Blog

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?

By 2050, the United States could have more Spanish speakers than any other country, according to a report from the Cervantes Institute.

With more than 52 million native and Spanish-language speakers, America is now the second-largest Spanish speaking population in the world after Mexico. In other words, the U.S. already has more Spanish speakers than Spain.

Approximately 41 million of these individuals, or 13.4 percent of the U.S. population, report that they speak Spanish at home. Forty-three percent of all U.S. Spanish speakers assessed themselves as speaking English less than “very well” in the 2013-2017 American Community Survey.

Mexico has 121 million Spanish speakers. Data obtained by the Cervantes Institute from the U.S. Census Bureau suggests that the U.S. will have an estimated 138 million Spanish speakers by 2050.

Healthcare organizations are adopting telehealth technology at an impressive rate.

Legislation, escalating costs to deliver traditional services, and overall population health management have accelerated interest in telemedicine solutions. More than half of hospitals are expected to have installed telehealth technology by 2020. Especially in heretofore underserved populations, telehealth stands to dramatically improve the delivery of quality care to areas where it has been challenging - if not impossible - to access.

But for telemedicine platforms to truly be revolutionary, they must be able to hear every voice, including those that speak a language other than English. In other words, if you are building a telehealth solution without limited-English speakers in mind – stop!

The U.S. Hispanic market is massive – and growing larger at a dizzying rate.

There are more than 130 million multicultural Americans, making up nearly 38 percent of the total population. One out of five of these multicultural Americans is Hispanic. There are nearly 60 million Hispanics living in the U.S. today, and that number will grow by 12 million over the next five years. In fact, by 2050, the U.S. is expected to be the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country.

These are a lot of numbers, but what does it all mean to the average American business?

Does your organization provide interpretation or translation for limited-English speakers?

If you answered “yes,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would like to hear from you.  

Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act asserts that healthcare organizations and programs that accept funding from HHS must provide meaningful access to care for limited-English patients and beneficiaries.  This includes written communication notifying them of free language-access services like interpretation and translation.

The Trump Administration wants to remove this and other important provisions, including removing quality standards for video remote interpretation (VRI) and recommendations that covered entities develop language access plans.

Like physicians, pharmacies play an important role in empowering patients to take charge of their health.

Unfortunately, language barriers often make it more difficult for non-English speaking customers to ask important questions about their medication, take it as directed, and be aware of potential side effects.