Aphasia Snapshot Results: Outside the Home with Aphasia

This extra-long Snapshot is the result of four mini Snapshots we asked for Aphasia Awareness Month. These four related surveys all discuss life outside the home: Dining at a restaurant, shopping for groceries, traveling to visit a new place, or running errands in nearby stores.

All of these activities can be more difficult when you have aphasia. These answers are not only interesting for our community, but they are a call-to-action for the service industry.

Due to the length of the Snapshot, we’re only going to call out some points to notice as you read, and then we’ll direct you to the 12-page Snapshot results, which you can read online or download as a PDF.

Highlights

Staff at restaurants, grocery stores, travel spaces, and local stores can increase sales by being aphasia-friendly and knowledgeable about best communication practices. People with aphasia responded with a resounding “yes” when we asked people if they’d be more likely to visit a place where the staff had received aphasia training.

• 67.2% were more likely to go to a restaurant with aphasia-friendly staff
• 68.3% were more likely to go to a grocery store with aphasia-friendly staff
• 66.7% were more likely to go to a hotel or on a train/plane with aphasia-friendly staff
• 63% were more likely to go to local stores with aphasia-friendly staff

People found navigating the local stores the most difficult, whereas new restaurants, grocery stores, and travel were all slightly easier.

While delicious food brought people back to restaurants, aphasia-friendly ordering was a close second.

Want to dive into the results? We’ve made the results available as a downloadable PDF in case you want to discuss the answers offline. You can also read them on the web by following that link.

167 people participated in this last Snapshot. Were you one of them?

We take a new community snapshot each month. If you would like to participate, please go to the current questions that are all about telling people about aphasia. They are open until August 19, 2021.