Accessible communications in health - Prof Katie Ellis (part 2)

Speaker 1 00:31

Hello, welcome to New Horizons for this week. I'm Vaughan Bennison, thanks for joining us. This week, we hear part 2 of the keynote presentation given to day two of the Roundtable on Information Access for People with a Print Disability. This presentation given by Katie Ellis from Curtin University.

Speaker 2 00:48

So, co-design was, as I said, it also emerged as a really important issue during the literature review and one was one of our key recommendations to the Department of Health and Age Care was that they do get together people with disabilities, listen to these communities about what the best communication practices are. And this is something in my centre we're planning to do a major project on next year so that we can establish some great communication frameworks that can be used not just in the health system but also in other systems like in education or anywhere where we need to communicate with people with disabilities.

Okay, and the importance of co-design, digital inequalities. So, major digital inequality issues did still remain during the pandemic so we established concerns still around improving resources such as web accessibility, something we've been talking about prior to the pandemic that people with disabilities should be able to access the internet just like everyone else potentially in different ways. Going back to my disability new media book that I mentioned earlier, digital technology is inflexible. Why are we restricting it to just a visual or an oral way of doing things? So, why is this important? Because it means that there are major barriers for many users to digital inclusion and we have evolving ways of communicating with and providing information in preferred formats and channels for everyone and this has direct implications for health equality.

So, innovation in digital communication increased digital communication. One size does not fit all as I've said and we need to capitalise on the different types of pandemics, different types of communication strategies implemented during the pandemic because we all benefit and we all have different communication needs. So, what are some clear strategies that we suggested to the Department of Health and Age Care? I'm going to start with my favourite one which was different strategies for communicating with people with intellectual disability or developmental disability or extremely low literacy because I think these types of communication practices were really what we all needed during the pandemic.

So, if we design for this group it will benefit everyone. These strategies are adapted from Florus, Lynch, Squires, Walker and Ligon in their paper that was published in the Journal of Communication in Healthcare in 2022. So, they suggest keep it simple firstly, stick to short words and sentences where you can because many people with intellectual disability process information in a literal way so best to avoid metaphors when communicating with this group show that you're listening. This is an important point within health communication. Show that you understand by listening to people's concerns then repeating what you've heard in your own words. 

Say it in pictures. This is important with this group. When you recommend positive behaviours like wearing a mask or keeping a safe distance use literal realistic images to help people visualise those behaviours. Now non-visual environments I think they're key points also are relevant to break behaviours down into a series of steps using one image to illustrate each step. Include everyone in the conversation. When you're asking questions or sharing information always talk to the person directly. Then you can check in with their caregiver or support person to learn or to make sure that everyone is on the same page but in general you should be talking to the person directly.

And finally, repeat the key takeaways. Take time to repeat the main point of the ideas you want the person with whom you are talking to to take away from the conversation. So, I think that works for all of us definitely would work for me. So, some tips for people who use sign languages. Keep sentences and paragraphs short and to the point. Each section of the message should have only one theme or idea. Use a readable font. For any text on the webpage or the ASL video, font size should be at least 12 points or 16 pixels. Use the common fonts. Make headings meaningful, short, and specific as possible. Headings should support the content and aid in navigation and support wayfinding. Divide or break instructions down into individual steps. Again, that was one of the points we heard in the previous checklist about how to communicate with people with intellectual disabilities. Use simple visuals to support written text. Use images that help people learn.

06:17

Providing different modes of communication can reinforce the message. Now, one of the main things that we actually spoke to the Department of Health about was their concerns in visualising how to use a rat test. So this was something they were quite concerned about and did say that they delayed doing this because they really had to figure out how such a thing would be done. But it was something that ended up being so important during the pandemic. So to continue with people who use sign language, provide one clear main message, define what you want the audience to know and then communicate with that to them. Pay the most, pay attention to the most important information first. Make the content action-oriented. Keep the content focused on one message. Use literal concrete language and words. Use common easy to understand words. 

So it seems to me that these kinds of hints and tips about how do you communicate with people with disabilities, they have a lot of common themes that the entire population really would have benefited from during the pandemic too. And to me, a lot of it is common sense, but I think we have to point this out. We have to say, this is what you need to do. And my final point is around remembering people use assistive technology to access health communications. So make assistive technology accessible, make pandemic public health-related responses inclusive to people who do use those assistive technologies. And recognise that those technologies are essential health products and services and that they're absolutely vital during a pandemic.

And you know what, it's not just about the pandemic, something that we found in this project was around the flu shots. So we were doing this project, one of the questions we asked people with disabilities was, find out the information about how you find a flu shot on the Department of Health website. And there was a lot of barriers even around that because the websites weren't necessarily prioritising health communication. At the time, there was a lot of information about the budget and even the type of language used on the website was influenza shot. And for some people that didn't correspond with a flu shot, I'd go and find how to get a flu shot. They actually had to find out how to get an influenza shot. 

So even thinking about usable language is really important in health communications when you're trying to reach the whole population. We want the whole population to get their COVID vaccines, to get their flu shots. So it needs to be obvious how to find that information out on the website. So just to finish off on making accessible technology accessible on health communication sites is we need to strengthen AT services to improve our preparedness for the future pandemic responses. So we need to integrate assistive technology services into healthcare systems and in particular, community and primary healthcare strategies, train and equip a broader range of health professionals to provide this kind of AT support. And that was adapted from my colleague, Natasha Leighton's work published in 2021. 

And just to wrap up with my, to wrap up with my three key points from the project and from this keynote is that we found that there was great innovation in digital communication during COVID-19, not just amongst the disability community, but amongst the whole community and universal design and inclusive design was really vital to that. And I would argue, made it possible for the whole population to do what they had to do in terms of socially isolating and staying at home and using digital tech to still continue participating in the workforce, public life, attend health appointments and so on.

10:51

Secondly, co-design is so important. You're not going to reach a group, you're not going to reach a group with health communication unless you co-develop and co-design those communication strategies within that group. And finally, different people have different communication preferences. So people with disabilities do communicate in different ways and one size does not fit all. And thank you for listening to my keynote today.

Speaker 1 11:18

And we may be hearing more from the roundtable in the future. Don't forget that we're still looking for people to join the New Horizons team. If you're interested in making a difference in your community and building radio and podcast content, then get in touch with CEO at bca.org.au, CEO at BCA dot org dot AU. If you've got any ideas for New Horizons, anything you'd like to hear more about, or if there's anything happening in your community that you think we should draw attention to, new.horizons@bca.org.au is the address for that. New dot Horizons at BCA dot org dot AU. 

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12:27

And as I said, last week, we need some variety and some diverse voices. So if you're interested, let us know. In the meantime, I'm Vaughan Bennison. I'll talk to you again next week.