Recommendations

An education and training curriculum should be developed around effective organizational disaster response and recovery plans for CILs across the country. This should include content-specific elements of an organizational disaster plan, materials that can be used by the leadership and staff of CILs and ongoing technical assistance to CILs for developing and implementing these plans.
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( ARC DHS FEMA HHS STATES )

Provide decontamination instructions in audible, text, and picture formats to accommodate individuals with vision, hearing or cognitive impairments, and language barriers.
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( DHS FEMA HHS STATES )

Identify the functional needs of individuals, particularly those with sensory, cognitive or language barriers, prior to entering decontamination facilities to ensure that proper accommodations or assistance will be provided to those individuals.
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( DHS FEMA HHS STATES )

Consider the feasibility of shelter-in-place as an additional option for certain individuals with disabilities who have the appropriate care facilities and equipment at their residence. Make arrangements for health professionals to visit regularly and assess any quarantined, isolated, or sheltered individuals who are sheltered-in-place.
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( DHS FEMA HHS STATES )

Ensure that isolation and quarantine locations are ADA compliant. ADA rules for accessibility can be accessed at  www.access-board.gov/ADA-ABA/summary.htm.
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( DHS FEMA HHS STATES )

Make accommodations for service animals in facilities designated as potential isolation/quarantine facilities.
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( DHS FEMA HHS STATES )

View fixed “pop-up” decontamination facilities in locations such as hospitals as as extension of the hospital facility and design, and mandate them to comply with ADA standards.
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( DHS FEMA HHS STATES )

Establish protocols and procedures, along with maintenance of the necessary equipment to allow the decontamination of individuals who rely on durable medical equipment. Require manufacturers of medical equipment (including, but not limited to ventilators, oxygen administration systems, prosthetic devices, walkers/canes/crutches, wheelchairs, catheters, ostomy equipment, hearing aids, etc) to provide information on decontamination procedures.
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( DHS FEMA HHS STATES )

Decontaminate service animals by going through a decontamination corridor/tent/trailer or other mass decontamination process with their owner/handler using the same process whenever possible. Consideration should be given to decontaminating the service animal in an area or corridor where people are not being decontaminated at the same time in case the service animal has an unexpected reaction to the process.
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( DHS FEMA HHS STATES )

In order to develop effective plans for people with disabilities, they must be identified and treated as one distinct population within the larger array of “vulnerable populations.

Target Agencies/Organizations: ( ALLEXEC ALLORGS ARC DHS FEMA HHS STATES )

The Secretary of DHS must ensure that the NRP provides for a clear chain of command to lead and coordinate the federal response to any natural disaster, act of terrorism, or other man-made disaster. 
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( DHS FEMA )

DHS should 1) rigorously retest, train, and exercise its recent clarification of the roles, responsibilities, and lines of authority for all levels of leadership, implementing changes needed to remedy identified coordination problems; 2) direct that the NRP base plan and its supporting Catastophic Incident Annex be supported by a more robust and detailed operational implementation plans; 3) provide guidance and direction for federal, state, and local planning, training,  and exercises to ensure such activities fully support preparedness, response, and recovery responsibilities under the NRP and the interim National Preparedness Goal; and 5) use a risk management approach in deciding whether and how to invest finite resources in specific capabilities for a catastophic disaster.
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( DHS FEMA )

Make telecommunication options (e.g., videophones, Video Relay Services [VRS], TTYs, captioned telephones, amplified phones) available when telephones are provided.
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( ARC DHS FEMA HHS STATES )

Develop agreements between telecommunication organizations and the local community to facilitate accessibility in emergency situations, to assure availability of appropriate analog lines for TTY users and CART access in shelters.
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( ARC DHS FEMA HHS STATES )

Make the following available and easily accessible in all medical facilities, mass dispensing sites, and shelters:  1) Hearing Assistive Technology (HAT), written instruction on the operation of the
technology and floor plans which detail where HAT is located;
2) Instructions for staff on where to find sign language interpreters and VRI and what to do until the interpreter arrives; 3)  Signage for consumers indicating where people who are deaf or hard of hearing will find interpreters, CART services, HAT, TTYs, amplified phones, visual display of announcements and/or other communication accommodations; 4) Videos with open captions and/or written instructions; 5) Pen and paper
Target Agencies/Organizations: ( ARC DHS FEMA HHS STATES )