The future of equality is in 5 pieces of 4-day-long boiled cauliflower ....... and shooting deaf people

NHS Health Scotland.  One of the 22 Health Boards which are used to meet the health needs of Scotland's people.  One of the things they are big on is making sure you live longer.
They do this by persuading you to eat 5 bits of 4-day-long boiled cauliflower a day [cheese sauce optional], drink less booze [or even give it up - as long as people abroad by our whisky], give up fags [ciggies to the 'squeezed' middle -class and who always 'borrow' from other smokers], breast feed often and in public, wear hip & crotch-hugging vibrantly-coloured designer lycra when jogging along the leafy boulevards of Wester Hailes, and to stay away from shops like Greggs.
I recall when I first came across this earnest corner of the NHS a few years back.  They were uncovering data that the average man in Shettleston died a lot earlier than the average man in Barnton.  It quickly became a core part of the NHS mission that the gap should be narrowed and eliminated.  My reaction was what a cruel and perverse construct - make Shettleston man live longer so that he can endure even more years of a crap life and without the offsets of booze, fags and sausage rolls which can help fuzz the sharp edges of a bleak life.  When I voiced an alternative [shoot all Barnton men when they reach Shettleston man's age] there was a lot of sucking of teeth.
More recently and having left my labours in the vineyards that is the NHS, my attention was caught by a newspaper advert for an NHS Health Scotland Board meeting.  Buried in the classifieds, it invited those interested [if you read the Scotsman classifieds - why not on page 3 of the Sun?] in attending the Board meeting to telephone a staffer to make arrangements.  Some of you avid readers of this blog will by now know I have a hearing impairment and that landline telephones don't work for me.  E-mail and text messaging are both good options for me - and the tens of thousands of other deaf and hearing impaired people.
I emailed NHS Health Scotland's Chief Executive, Mr G McLaughlin, and observed :

• the notice takes no account of deaf and hearing impaired people like me who find communicating using the telephone either difficult or impossible, as it represents a well known barrier to effective communication.
• no other method of contacting NHS Health Scotland was offered in the notice.
• Equally absent was any indication that I or others with particular communication support needs would find NHS Health Scotland ready, willing and able to put these in place so that attendance at the Board meeting could be more than a token event in terms of accessibility.

I then asked Mr McLaughlin :

• Given NHS Health Scotland is a public sector body and has a legal responsibility to eliminate discrimination in how it works, can you please explain just why a simple thing like publishing a notice of a Board meeting and inviting attendance by the public, should find the Board discriminating against deaf and hearing impaired people in the way I have described?
• Could your explanation also touch on the fact that this form of discrimination is far from new and far from being an unknown issue to public bodies? 
• It would also be interesting to read just how an NHS Board which houses the NHS Scotland support function on equalities should fail to meet the equality duties in such a basic manner.
• Could you also please advise if the function of Board meetings has been Equality & Diversity Impact Assessed and, if so, could you please provide me with a copy?

A response did come, fairly promptly:

We recognise that the notice in The Scotsman did not offer ways for getting in contact which are accessible to people who are deaf or have a hearing impairment. Thank you for drawing this to our attention. We will address this in future notices.
Like all NHS Health Scotland events, Boards Meetings are run in line with our Events Accessibility Check List. This was originally developed in partnership with, among others, members and representatives of the deaf community. The Check List is currently being reviewed, two years after development as planned. Therefore, I have attached a copy of the 2010 edition for your reference. However, as a specific function, Board Meetings have not been impact assessed.

Needless to say I have asked for replies to my original questions and why they have not followed their own check list which calls for the offer of an email address when advertising events.

I am beginning to wonder if the accessibility and equality question is one which will only be solved by deaf and hearing impaired people shooting ourselves.