A visually impaired woman who won a High Court battle to get better provision for blind voters at polling stations is facing a fresh fight - because the government has yet to put in improvements.

Rachael Andrews, 49, from Thorpe St Andrew was successful in her judicial review in May 2019, when a judged ruled voting arrangements for blind and partially sighted voters were unlawful and "a parody of the electoral process".

The judgement should have seen changes to allow blind and partially-sighted people to vote independently in the December 2019 general election.

But the changes were not brought in and Mrs Andrews instructed solicitors Leigh Day to launch a second judicial review.

She claimed the unaltered arrangements were unlawful, and a breach of her human rights, because she could not vote independently and in secret.

But Mr Justice Swift, the same judge who handed down judgment in her initial case dismissed that claim.

However, she is appealing against that ruling.

At the 2019 General Election, she and other blind and visually impaired voters used a Tactile Voting Device (TVD) to register their votes.

That is a sheet of transparent plastic which fits on top of the ballot paper and has a number of flaps corresponding to various places on the ballot paper where voters are able to mark next to candidates’ names.

But she still needed help from staff at the polling station to read the names of the candidates and their order on the ballot paper.

She said: "I see no reason why the changes could not have been introduced by the time of the December 2019 general election, after Mr Justice Swift had ruled so categorically that the TVD measures were unlawful.

“I am disappointed the judge did not agree that the failure to put the changes in place was also unlawful, but I am hopeful the appeal judges will see things differently.”

Samantha Fothergill, senior legal policy officer at the Royal National Institute of Blind People, said: "Rachael’s win in 2019 clearly established that current provisions to enable an independent vote for blind and partially sighted people did not comply with the law."