Background

Mental health services are turning to technology to ease the resource burden, but privacy policies are hard to understand potentially compromising consent for people with mental health problems. The FDA recommends a reading grade of 8.

Objective

To investigate and improve the accessibility and acceptability of mental health depression app privacy policies.

Methods

A mixed methods study using quantitative and qualitative data to improve the accessibility of app privacy policies. Service users completed assessments and focus groups to provide information on ways to improve privacy policy accessibility, including identifying and rewording jargon. This was supplemented by comparisons of mental health depression apps with social media, music and finance apps using readability analyses and examining whether GDPR affected accessibility.

Results

Service users provided a detailed framework for increasing accessibility that emphasised having critical information for consent. Quantitatively, most app privacy policies were too long and complicated for ensuring informed consent (mental health apps mean reading grade = 13.1 (SD = 2.44)). Their reading grades were no different to those for other services. Only 3 mental health apps had a grade 8 or less and 99% contained service user identified jargon. Mental health app privacy policies produced for GDPR weren't more readable and were longer.

Conclusions

Apps specifically aimed at people with mental health difficulties are not accessible and even those that fulfilled the FDA's recommendation for reading grade contained jargon words. Developers and designers can increase accessibility by following a few rules and should, before launching, check whether the privacy policy can be understood.

中文翻译：

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适用条款和条件：心理健康抑郁症应用程序中可读性和术语的关键问题

背景

心理健康服务正在转向技术来减轻资源负担，但很难理解隐私政策可能会损害有心理健康问题的人的同意。FDA 建议阅读等级为 8。

客观的

调查和改进心理健康抑郁症应用隐私政策的可访问性和可接受性。

方法

一项混合方法研究，使用定量和定性数据来提高应用隐私政策的可访问性。服务用户完成了评估和焦点小组，以提供有关改善隐私政策可访问性的方法的信息，包括识别和改写行话。通过使用可读性分析并检查 GDPR 是否影响可访问性，将心理健康抑郁症应用程序与社交媒体、音乐和金融应用程序进行了比较，从而补充了这一点。

结果

服务用户提供了一个详细的框架来增加可访问性，强调获得同意的关键信息。从数量上看，大多数应用程序的隐私政策对于确保知情同意而言过于冗长和复杂（心理健康应用程序的平均阅读等级 = 13.1 (SD = 2.44)）。他们的阅读成绩与其他服务没有什么不同。只有 3 个心理健康应用程序的等级为 8 级或更低，并且 99% 包含服务用户识别的术语。为 GDPR 制定的心理健康应用程序隐私政策不具有更高的可读性并且更长。

结论

无法访问专门针对有心理健康问题的人的应用程序，甚至那些满足 FDA 阅读等级建议的应用程序也包含行话。开发人员和设计人员可以通过遵循一些规则来增加可访问性，并且应该在启动之前检查是否可以理解隐私政策。