Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, mobility limitations, and other disabilities experience difficulty accessing health care due to both personal and environmental barriers (Williamson et al., 2017).
Patients often report encountering structural-environmental and process barriers when trying to access primary and preventative care (Kroll et al., 2007).
Assessing your Accessibility
People with disabilities report encountering multiple barriers when accessing care. Take these short quizzes to learn more about how you can ensure your practice meets the needs of Delawareans with disabilities.
Do you want to complete a more comprehensive self-assessment?
There are a number of published self-assessment tools and checklists that you can use to thoroughly assess your practice’s accessibility to people with disabilities:
This 5-page assessment measures a site’s physical accessibility across three major components: entrances, building usability, and restrooms.
This assessment offers insight into mobility-related supports an individual may need when accessing the site.
Source: https://www.ot.wustl.edu/
This survey tool assesses healthy living resources in a community settings such as: Schools, Worksites, Healthcare sites, Community Organizations/Institutions.
Accessibility of these resources is measured across the built environment, equipment, programs and services, staff, and policies.
Source: https://www.nchpad.org/
A Partnership between the Center on Health Promotion Research for Persons with Disabilities, University of Illinois at Chicago, and the National Center on Health, Physical Activity and Disability, University of Alabama at Birmingham & Lakeshore Foundation.
This checklist assesses a public site according to the 2010 ADA Standarnds for Accessible Design.
The ADA checklist highlights the following priorities for accessibility: Approach and Entrance, Access to Goods & Services, Restrooms, and Additional Access items.
Source: ADA National Network
http://www.adata.org/
This checklist is for healthcare providers to assess their services across domains such as: Attitudes, Physical Access, Accessible Medical Equipment, Communication Access, Care Management/Care Coordination, and Preventative Care & Health Education.
Source: Kailes, J.I. Providing Health Care for Participants with Disabilities: Competency Planning
Checklists, Edition 2, 2016.
This survey tool is for people with disabilities to assess environmental barriers related to: transportation, built and natural environment, education, health care, and social support.
Source: Craig Hospital Research Department
https://craighospital.org/
This self-assessment tool is for service providers specializing in sexual assault and domestic violence to examine the accessibility of programs and services for people with disabilities.
Source: Disability Rights Wisconsin http://www.disabilityrightswi.org/
This checklist is for healthcare providers to identify potential barriers for patients who are blind, deaf-blind, or visually impaired.
This tool examines accessibility across providers’ public healthcare services and facilities.
Source: American Foundation for the Blind
https://www.afb.org/
A comprehensive self-assessment tools for healthcare providers and systems to assess their ability to meet the health needs of adults with disabilities or functional needs.
Source: Resources for Integrated Care
https://www.resourcesforintegratedcare.com/