In 2012, People With Disabilities Foundation (PWDF) negotiated a settlement agreement with the Social Security Administration (SSA) on behalf of two PWDF clients who were Social Security disability beneficiaries.  See Davis v. Astrue, Case 3:06-cv-06108 EMC (N.D. Cal. 2012); and Doe v. Astrue, Case No. 3:09-CV-980 EMC (N.D. Cal. 2012).  Each of these plaintiffs has a number of impairments related to his disabilities that make it difficult for him to understand and communicate with the SSA.  In this settlement agreement, the SSA agreed to a number of reasonable accommodations to help the agency communicate effectively with Mr. Davis and Mr. Doe so that it could provide them with equal, meaningful program access.[1] 

Among other things, the SSA agreed to these reasonable accommodations:

·         assign designated Social Security disability “program experts” (claims representatives) to facilitate communication between the plaintiffs and the SSA,

·         make these employees available for a training meeting with the professionals of the given plaintiff’s choice so that the experts could learn about the plaintiff’s impairments and how to communicate effectively with him,

·         follow processes for ensuring that the assigned experts are indeed the persons who meet with plaintiffs when plaintiffs request a meeting, and

·         provide audio CDs of SSA notices (in addition to the standard written notices).

In the last few months we have met with both plaintiffs to assess the status of the accommodations.  As mentioned in a previous article, we found that Mr. Davis’s assigned program experts were no longer available, thus new experts needed to be assigned.  We recently organized and held a training meeting for the new assigned experts with two of the professionals who work with Mr. Davis.  (See related article.)

Although the program experts encouraged one plaintiff to make appointments by phone, the plaintiff reported that the SSA’s telephone appointment system was too complicated to use.  Thus, he preferred to go to an SSA office to make an appointment with his designated program expert. 

Both plaintiffs reported that they receive the audio CD of notices from SSA, but they no longer have a CD player available at home and/or need help working a CD player.  As a result, both plaintiffs take their CDs somewhere to get help to play it, e.g., to a relative or the public library. 

PWDF believes the SSA can use the experience gained from providing these reasonable accommodations to Mr. Davis and Mr. Doe to design a process that will allow it to effectively communicate with other claimants and beneficiaries who need help understanding and replying to notices from SSA due to their disabilities.  We urge the SSA to design a replicable process for providing such accommodations nationwide. (See  letter from PWDF Legal Director, Steven Bruce, to the Commissioner of the SSA through the US Attorney.)