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Re: Inaccessible Medical Bills: KHN Investigation

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From: Brandon Keith Biggs
Date: Dec 1, 2022 11:08AM

Hello Lauren,
Thank you so much for highlighting the difficulty blind individuals have
with medical bills. I almost never see anything related to blindness and
accessibility go through my news feed, so even though your findings are
depressing, it made my day to know this issue was being highlighted in
national news!
There are so many problems like this within the disability community, I
would love it if you could do more articles focusing on the incredible
number of systemic inaccessibility problems that people with disabilities
face every day. Here is a short five minute brainstorm I had. Blindness is
what I know, so it was my focus:

- Pill bottles in the U.S. are completely inaccessible to blind
people, but in Europe, medications have braille.

- Medical devices for at-home use are often missing digital
instructions, accessible labels, or use a touchscreen without a screen
reader, making the device difficult or impossible to use.

- Non-visual COVID tests first came out in June 2022, two years
after COVID hit the U.S. and there are still no accessible pregnancy tests
you can get at home.

- It's extremely difficult for someone who is blind to independently
navigate medical facilities without tools like Goodmaps that provide
turn-by-turn navigation to a destination.

- Most medical facilities have a ton of paperwork that you need to
complete when you arrive that's not in a digital form so you can
independently fill it out, so either your doctor or someone at the
front-desk, needs to complete the form with you, which takes up your time
with the doctor in the first scenario, and has privacy concerns in the
second.

- Often medical records are in PDF form, and not properly tagged for
accessibility, which make the PDFs impossible to read. My health insurance
documents were very inaccessible before our company trained someone to
properly tag PDFs.

And these are only a few of the medically-related topics, there are many
other topics in education, employment, shopping, digital accessibility, and
home life that impact people just as much, if not more than, inaccessible
medical bills.

Thank you,



Brandon Keith Biggs <http://brandonkeithbiggs.com/>;


On Thu, Dec 1, 2022 at 9:45 AM Lauren Weber < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:

> Hi all --
>
> Lauren Weber, KHN reporter here who previously reached out to better
> understand the prevalence of inaccessible medical bills.
>
> Thanks so much for all the responses, and I wanted to pass along our
> investigation that found across the U.S., health insurers and health care
> systems are breaking disability rights laws by sending inaccessible medical
> bills and notices. The practice hinders the ability of blind Americans to
> know what they owe, effectively creating a disability tax on their time and
> finances.
>
> There is an audio version of it as well as the bottom of the story!
>
> Here is the link:
>
> https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/12/01/1139730806/blind-disability-accessibility-medical-bills
>
>
> Please don't hesitate to reach out to me with any questions or comments,
> and I appreciate the time so many of you took to fill out our
> questionnaire.
>
> All the best,
> Lauren Weber
> 314.703.5829
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> --
> Lauren Weber
> Midwest Correspondent | Kaiser Health News
> @LaurenWeberHP
> 314.703.5829
> > > > >