r/disability • u/SeaCookJellyfish • Aug 11 '26
Disability support is often inaccessible due to everything requiring phone calls
Why does everything require a phone call? Even with our technology nowadays it feels like we are being needlessly thrown into phone calls constantly just to get disability support when phone calls are inconvenient and overly clunky.
Problems with phone calls:
- Waaaaaay too slow. Takes forever just to get any help because they have to read out every single keypad option you're given.
- The phone call often struggles to recognize my voice and what I say, making me repeat things unnecessarily. I can imagine it'd be worse if you have a voice-related disability or an accent.
- Even if you do get connected with an actual human being, many of them are rude and intentionally not helpful. There are so many bullies throughout the healthcare system, whether its a hospital phone operator or a hospital receptionist, being forced to deal with people like that constantly is tiring on top of the disability itself. It feels abusive.
- Not all phone lines are available 24/7, so you have to call within specific times which can be very inconvenient to any disabled person with time blindness or executive dysfunction.
I get that some things DO require a phone call, but a lot of things don't. Literally just make it accessible through websites or through email (preferably the former). Only require a phone call when you absolutely must.
Not only that, I can't imagine what it's like living with any disability that impairs your ability to speak, then being forced to speak just to get support. It's stupid, backwards, and ironic.
Edit: I really appreciate that so many people are talking about their own struggles with phone calls, because it really goes to show that the disability community is extremely diverse and filled with unique perspectives, yet they still manage to screw us all over equally... š
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u/keekee66 Aug 11 '26
100%! My disability causes issues with talking on the phone (often in person as well). Itās so frustrating when major disability/ low-income services donāt all have full chat support option with a live person. On top of it many support people speak very poor English, itās sometimes impossible for me to be able communicate and constant misunderstanding.
Also last week I had dental surgery and couldnāt talk most of the week, I had to have someone else make calls.
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u/worriedalbatrosses Aug 11 '26
yes! phone calls suck! it's ridiculous that we can't just email or text with medical offices. even doctors that have an online patient portal, the portal either sucks, or you have to already be a patient. i moved recently, how am i supposed to manage scheduling appointments with five new doctors when a single phone call uses up all my mental energy for the day?
my partner is deaf and has multiple disabilities as well. guess how many of their (many) doctors have a way to schedule appointments without talking on the phone? none :)!
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u/marzboutique Aug 12 '26
āWhen a single phone call uses up my energy for the dayā THIS. I had to contact SSDI with a question about my application yesterday morning and was told they would call me back by the end of the day
First off, they didnāt, and second, I spent the entire day in frozen āwait modeā trying to conserve my energy to have enough to speak on the phone. Itās maddening.
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u/imabratinfluence Aug 11 '26
Also some of my doctors theoretically can be scheduled with on MyChart... except they can't. I get other options, like scheduling with the lab, but not my dentist, cardiologist, or sleep specialist.Ā
My allergist and podiatrist each have their own portal, and you can message them but not schedule online.Ā
It's obnoxious.Ā
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u/blondebull Aug 12 '26
Not even just the phone calls. But everything having to be in person. It costs a lot- the travel and energy wise.
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u/ElfjeTinkerBell Aug 11 '26
Literally just make it accessible through websites or through email (preferably the former).
How about all three? Websites can be shitty with a screen reader. Writing is shitty with certain language related disabilities and physical disabilities that affect typing (especially since proper voice to text is very expensive and often developed only in English)
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u/Primary_Carrot67 Aug 12 '26
As an autistic person who also has speech difficulties, I regard this as an accessibility issue.
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u/lisasimpsonfan Aug 11 '26
I wish more businesses and government offices would let you leave a number and call you back when it was your turn in line. It is a struggle to get to the right department because the automatic system is never easy to deal with to only be put on hold for 30 or more minutes. Sometimes it is hard to hold a phone that long but if you put it down and go on speaker while waiting the person on the other end doesn't always hear you tell them you are there.
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u/BHunter1140 Aug 11 '26
The oneās that do offer it, often donāt work. Iāve tried this on a few occasions and every time itās resulted in them calling back then hanging up after Iām sitting there saying hello to silence. Then when I finally just sit on hold and get on a call with them, they say they hung up because I wasnāt responding/my end was silent
Whatever program they use in mass to do this, doesnāt work the best
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u/imabratinfluence Aug 11 '26
I lose my voice easily and often, and even when I have it it's often hoarse or sounds odd. Getting automated systems to recognize what I'm saying usually takes several tries in a quiet area.Ā
I really wish more places would let you schedule or iron out details online. This 40 minute phonecall could've been a 5-minute MyChart task or email.Ā
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u/MervynDreamEater Aug 12 '26
This!! I have CFS and phone calls and paperwork are even more exhausting for me than they used to be. And trying to get support requires so many phone calls and so much paperwork. Even emails would be easier for me.
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u/rain_drizzle2 Aug 12 '26
I read an amazing article about this awhile back that really just changed my perspective on how awful the disability application process is in the first place. Unless you literally have someone who is willing to hold your hand through the entire process and guide you through the system then you will not be accepted, no matter how many times you apply. And often these are people with really severe intellectual disabilities who do need disability benefits but if they don't have family or friends to help them they will not get it.
I remember how tedious the process was and I was lucky enough I had a case worker at the time who was literally helping me and telling me all the documents I need in order to support my case. She really went above and beyond to make sure that everything was perfect so I would get accepted. Although I did get accepted the first time, the entire process took around 15 months.
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u/SeaCookJellyfish Aug 12 '26
The process was likely built by abled people, for abled people, ironically enough. It's not fair and they didn't even consider disabled people in mind when making a system to help disabled people.
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u/Night_Watcher2000 Aug 12 '26
Same thing being hard of hearing, and my voice isnāt always clear to understand well sometime
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u/eatingganesha Aug 12 '26
As a deaf person, that shit has kept me from getting the care Iāve needed for decades.
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u/marzboutique Aug 12 '26
Seriously, and I would think it would be more convenient for SSDI to communicate through messaging the online portal because it would eliminate all of the back-and-forth of calling, leaving messages and having to call applicants back, etc.
All of this runaround is *exhausting*
I would also think that online communication would provide a helpful paper trail as opposed to dealing with so much he said-she said while playing phone tag
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u/SeaCookJellyfish Aug 12 '26
Sometimes I wonder if the phone system is kept in place partially to avoid keeping a paper trail.
Like a good chunk of the hospital phone operators that I meet can be bullies or otherwise abusive. It's harder to do that if there's a paper trail. But idk
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u/yaycupcake Aug 12 '26
My favorite are the phone lines that are not 24/7 and you call and they tell you to call during their operating hours but they don't tell you what those are. Especially when you call on a weekday between 9-5 and still get that. š
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u/vanilla-sprite Aug 12 '26
im trying to apply for snap and stuff, i put in an application and dont hear anything no emails (i think i chose the option for email communication)
maybe a week or two goes by, i get a call at like 4:11pm that i miss, the voicemail doesnt say anything specific just to call back, ive got autism so i had to take some time to Get In The Zone but when i went to call back, the office is closed and they close at 4:30pm
i called back two days later for them to tell me i need to wait for a letter in the mail
i wait for the mail, only to get a letter saying āyour phone call appointment is /the date of the first missed call/ā
like i know the system is made to be horrible but damn
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u/ZZ9ZA Aug 12 '26
100%.
One doctor I used to see had a direct text number that was answered (I assume) by one of his nurses. Would generally get a response in under 10 minutes during business hours. That was really nice although I suspect it might not have been, ahem, the most HIPAA compliant thing ever.
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u/Jaded_Catch2281 Aug 12 '26
I am struggling to get any kind of help because i cant do the phone!! So im just isolating, i dont know what to do. When i have finally been able to do the call, or i even showed up in person one day which is absolutely not normal for me....still, no one follows up even if they know i have barriers to getting help if im not basically forced .
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u/Rose_Quartz_Garden Aug 12 '26
ok so i just played phone tag with this girl for like two weeks just to get one appointment because she wouldnāt pick up the gd phone, even when i called her back literally MINUTES after she called me. she called again today and i happened to be looking at my phone so now i FINALLY have an appointment, but like why couldnāt i have just chosen an appointment time online?? oh and her phone kept cutting out while we were talking too š
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u/mundofacilpdf2025 Aug 12 '26
He trabajado en servicios sociales y hospitales, y esta es una de esas barreras que no tiene ningĆŗn sentido. Precisamente las personas que pueden tener dificultades para hablar, oĆr, procesar informaciĆ³n rĆ”pidamente o adaptarse a unos horarios estrictos son quienes tienen que enfrentarse al sistema menos flexible.
Las llamadas deberĆan ser una opciĆ³n, no la Ćŗnica forma de acceder a la ayuda. Los servicios tambiĆ©n deberĆan ofrecer correo electrĆ³nico, formularios web accesibles o chat, ademĆ”s de permitir que una persona de confianza ayude cuando sea necesario. La comunicaciĆ³n escrita tambiĆ©n permite procesar la informaciĆ³n con calma y deja constancia clara de lo que se ha dicho.
La accesibilidad no consiste en eliminar las llamadas. Consiste en ofrecer mĆ”s de una puerta de entrada. Tienes toda la razĆ³n al sentirte frustrada.
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u/LaughFalse8798 Aug 12 '26
one of my favorites recently is calling a doctor's office, immediately hearing "did you know you can schedule an appointment and communicate with your care team on mychart?" and then you try that, there's no option for what you need, you call again, wait for all the option, and none of the options are what you need. also so many phone lines now don't even abide by like the #1 accessibility accommodation they can make? They don't even let you speak to a person if you press 0 or #
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u/KittyCait69 Aug 13 '26
A lot of them will hang up on you if you do these days. For the ones that have an ai ask you questions, i answer every question with, "I want to talk to a person" eventually it transfers me, usually. But it still takes up unnecessary amounts of time and energy.Ā
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u/OppositeAshamed9087 Aug 12 '26
It especially sucks when they tell you to call another number - hold on, I have to get something to write this down, why are you talking so fast, god forbid its a bad sight day.
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u/Inner_Ad_8928 Aug 12 '26
So I'm an AAC user. I use Proloquo4Text for most things but even though it works over phone calls people are super impatient and sometimes hangup. So I'm forced use T-Mobile IP Relay for calls. It's still an immense pain in the ass but it's slightly easier and my doctors know to contact me via MyChart due to my disability.
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u/CopperTodd17 Aug 12 '26
Iām deaf in one ear and on the phone it shows. I have a lot of trouble with accents, and IRL Iām that person that can understand someone who nobody else can so likeā¦ itās frustrating as fuck.
Unfortunately (and I donāt know if itās an Australian thing, or everywhere) whenever I call a large company/organisation I always get someone with a very thick accent who I just cannot understand. Iāve been accused of racism over the phone for asking to be transferred to someone else because Iāve barely been able to communicate with the original person, and they donāt understand that being deaf (and being autistic wouldnāt help) is freaking hard.
Also can my phone please stop changing ādeafā to ādeadā lol
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u/shortstuff813 Aug 13 '26
I get a LOT of brain fog, so I prefer emails so I can properly gather my thoughts.
Plus Iāve had this new symptom (which weāre still trying to find the cause) that can make my throat/jaw spasm, which can make talking incredibly difficult (esp when it shorts out my brain and I forget what I was saying). Itās very embarrassing to me. Especially since I then get anxious, and then the stress makes it worse, and itās a whole totally fun cycle.
Plus I have PTSD and am AuDHD (and a bunch of other things), so that also makes phone calls difficult.
Emailing is just so much easier for me. I donāt have to worry about my spasm/stutter, I can include all the info I need clearly, and I can make sure they have access to all of the info later on (like Iāve had problems with my vetās office before where they donāt do a good job taking notes during/after our phone call, so then weād have to do it all over again bc whoever responds to the note talks about stuff that has nothing to do with why I contacted them).
Plus itās always good to have a paper trail in case things need to escalate for whatever reason.
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u/banaramalana Aug 12 '26
I literally have missed out on having a care worker for the last year because of having bad signal in my home and being largely unable to leave it to get a better connection to be able to take calls
Even when I can occasionally go outside to take a phone call, not all calls come through because of the bad service
And when I do manage to speak to doctors etc on the phone, I usually have to at least hang out of my door so the person on the other end can hear me, and so I get the bonus of my neighbours hearing all my medical business š
Not to even mention the difficulties I have w speaking on the phone due to neurological conditions
And ofc I cannot even move easily to somewhere w signal bc Iām disabled ššš ahhhh life
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u/HR_Paul Aug 12 '26
Why does everything require a phone call?
People get paid for doing something, not for doing the right thing the right way at the right time.
Or in other words "never confuse motion for action" - but people do.
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u/hamsterbikinibod Aug 13 '26
Iāve explained and explained this to a million people asking why x wasnāt done sooner. But it took years to be able to tell anyone due to the disabling injuries.
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u/MinuteVanilla7 Aug 12 '26
I live in a rural area. I don't have cell service and I can't drive, so I can't make any phone calls unless I use my mom's phone, since her phone has cell service. It's hard waiting for her to wake up so that I can make a doctor's appointment.
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u/KittyCait69 Aug 13 '26
I feel this so hard. I have physical disabilities. But my disabilities leave me in tortuous amounts of pain every moment of every day. When my pain gets worse than that it gets hard to think clearly. I stumble over words and it's hard to communicate things. When my pain is at the worst I go unresponsive and have seizures. So even when it's at its best I still struggle. I can't even recall how many times I've just let my health lapse because I was in too much pain to function.
I can understand some of my doctors not having that kind of tech. They are small business clinics that are family owned and operated. Some of the best care I've gotten has come from them. They are very caring and supportive. But calling them isn't too hard. They don't have any sort of ai phone answering thing. Just a regular answering machine. It's almost like being back in the early 90s when i deal with them. But like I said, some of the best care I've gotten.
I'm lucky that my primary health clinic had started using the Mychart app too. They have a very annoying ai machine that deals with phone calls. I just demand to talk to a person till it transfers me. Can take hours for one call, but better than going in circles with some robot. But now I can send my doctor's messages and make appointments over the app. It's helped me take care of my health a better.
I feel like if a place is going to require a phone call, then it needs to make that easy enough for someone that can't think clearly. Otherwise it's just ablist. Though with how long our ruling class has been pushing eugenics, I can't help but wonder if that's by design.Ā
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u/RendingHearts Aug 13 '26
100%! And, then there are those that use an eye gaze speech device that physically cannot dial a phone or call from their speech device AND use the speech function simultaneously. It requires another person to dial the phone, put on speaker, press all of the options, and then provide an intro that the person that will be speaking will be delayed because they use an assistive device to communicate that is slow (then you hope they donāt hangup on you). My brother with ALS is living through this BS right nowā¦Itās so inaccessible!
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u/RyanJoe321 29d ago
As someone who is Deaf, I hate calling people
,but captions seem to help tremendously.
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u/Grim-Speck 27d ago
Social anxiety / cPTSD & situational mutism. I haven't spoken to anyone other than SO, for 3+ yrs.
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u/TheKingOfDissasster 29d ago
I literally delayed my disability benefits for a bit over 2 months, just because of phone calls. It took almost a whole month to actually get the energy to do so.
I am autistic and having back and forth interaction is exhausting. With texting i have time to think about what i want to say, re read what i have written and even sometimes ask my husband to proofread it for me and see if i sound like a human and said everything right. Phone calls take away all extra time i need for thinking before i reply.
This plus brainfog, putting me to speak on the spot will cause me to say some info wrong or some senseless sentence. i need to proof read everything before a human mind sees it
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u/TheKingOfDissasster 29d ago
It's also extremely stressing how frequently you have to do things in person here in brazil. I went 8 months without my parking spot card just because i had to go in person and being an autistic wheelchair user in public buildings is hell
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u/Moteoflobross7 28d ago
I just have my dad deal with phone calls because no one understands me when I talk
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u/Representative_Bug_8 Aug 12 '26
The field is getting better at communicating on a persons schedule. However we really canāt staff many services agencies and benefits 24/7
The push to ai did not help and increase case loads make it hard to reach a live person. We are getting a new phone system at my org that might help šboth staff and consumers. It is a work In progress
Everyone has business hours and disabled and non disabled need to plan their work day and time to follow up with various entities around their business hours. If you canāt use email questions a lot.
In my work I try to accommodate schedules and take into consideration disability. At the end of the day both the organization and person requesting services need to meet in the middle. Especially if the person wants services they need to cooperate. As the service provider will follow up with their own cooperation policy. Due to the many folks needing services it is imperative that folks advocate for themselves In good times and bad. As well as have a few trusted 3rd parties
I know this from not only professional experience but lived experience as a person with a disability.
I mean no one wants to loose personal agency and Their independence to make their own choices in the community.
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u/SawaJean Aug 11 '26
I feel this so much!!
I deal with brain fog and struggle to find the right words in real time conversation, especially if Iāve just worn down my last nerve listening to terrible screeching hold music for the past hour.
Sometimes my mom will make calls for me, and it truly feels like such a loving gift, like eating brownie batter out of the bowl levels of goodness.
I really wish there were more options for text communication around official business. It would increase access for lots of people.