Providing accessible health information for people with disability in a public health crisis: A qualitative study of the experiences of Australian accessible information provider organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, people with disability had a right and an acute need to access accessible COVID-19 information, in formats such as sign language, Braille, large print and Easy Read/English. Yet such information was not always provided and many people with disability were without sufficient accessible information.

Objective: This paper explores the experiences of Australian accessible information provider organizations of producing accessible information during the pandemic. The intent is to understand why insufficient accessible information reached people with disability.

Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with 17 accessible information provider organizations and one other stakeholder in Australia, and thematically analyzed.

Results: The findings show that accessible information provider organizations felt an immense depth and breadth of responsibility for providing accessible information to people with disability during the pandemic. However, they were hampered by constantly changing information; workforce challenges; and a lack of financial, logistic and partnership assistance. Other notable difficulties included having no source of clear/accurate information to translate to accessible formats and not having medical/health expertise themselves.

Conclusion: The findings have implications for better preparation for accessible information access in future public health crises. There should be greater funding and logistic support for accessible information provider organizations. Provision of clear/accurate information and subject matter checks of accessible products would be helpful. Responsibility for this should be scoped into existing outreach, education and communications roles - for example, in local health services, general practice clinics and government health departments.