Overcoming Barriers to Using Telehealth for Standardized Language Assessments.

The clinical imperative to provide speech-language pathology services to families outside of the metropolitan area, while accounting for the barriers previously identified, was the impetus for a recent study conducted examining the use of telehealth in Australia (Sutherland et al., 2016). That study found that delivering standardized language assessments via telehealth using consumer grade equipment was feasible, reliable, and tolerated by students with language impairment. In the present article, a follow-up to Sutherland et al. (2016), the barriers to using telehealth are described, along with the steps taken to overcome these barriers in completing the original study. The current article also seeks to describe to the responses of the school-aged students and clinicians involved.