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.

Read a related news story.

Read the letter that AAPD sent to HHS.

TAKE ACTION: Send your own letter to Secretary Leavitt, if you are concerned about accessibility of health records for persons with disabilities. For further information or to comment, please contact Jenifer Simpson.