Telehealth and Captioning/text box- Americans With Disability ACT
AnsweredI have a client did not have any hearing problems when we started therapy. She noticed her hearing was getting worse and found out she has a tumor that is causing her to lose her hearing. She is now considered hearing impaired and may lose all of her hearing.
So, here is my question: Considering the laws with the ADA and providing resources for individuals who are hearing impaired, I believe that SP may want to look further into providing captioning during live tele-health sessions or at the least a chat box. I have tried a variety of things - using messaging that SP provides, but that does not work well for fuidity of sessions. I will sometimes share my screen and write what I am saying into a word document and she can read that. But that is VERY time consuming.
There must be someway SP can implement some form of supplemental assistance for those who are hearing impaired. PLEASE HELP!!
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Our Telehealth feature does not have a closed captioning feature. However, some clients with similar needs have opted to use 3rd party closed captioning or voice-to-text services. Such a service can be used simultaneously on a computer while using Telehealth or a voice-to-text app can be downloaded on a phone and used during the call. These options will allow the audio to be captured and read in live text format. That being said, we do not have a particular service to recommend over another.
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Hi there, I am here also to affirm our practice's need for captioning for both clients and clinicians alike in the Deaf/HOH community. We shouldn't have to turn to a competing platform (Zoom, in our case) just for caption access when those services offer AI captioning absolutely free and are covered by free BAAs.
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I would also like to strongly advocate for live captioning software to be included in Simple Practice's Telehealth platform. This is a basic accessibility feature needed for Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals as well as people with other disability and accessibility barriers (i.e. technological access issues like a broken smartphone/computer speaker). Per the ADA, clinical PROVIDERS bear the legal burden of making their services accessible to people of all ability levels. Continuing to perpetuate this easily remedied barrier to access is an issue of illegal discrimination. I am calling on the leadership at Simple Practice to immediately prioritize incorporating digital access tools such as live captioning/speech-to-text software as a part of Simple Practice's Telehealth services.
- Danielle Trottier, LICSWA
For further information and resources, go to https://www.section508.gov/
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Hi guys! I am the OP. I still use SP but unfortunately have had to go to a 3rd party platform due to this issue. I loved the idea of the ease having all features being on one platform (SP) but this issue - along with a few others with the Telehealth feature has resulted in me completely switching over to the third party platform for Telehealth and paying extra money for it. I feel SP doesn’t always prioritize specific issues with the platform as they should, however, I do stick with them because in the end it is simpler (seriously) for me to use this platform for billing, documentation, appointment reminders, calendar stuff, etc than other EHRs I have looked into.
SP 100% should take care of this issue and there is no excuse that they haven’t by this point.
Just wanted to share my position on this!
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If simple practice won’t add in captioning, I wish they would let us opt out of the telehealth platform entirely for a lower monthly fee so I could afford to outsource my telehealth to an accessible platform. I like the EHR overall but the lack of captioning and lack of financial discount/opt out option has me feeling stuck and considering leaving Simple Practice entirely.
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For all of us who comment here - I spoke with customer service again today who stated this is the only way to address this issue and they have no ability to accept complaints due to the non-compliance or any other options available for those of us who need to utilize it or actual suggestions. They claim it's part of their "plan" in the future despite it being over 2 years since the thread was began and that we should "just keep commenting and voting here."
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