Aids for Hearing, Speech, Sensory, and Vision Challenges

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital offers free resources for patients and family caregivers with communication challenges related to hearing, speech, sensory processing, and vision.

St. Jude staff reviews each family’s communication needs so they get the tools they need to communicate better while they are at the hospital. 

It is important that patients and families understand care and treatment, ask questions, and take part in making decisions. 

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Affordable Care Act require hospitals to provide services to help patients, families, and visitors with communication disabilities. These laws apply to all hospital programs and services.  

If you need help with communication, talk with your child’s care team.

Services we provide

St. Jude provides communication support for patients and family caregivers who: 

• Are deaf or hard of hearing
• Are blind or have vision problems
• Have other communication disabilities, such as problems with speech, sensing, or feeling.

Assistive devices or technology

St. Jude provides several different services for people with communication challenges. Families may talk with their care team to access communication services and tools. 

Hearing and speech

• Portable devices that make sounds louder 
• Audio recordings or note-takers for patient care-related conversations  
• Phone equipment with captions, video, or video text display. 
• Phones that work with hearing aids or that have amplifiers
• Text phone (TTY): A text phone helps people with speech and hearing challenges communicate using the telephone. Users can type messages back and forth. All people in the conversation must have a text phone to communicate. The phone number to access hearing-impaired services from a phone anywhere in the United States is 711. But if you call from a campus landline phone, call 9711.
• American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters: In-person or video interpreter 
• CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation, also called real-time captioning): This service shows real-time captions of a conversation to those who are deaf or hard of hearing. The captioning is provided by a person or software. Captions are displayed on a screen or monitor. 

Vision

• Voice, text, and video-based products that turn “text to talk”
• Information in large print
• Computer software to make text larger or read it out loud 
• Apps that tell what is on a computer or phone screen
• Optical readers that scan printed text and convert it into digital text that a computer can read or process. 
• Braille materials. Braille is a system of raised dots that can be read by the fingers of someone trained in Braille.  
• Large-print materials for low-vision or blind persons 
• Screen readers to help blind or visually impaired users read on-screen text by converting it into speech or Braille. Screen reader software is available on all St. Jude computers. 

If you ask for a specific service or item, St. Jude might not be able to provide it. If we cannot, we will offer a similar service or item. We will discuss these decisions with you.

Learn more