By Michele Linder
Q: What’s missing in hospital accessibility and language services?
A: CART (Computer Aided Real-Time Transcription or Communication Access Real-Time Translation)/textual language interpretation for the Hard of Hearing!
Check your hospital’s nondiscrimination policy and/or accessibility/language services information—yes, do it right now so you know—and they likely read similar to mine.
“Essentia Health provides free aids and services to people with disabilities to communicate effectively with us, such as:
- Qualified sign language interpreters.
- Written information in other formats (large print, audio, accessible electronic formats, other formats).
- Provides free language services to people whose primary language is not English, such as: Qualified interpreters.
- Information written in other languages.”
NOTE: Clicking on the link above you will see that in addition to sign language for the Deaf, I can also get translation in the following world languages: Amharic, Arabic, Bantu, Chinese, Cushite, French, German, Hindi, Hmong, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Nepali, Norwegian, Pennsylvania Dutch, Polish, Russian, Serbocroatian, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Telugu, Urdu, and Vietnamese.
