“They need to speak a language everyone can understand”: Accessibility of COVID-19 vaccine information for Canadian adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Accessible vaccine information is one vital component of effective vaccination programs, however, there is limited research that explores how people with disabilities engage with public health messaging. This study aimed to understand how adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and their caregivers navigated Canada's public health communications regarding COVID-19 vaccines. A national survey on the accessibility of vaccine information was conducted in the spring and summer of 2022. Surveys were completed by 208 adults with IDD, 102 family caregivers and friends, and 54 staff. Quantitative data were analyzed descriptively, and descriptive qualitative content analysis was applied to open-ended survey responses. Vaccine information was difficult to understand and was not accessible to many people with IDD and their caregivers. Approximately 75 % of adults with IDD found COVID-19-related information challenging to comprehend, followed by 69 % of family/friends and 56 % of staff. All three groups indicated they felt overwhelmed by the large quantity of information they had to navigate (adults with IDD, 72 %; family/friends, 65 %; staff, 70 %) and experienced difficulties such as finding trustworthy sources and identifying vaccine misinformation and disinformation. Respondents offered recommendations to improve public health messaging and the accessibility of future vaccine campaigns. Our study explored the experiences of Canadian adults with IDD and caregivers while navigating COVID-19 vaccine information, revealing significant barriers. To address these barriers and improve vaccine uptake, public health communications must ensure accessibility throughout every stage of immunization, including education campaigns, appointment booking, vaccination appointment, and aftercare services. Recommendations include using Easy Read language and multiple formats, supporting caregivers and community groups, and enlisting trusted community messengers to disseminate accurate information and build confidence among adults with IDD and their caregivers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.015 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".