Focus group interview regarding the accessibility of health information for people with disabilities and means of improving this accessibility in the future

Abstract

This study concerns the accessibility of health information for people with disabilities. More specifically, by interviewing policy elites who have backgrounds in this area, we seek to obtain their opinions regarding the type of information people with disabilities require, and people with disabilities overall awareness of such information. Based on the information obtained, we also aim to identify methods of improving this accessibility.A focus group interview was conducted involving policy elites who had previously participated in decision-making processes for health policy. These elites were sourced from the fields of academia, medicine, and government. Content analysis was performed using NVivo 10, which is a computer-assisted/aided qualitative data-analysis software.The focus-group participants felt that relevant information for people with disabilities is provided in a fragmentary manner through several channels that have relatively low reliability, which creates difficulties for a significant portion of the target recipients. Discussions regarding the type of health information required by people with disabilities yielded the following topic clusters: information regarding health-care providers who specialize in specific disability types and regarding health behaviors for certain lifecycles, and information that helps people with disabilities return to society. Further, the focus group recommended 2 means of providing essential health information to PWDs in the future. As short-term strategies, the participants proposed simplifying the existing, fragmented information channels and the creation of a comprehensive web-based information portal with an associated call center. As a long-term strategy, they proposed the development of smart-device-based information services that are tailored to the needs of individuals.Efforts to reduce the disparities in health information for people with disabilities are essential for addressing the existing inequality regarding the availability of health information.