Exploratory study on the adaptation of online services offered to people with disabilities, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

Aim: During the COVID-19 pandemic, many community organizations offering services to people with disabilities (PWD) changed their service delivery, switching from in-person to remote services. However, little is known about what it was like for organizations to quickly pivot their service delivery. The study explored barriers and facilitators to access community services for PWD and identified potential improvements to these services.Methods: The study used a mixed method, multiple case study design, which included a convenience sample of 27 participants recruited from four community organizations delivering services to PWD. Participating staff and members participated in six different focus groups and completed a questionnaire about their level of satisfaction regarding the evolution of the services. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted on the focus group data and the data from the questionnaires were descriptively analyzed.Results: The thematic analyses revealed four themes: "Succeeding in adapting the interventions to continue providing services", "Enjoying a lot of new things about the new online modality", "Key elements that have facilitated the transition" and "Facing some difficulties implementing online services". The median satisfaction score demonstrated that the participants were satisfied with the services. The success of these organizational changes relied on the adoption of new methods and approaches to service delivery.Conclusion: Through this study, barriers and facilitators that the organizations and their beneficiaries have experienced during the pandemic were identified as well as suggestions for improvement. The organizations consider maintaining online services beyond the pandemic to offer PWD easier access to community services. People with disabilities and professionals were satisfied with online community services developed during the pandemic.Individual with disabilities were more satisfied about the accessibility and the way of delivering online services than the staff.Facilitators for online service delivery included the choice of low-risk services to offer to their members, the use of the Zoom platform to deliver the service and the flexibility of the internal organization.Barriers to online service delivery included challenges related to communication, both among members and between staff and members, composing with a small screen for the staff and the members and for organizations to reach all their members - especially the oldest ones.