In case you missed this item in the AAPD news and in case you'd like to lobby for equal access to electronic health records, here's a letter I wrote to Secretary of DHHS about the issue.  I'm sure he'd welcome more feedback.  Kathie
Dear Secretary Leavitt,
        I read with concern the news item I've pasted below from AAPD.  As a blind person who is nearing sixty, I very much want electronic access to my health records.  With the advent of computers and screen reading software, those of us who are blind no longer have to rely so heavily on others to read us very personal information like our health records if they are available electronically in usable formats.  It distresses me that the mandates to do this from the beginning were dropped; please reinstate them.  Since I've retired I've worked with a variety of library and other websites to bring their websites and databases into compliance with section 508.  It's much easier to build it right from the beginning. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
  Sincerely,
  Katherine Schneider, Ph.D.

HHS Federal Advisory Group Eliminates Disability Accessibility in Health IT Recommendations


AAPD sent a letter of alarm recently to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt, about recent action taken by the American Health Information Community (AHIC), a taxpayer-funded and supported governmental advisory panel to HHS.  AHIC struck out two accessibility recommendations affecting persons with disabilities that had been made by an AHIC work group on consumer empowerment, which spends most of its time dealing with issues related to personal health records.

The recommendations eliminated by AHIC said that HHS should:


"coordinate to ensure that Personal Health Records (PHRs) sponsored by the federal government are consistent with accessibility standards found in the Rehabilitation Act;" and "HHS should develop and accommodate to technological applications that can be used by persons with disabilities...."

AAPD recommended that the Secretary reinstate these two recommendations as we believe there may be excessive costs to retrofit in the future to ensure persons with disabilities have accessibility to and usability of electronic health records if these concerns are not addressed now.

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Katherine Schneider, Ph.D.
Senior Psychologist, Emerita
Counseling Service
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
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The man who has no imagination has no wings. -  Muhammad Ali

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