Blind employee takes VA to court saying new EHR from Oracle is inaccessible

A blind employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs is suing the federal agency on grounds that their new electronic health records system makes it impossible for her to do her job.

A clinical social worker, Laurette Santos has worked for the VA for a decade, but when the agency switched to Oracle Health’s Cerner EHR in 2022, her productivity plummeted. Sighted people had to help her complete basic tasks like reading her clients’ files because the new system could not accommodate the Jobs Access With Speech software — the most commonly used screen reader for federal employees.

“I am extremely independent, and I work to maintain that independence,” said Santos, who lives in White City, Oregon. “I feel that they came along and made me disabled again, and I object to that.”

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