Medical bills remain inaccessible for many visually impaired Americans

Lucy Greco (left), a web-accessibility specialist at the University of California, Berkeley, is blind. She reads most of her documents online, but employs Liza Schlosser-Olroyd as an aide to sort through her paper mail every other month, to make sure Greco hasn't missed a bill or other important correspondence. (Shelby Knowles for KHN)

A Missouri man who is deaf and blind said a medical bill he didn't know existed was sent to debt collections, triggering an 11% rise in his home insurance premiums.

In a different case, from California, an insurer has suspended a blind woman's coverage every year since 2010 after mailing printed "verification of benefits" forms to her home that she cannot read, she said. The problems continued even after she got a lawyer involved.