I am trying to find out what accommodations my daughter is able to get at places of business due to her disability. I cannot find a clear answer online.
She is autistic and has extreme anxiety and various processing disorders. She can drive a car and hire services, but she has trouble communicating with employees. She has selective mutism which is an anxiety disorder where the person become so anxious that they lose the ability to speak. Sometimes she can answer questions, but she struggles with initiating conversation and speaking up for herself (saying "no, I don't want to do that is there another option?"). She needs to be able to these things on her own.
What she woud like is when she goes to the veterinary clinic, is if staff would discuss pricing with her first and preferably provide the prices before taking the animal in the back to do work (blood tests, urine tests, etc.). What the staff does is say they're gonna do a blood test, administer fluids, then they just take the animal to the back. My daughter tries to get info from them first because she never knows how much it's going to cost beforehand ($100? $300? $700?). Some places don't like her questioning them. This causes her to become extremely anxious. Sometimes she says they do things in the back to her pet that she never authorized, then they charge her for it. All of this varies by clinic and by veterinarian.
There have also been times where she is not permitted to speak on the phone with the veterinarian and a receptionist or vet tech will relay messages back and forth between the vet and my daughter. This often leads to communication issues and my daughter gets frustated. She typically audio records all conversation with staff (legal in this state) so she always has proof and can refer back to the audio because she can't remember everything. There were times when a receptionist laughed at her for stuttering due to her mutism and then could be overheard in the background mocking her with the other receptionists. There was a time where another receptionist misunderstood her (the audio proves it was the receptionist) and it resulted in the veterinarian yelling at my daughter unjustifiably (audio proves this).
I've spoken to neurotypicals and other "normal" people who use these same vet clinics and they never have problems. But the audio proves that my daughter is not the one causing the misunderstandings. I would say that her only faults are that she knows too much about veterinary medicine and therefore asks important questions that the staff doesn't know the answers to such as "the test results show my cat has nonregenerative anemic, can we do a trial of Varenzin-CA1?" The vet or tech have never heard of the medication and have no clue what she's talking about and treat her like an idiot. The medication is for cats with anemia. There have been times when some vets come back and say she educated them about something they didn't know.
Is it reasonable that she ask for prices beforehand? Is there anyway that she could use the ADA laws to speak directly with the veterinarian instead of going through other staff? She has even tried emailing her questions and the staff still screws everything up.
She feels that communication is not effective enough for her and is causing unnecessary anxiety and autistic meltdowns. I cannot figure out how to help her as I do think the vet clinics are the problem. There's something that's clearly getting lost in translation. She never had these problems when she could speak directly to the veterinarians on the phone and when she could deal specifically with one particular veterinarian 15 years ago. Unfortunately that vet is not an option anymore.
She is autistic and has extreme anxiety and various processing disorders. She can drive a car and hire services, but she has trouble communicating with employees. She has selective mutism which is an anxiety disorder where the person become so anxious that they lose the ability to speak. Sometimes she can answer questions, but she struggles with initiating conversation and speaking up for herself (saying "no, I don't want to do that is there another option?"). She needs to be able to these things on her own.
What she woud like is when she goes to the veterinary clinic, is if staff would discuss pricing with her first and preferably provide the prices before taking the animal in the back to do work (blood tests, urine tests, etc.). What the staff does is say they're gonna do a blood test, administer fluids, then they just take the animal to the back. My daughter tries to get info from them first because she never knows how much it's going to cost beforehand ($100? $300? $700?). Some places don't like her questioning them. This causes her to become extremely anxious. Sometimes she says they do things in the back to her pet that she never authorized, then they charge her for it. All of this varies by clinic and by veterinarian.
There have also been times where she is not permitted to speak on the phone with the veterinarian and a receptionist or vet tech will relay messages back and forth between the vet and my daughter. This often leads to communication issues and my daughter gets frustated. She typically audio records all conversation with staff (legal in this state) so she always has proof and can refer back to the audio because she can't remember everything. There were times when a receptionist laughed at her for stuttering due to her mutism and then could be overheard in the background mocking her with the other receptionists. There was a time where another receptionist misunderstood her (the audio proves it was the receptionist) and it resulted in the veterinarian yelling at my daughter unjustifiably (audio proves this).
I've spoken to neurotypicals and other "normal" people who use these same vet clinics and they never have problems. But the audio proves that my daughter is not the one causing the misunderstandings. I would say that her only faults are that she knows too much about veterinary medicine and therefore asks important questions that the staff doesn't know the answers to such as "the test results show my cat has nonregenerative anemic, can we do a trial of Varenzin-CA1?" The vet or tech have never heard of the medication and have no clue what she's talking about and treat her like an idiot. The medication is for cats with anemia. There have been times when some vets come back and say she educated them about something they didn't know.
Is it reasonable that she ask for prices beforehand? Is there anyway that she could use the ADA laws to speak directly with the veterinarian instead of going through other staff? She has even tried emailing her questions and the staff still screws everything up.
She feels that communication is not effective enough for her and is causing unnecessary anxiety and autistic meltdowns. I cannot figure out how to help her as I do think the vet clinics are the problem. There's something that's clearly getting lost in translation. She never had these problems when she could speak directly to the veterinarians on the phone and when she could deal specifically with one particular veterinarian 15 years ago. Unfortunately that vet is not an option anymore.
