Informed Consent Accessibility

The practice of making informed consent documents and processes fully accessible to people with disabilities, ensuring they can understand the information being presented and make genuinely informed decisions about participation. For Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals who primarily use sign language, this means providing consent materials in their native language rather than only in written English, which may be a second language. For people with intellectual or cognitive disabilities, it may involve plain language versions or multimedia explanations. Federal regulations in the United States (45 CFR 46.116) require that informed consent be provided in a language understandable to the participant, yet many consent processes remain inaccessible, contributing to the underrepresentation of people with disabilities in research and healthcare.