The Hearing Loss Association of America reports that ICF Macro, working with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), wants to find out how to improve federal tax services and federal tax preparation assistance to hard of hearing and deaf taxpayers.
Through a series of in-person focus groups, they’re gathering opinions to learn about the difficulties people face in getting answers and assistance with tax issues.
Dates and Locations for the focus groups:
November 3
Bethesda, Maryland
November 18
Los Angeles
- The discussions will take no longer than 2 hours
- Approximately eight people will be assigned to each group, allowing for an in-depth discussion.
- If you have contacted the IRS for assistance in the past year, your experiences would be helpful to the discussion. If you have not contacted the IRS for assistance, your thoughts about this will be helpful.
- You will receive $75 in appreciation for your time and participation.
- Hard-of-hearing individuals are eligible to participate in the group being held at 5 pm. A speaking moderator will facilitate the discussion, with the assistance of computer-assisted real-time (CART) captioning. Assistive listening devices will also be provided.
- Deaf individuals are eligible to participate in the group being held at 7:30 pm. A deaf moderator fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) will facilitate the discussion and allow everyone the opportunity to communicate.
To be eligible to participate, you must have either a severe hearing loss or be deaf, be between 18 and 67 years old, and have filed a federal tax return for both 2007 and 2008.
If you would like to be a part of this discussion, please contact ICF Macro at (877) 878-3935 (toll free) or [email protected]. Spaces are extremely limited.
[Source: Hearing Loss Association of America]
