly, isn’t fit for purpose) and I had a very good reason for then going forward, from this point, with a photograph that didn’t satisfy the facial recognition software, currently used by the Home Office.
I was expecting delays in the process of me getting my new passport, as the renewal date just happen to overlap with some industrial action. Happily, I had no plans to go abroad any time soon and could afford to wait for as long as necessary. Then I received a phone call from the Glasgow passport office, about the photograph that I had submitted and the person calling me seriously asked me whether I could obtain another photograph, only this time with my spectacles removed? There are a number of reasons why this isn’t an adequate solution and, arguably the most important of these, is that I don’t look anything like I normally do, when I have my spectacles removed. Now, I’ve been asked, by people at passport control, to remove wraparound sunglasses and that’s fine. After all, sunglasses of this kind can deliberately obscure a part of your face. There was also the little matter of the eye alignment issue that I mentioned earlier, and so on.
Unless it could be explained by inflexible interpretation of a set of rules, I couldn’t understand why the Glasgow passport office representative, calling me, thought it was quite so important that I have a photograph that lived up to the gold standard imposed by their facial recognition software. I’ve yet to go through a passport control that wasn’t staffed and even if I was supposed to, these days, look at some sort of camera and then fail the recognition test, one look at my rather distinctive appearance, by a member of staff, running an eyes-on comparison with my passport photograph, would wave me through. It should be a simple as that and it isn’t. Aside from being personally annoyed, by the situation, I began to suspect that I was not alone and that this would be happening to other blind people, in the UK. No surprises, then, when this turns out to be the truth.
I told the lady from the Glasgow passport office that she was at perfect liberty to reject my passport application as unsuitable, solely on the grounds of the photograph that I had submitted an that my next course of action would be to get in touch with my local member of Parliament, with a view to highlighting what the Home Office are doing and how this conflicts with the provisions of the Equality Act (2010). After all, I’m being denied access to something, solely on the basis of my disability. In theory, this should be an open and shut case and any government department would recognise their culpability, in law.
There’s no real reason why it has to go this far. All the UK Home Office/passport office has to do is to decide to go easy on applicants who are unable to submit a suitable photograph based, in this case, on their disability.
You Say the word “disabled” to almost all ordinary folk and a wheelchair symbol pops up in their head. There’s no real reason why British government employees (the Home Office, in this case) will think differently (even if they have been on an awareness course). Se
nior British Home Office officials clearly have not thought through the extra problems that are likely to arise when taking a photo of a blind person and expecting it to conform to some sort of facial recognition gold standard.
It’s stating the obvious, I know, but the lives of blind people are already complicated and frustrating enough. A government department adding to this burden, when it need not do so, is something that us blind folks can do without.
I now have statements from a number of blind people, on Facebook, who have told me that my, recent, experience is anything but unique.
Some blind people have employed professional photographers and not all attempts to use this work around have met with success. It’s worth adding, at this point, that most blind people are in a lower income bracket and affording a professional photographer would make a not inconsiderable hole in their finances, which they won’t be reimbursed for.. Passport applications have been accompanied by letters from medical specialists and not even this, with a professional photo can turn out to be enough.
Do you think it’s time that blind people stopped accepting this? Why should you go along with the existence of flawed facial recognition software that can take no account of your eyesight condition. Why should you put up with inflexible passport office staff who apply rules so rigidly that you may be denied a passport?
I regret that blind people are banging their head up against a Home Office culture that believes it can do what it likes, regardless of its impact on members of society who are often not best placed to fight back against injustice. Although there are some people who can fight their own corner, a lot of blind people lacked the confidence to do so and often live with things like agoraphobia. I have written to Matt Stringer (CEO of the Royal national Institute for the Blind, concerning this issue. I don’t expect much by way of a constructive response. You might think that this organisation is capable of successfully campaigning on behalf of blind people in British society and you couldn’t be more wrong. RNIB couldn’t campaign their way out of a wet paper bag and, regrettably, it’s up to individuals to fight, against injustices such as this one, pretty much on an individual basis.
Here’s the email address of the Home Office CEO in charge of the Passport Office:
abi.tierney@homeoffice.gov.uk
abi.tierney@homeoffice.gov.ukl
