Blog

Hospitals and other healthcare organizations frequently grapple with understanding and fulfilling their communication responsibilities to patients who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

To help healthcare organizations achieve compliance, we are offering a webinar titled “Healthcare Providers: Understanding Communication Responsibilities to Patients Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing.”

When Procter & Gamble started selling Pampers diapers in Japan, they used the classic image of a stork carrying a baby on the packaging.

They later discovered that while the legend of the stork is common in the U.S., Japanese parents tell their children a different tale. Instead of arriving by stork, babies arrive in giant floating peaches.

If language isn’t on your mind when thinking about the future of your organization, it should be. Finding a reliable language services provider is critical to the success of your organization.

Consider this: More than 65 million U.S. residents speak a language other than English at home. Another 10 million are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. The complexity of communicating with these individuals will only increase, given that immigration is expected to account for nearly 90 percent of population growth in the U.S. over the next 40 years.

Believe it or not, the linguistic and cultural hurdles you may be facing can be turned into enormous opportunities. To accomplish this, you’ll want to partner with a language services provider that has the interpretation and translation solutions necessary to take on these challenges with ease.

When trying to decide which language services provider (LSP) is right for you, the first thing to know is that not all LSPs are created equal. Much like companies within your industry, some players in the language services space are more formidable than others.

Learning a second language is hard work.

Bilingualism brings with it a level of language proficiency that is sufficient for most standard, everyday situations and conversations.

Unfortunately, many organizations feel they have their language needs covered because they have a bilingual person on staff. This is typically not the case for several reasons.

Today in the United States, one out of every five of our neighbors speaks a language other than English at home—that’s more than 64 million people. Another 10 million are Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

Many struggle to communicate as they navigate their everyday lives. A doctor’s visit, a traffic stop, a parent-teacher conference, or a trip to the bank—things we take for granted—can be very difficult for these individuals. As most of us would, they may feel embarrassed, frustrated, or excluded.

Whereas this lack of understanding is distressing, the experience of being understood is empowering. Language access can be far more than transactional—the mere exchanging of words, much as one would exchange one currency for another. When done right, language access is transformational. Believe it or not, the language and cultural hurdles you’re facing today can be turned into enormous opportunities.

For this to happen, you’ll need a partner that can take these challenges and help you manage them with ease. Language services providers (LSPs) provide the interpretation and translation services you’ll need. But which LSP is right for your organization?

Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act covers a lot of terrain. Many public agencies lack a specific understanding of their communication responsibilities to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing under Title II.

September is officially Deaf Awareness Month. In recognition, we are hosting an upcoming webinar called “ADA Title II: Understanding the Communication Responsibilities of State and Local Agencies.” During this webinar, leading ADA and disabilities rights expert Julia Sain will outline requirements for state and local government agencies when communicating with the Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities they serve. She will also address attendee questions.

In particular, this webinar will be essential listening for state and local government officials who are responsible for language access and compliance. Non-profit organizations that work with local government agencies to provide services will also find it of great interest.

If you think it’s difficult to define your typical customer today, imagine what it will be like in a decade.

For one thing, by 2030, the concept of one particular racial or ethnic group being in the majority will be fading fast and will be non-existent by 2043, according to U.S. Census data. Your customers may be just as likely to speak Spanish at home as they are to speak English. And although they may be able to speak English, many will feel more comfortable having conversations in another language.

If you want your company to continue providing exceptional customer service and maintaining a competitive advantage, you need to be prepared to welcome anyone who walks in the door.

What will be the most common languages in the United States in the future? While no one knows for sure, we can get some good indicators by looking at a few key trends.

As a healthcare provider, the patient is always your main concern. Of course, the care you provide is also guided by laws and regulations.

While some of these laws and regulations can make the jobs of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other providers more complicated, we can all agree that the majority of them help ensure that patients and health care professionals are protected and everyone can access the same high-quality medical care when it’s needed.

Each week, LanguageLine selects and excerpts five stories about language and culture that we think readers will find intriguing. Here is this week’s “Liner Notes”:

The public-charge rule issued this week by the Trump administration will have profound effects on legal admissions to the United States and on use of public benefits by millions of legal noncitizens and the U.S. citizens with whom they live.

The pace of globalization is accelerating, to the extent that half of customers for U.S. businesses will come from overseas by 2025.

Meanwhile, three-quarters of internet users already speak a language other than English, and that percentage is expected to grow.

This reality could pose a stumbling block for some businesses. According to The Economist, nearly half of 572 senior executives interviewed said that misunderstandings and “messages lost in translation” have stalled major international business deals for their companies. More than 60 percent of these executives also said that poor communication skills have negatively affected their plans to expand internationally.

In a separate study, a quarter of U.S. employers said they have lost business recently because of a lack of language skills. This trend is bound to grow, given that 56 percent of American businesses say they expect their foreign language demand to increase in the next five years.

As organizations try to adapt to this new reality and optimize their language strategies, most are asking: Which business languages are the most important?