Phone calls, Awareness and Accessibility

usernameasd

Hello, this is my first post on here but I've had an account for a bit! Anyway, I am just wondering if there is a way to somehow promote understanding and change in regards to people who cannot make phone calls. (This will be a long post, so bear with me!!)

In the past I have relied on a family member to make phone calls on my behalf, but the person who did so is no longer with us, so I have been left to manoeuvre communications by myself through email, which is where I noticed how unfair and inaccessible a lot of things are.

For those of us that can't phone - we have to wait weeks even for the same amount of service as those that are able to. Some people cannot make phone calls due to their disability. In my case I am on the autism spectrum and can shut down, at times going non-verbal, which is so unpredictable to guess when it will happen that I have severe phone anxiety and will not phone, no matter what! An example of this is I recently dislocated my hip completely - should have phoned for an ambulance and didn't. It's so bad I cannot phone even in an emergency, so the people saying to just "pick up the phone", do not understand at all.

So in this time of being left to navigate official communications via email I have noticed extreme disparity in the speed of which things get answered. I know emails take longer than phone calls (which are instant), but I'm talking about several cases of waiting two or three weeks even for a simple reply. I appreciate those that say the response time will be about two or three days, because they are accounting for the time it will take, and let me know what to expect. But when things take two or three weeks it just seems like this is another accessibility issue that needs to be tackled, but I don't know how to go about campaigning for awareness of it.

An example is: I have been trying to navigate private dentists (no NHS available, go figure!), and one practice would take two weeks to reply to each email (one time they took three and a half weeks). After a while I just told them to take me off their patient list, as it was getting extremely frustrating and I just wanted to be seen. They made me sign up to Denplan and then wait until that money went out to book an appointment, which I did, so the whole process of even getting an appointment booked took me about two to three months (for an appointment a month ahead, so four months after I contacted them looking to be seen)! At that point, I was done with it, and cancelled with them (they still took two months worth of Denplan money though). Tried Bupa which was an instant email response and let me book an appointment online in the same week, but very expensive. If I had phoned - this all would have been sorted instantly, within a week, and I wouldn't have had to pay probably double the amount it would have been.

I am going through this again currently, which is what prompted me to make this post. It is so incredibly frustrating, I have no idea how this can change, really, but I'm so tired of it. I can see it being like this maybe five years ago, but now emails are very important and widely used. If there is an email listed, the reception should have the time to answer it, at least within a week - but two, three, four weeks is just unacceptable. I know complaining or leaving a review individually on those that take forever to respond will probably help - but I'm not someone that likes to complain, even my cancellation email to that dentist that took forever was far too polite and didn't even imply any sort of blame on them. I do also mention on all the emails that I cannot make phone calls, so they are aware of that, too (so they can't just say - "well she can just phone!"). Perhaps I need more assertiveness? I don't know.

I know some people will think "this needs to be tackled by the individual", and "exposure therapy", but that's not understanding how it works, really. I cannot predict when I stop being able to talk! And even if it was solely the anxiety, that's not understanding how incredibly debilitating anxiety can be.

There are even some official communications that do not use email. EE appeared to just have a phone number, but I managed to connect via a messaging service with them, at the very least, which I was grateful for. But I know there are many places that still offer no email/messaging option. In those cases, I simply wouldn't contact them at all (and if I needed to, it simply wouldn't get done).

Apologies for this being practically a novel here (I don't send emails this long don't worry - they're usually two-three sentences at most!). I would be grateful for any advice etc with dealing with this, if there are ways to make it easier to navigate, or if there's something I can do or ways I can campaign/advocate on this. It needs to change, but I don't know where to start!

Rosie_Scope

Hi @usernameasd, welcome to the community!

I think there are still quite a few barriers for people who can't manage phone calls, it sounds really frustrating to have to wait so long to access the same services as others. You're right, so much more still needs to be done to make things more easy to access for people who can't use phones for whatever reason. I'm sorry you have to go through so much to get things sorted, it can't be easy!

I'm not sure I have any advice myself, but I just wanted to pop in to say hello and welcome at least. I hope some of our members will have had similar experiences and can share anything that has worked for them 😊

AutumnBreeze

I agree with this entirely, and just wanted to let you know, you are not alone. A lot of people don't understand that for those of us that have trouble making phone calls, it's almost like a type of paralysis. No amount of therapy will fix it. Sometimes it's better or worse; being under a lot of stress often makes it worse. Being pressured into it can cause a complete shutdown and an inability to communicate at all. With the amount of technology available today, there should be something in place as an alternative to a phone call for those of us that simply, as hard as we try cannot do it, and cannot always find someone else to help out either.