Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — Telemedicine, teleworking, rapid checks, virtual schools and vaccinations have become part of Americans’ routine, as the coronavirus pandemic enters its third year.
But as innovators race to make living in the midst of a pandemic safer, they have not considered people with disabilities.
Those with a physical disability may find home COVID-19 tests that allow return to the community difficult to use.
For example, people with limited vision may not be able to read lowercase letters in instructions, and blind people won’t be able to see results.
The American Council of the Blind is involved in a lawsuit once morest two dominant medical testing companies, Labcorp and Quest Diagnostics, centering on touch-screen check-in kiosks at their screening sites.
Sometimes the obstacles are mainly logistical, “If you’re blind, or have low vision and live alone, you won’t have a car,” said Sheila Young, president of the Florida Council of the Blind, referring to the long lines of cars at screening and immunization sites.
“Who can afford to park an Uber in line for three hours?” Young asked.
One in four adults in the United States has some form of disability, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Control. Although people with disabilities have faced many barriers for a long time, the pandemic risks of this inequality with healthy people have been life or death.
“My view is that people with disabilities are the last to be cared for and the first to die,” said Matthew Dietz, a founding member and current director of litigation for the Disability Independence Group in Florida.
People directly affected by access barriers often do not have the time, money, or energy to file legal complaints.
Federal, state, and local governments also violate regulations for people with disabilities.
An investigation by KHN, Kaiser Health News, last year revealed that government vaccine registration websites are inaccessible to blind people.
With this story in mind, the Department of Justice reached an agreement with five state and local government agencies in New York to rectify such issues, and made settlements with a number of pharmacies to ensure access to registration for immunization appointments.
Following an outcry from disability advocates, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its list to include people with disabilities who are most at risk of severe COVID-19 infection.
In mid-February, the National Institutes of Health’s Rapid Diagnostic Technology Acceleration Program announced efforts to conduct “Covid-19” tests at home, while the Department of Health and Human Services called on manufacturers to evaluate the ability to conduct COVID-19 tests at home for people with disabilities. .
But with many doctors turning to online check-ups to keep patients safe amid a spike in COVID-19 infections, lack of access to telemedicine has been a problem, says Howard Rosenblum, CEO of the National Association of the Deaf.
He noted that the Americans with Disabilities Act and other disability laws are violated when health care providers do not provide telemedicine technology with captions or have interpreters present on the same phone call.
When Liz Hamlin needed to see her nurse in the midst of the 2020 pandemic, she was thrilled to initially schedule a telemedicine appointment to avoid exposure to COVID-19, until she realized that the virtual visit would have no captions.
As a hard-of-hearing person, Hamlin reads and uses captions to help her understand video calls, and she was barely able to do so during a virtual exam appointment.
As director of public policy for the American Hearing Loss Association, this angered Hamlin, but she hesitated, believing there was little she might do regarding it.
The rapid shift toward home-screening that used to be performed in doctors’ offices is another growing problem for Americans with disabilities, said Brian Pashin, CEO of LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco.
For example, for colon cancer screening, many doctors recommend that patients collect stool at home and place the sample in a test tube, then send it to a laboratory.
“I’m not going to ask my friend to help me with this,” said Bashin, who is blind.
And while he was eventually able to schedule a medical appointment with his doctor following speaking to his insurance company, his care was delayed.
“Accessibility has to be part of what we do as a government and as a society,” Pashin said.
