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The Accessible Information Standard and the Deaf community

Rebecca Walls Clinical nurse specialist in mental health and deafness, Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust, Sheffield, England

Deaf people often struggle to access healthcare services, which can have a detrimental effect on their health. The Accessible Information Standard identifies that services need to ask everyone referred to them about communication needs and meet those needs. For the Deaf community, meeting communication needs requires more than just ensuring a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter is present at appointments.

Mental Health Practice. 20, 6, 24-26. doi: 10.7748/mhp.2017.e1178

Correspondence

rebecca.walls@rdash.nhs.uk

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software

Conflict of interest

None declared

Received: 12 May 2016

Accepted: 09 September 2016

Keywords :

accessibility - deafness - mental health - standards

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