When Dan Frye, of Concord, tried to book his vaccine appointment, he ran into a pretty common security step: a CAPTCHA, a tool that asks people to prove they’re not a robot.
Some CAPTCHAs ask people to retype a series of letters; the one on the vaccine site asked Frye to identify a word or picture. But that was a problem for Frye, who is blind.
“Fortunately, I had an assistant with me,” said Frye, who also serves as the administrator of the Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired program within the New Hampshire Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation. “And we simply got through it.”
But Frye said this seemingly small hurdle in the vaccine registration process is just one example of the barriers facing people who are blind and visually impaired as they try to access COVID-19 vaccines and testing.
“When these concerns have been brought to the state's attention, I feel like I need to say that the state has endeavored to be responsive and to make sure that they do accommodate our community and provide us with the vaccine that we need,” Frye said. “So I don't think there's any desire to keep it from the community, but there are inadvertent oversights that render this another access challenge in our state.”
(Do you have questions about the COVID-19 vaccine? NHPR can help.)
Similar issues are showing up across the country. A Kaiser Health News review found that “many covid vaccination registration and information websites at the federal, state and local levels violate disability rights laws, hindering the ability of blind people to sign up for a potentially lifesaving vaccine.”
“In at least seven states, blind residents said they were unable to register for the vaccine through their state or local governments without help,” they reported. “Phone alternatives, when available, have been beset with their own issues, such as long hold times and not being available at all hours like websites.”
State health officials say they’re trying to balance security and accessibility on the vaccine website. Jake Leon, communications director for the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, said vaccine registration websites “require protected health information from residents when they register, and they employ tools such as CAPTCHA to require verification.”
Understanding that CAPTCHA might not be accessible to people with vision loss, Leon said the state also offers an audio option. And “if the audio option is not clear, residents should call 2-1-1 to register and schedule an appointment,” he said. New Hampshire's 2-1-1 line is open seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
Frye said the audio option is in fact difficult to understand, and he’s concerned that people who don’t have access to outside assistance, like he did, might be forced to deal with long wait times if they try to register via the state 2-1-1 hotline.
Ideally, Frye said New Hampshire should consider offering another type of security question that asks someone to complete a simple math equation or otherwise answer a question that would demonstrate that the person using the website is a human being and not a computer. He said he met this week with state officials to discuss the feasibility of setting up this system, and he’s optimistic that his suggestions are being taken seriously by state officials.
“There's no promises to when that will occur,” he said, “but they say they understand it.”
Another challenge, Frye said, is the reliance on printed handouts at vaccine and testing sites. When he went to get his vaccine last weekend, someone handed him a stack of papers containing details about the vaccine, its side effects and other important information — all of which, he said, "served no purpose to me." Frye said he has a tool that allows him to take a printed document and turn it into an electronic one, to allow him to read it more easily, but not everyone has that luxury.
It’s clear the state put a lot of care into its vaccine distribution plan, Frye said, and he isn’t out to criticize just for the sake of being critical. Instead, he hopes that speaking up about these issues will improve the system for everyone. He also hopes to underscore the importance of bringing in people with a variety of perspectives — from the disability community, people experiencing poverty, people with language barriers and so on — when designing new systems, like the vaccine program.
“It's easier to build it well by inviting the entirety of the constituency that is going to benefit from it to the table at the beginning,” he said, “than it is to have to fix it once it has been developed, to some extent, without the involvement of the community that might be negatively impacted.”
State officials and community leaders have been meeting regularly for the past year through New Hampshire’s COVID-19 Equity Task Force to address concerns about coronavirus disparities and to talk about ways to improve equitable access to testing, the vaccine, treatment and more.
For more details on how to register for your COVID-19 shot, check out NHPR's vaccine guide here.
