Telehealth Access

Making the Most of your Online Visit

Online Children’s Therapy Videoconferencing

Choose your environment:

  1. Is it quiet enough?
  2. Is it private enough? Choose to use headphones if needed. Practice pugging them in, and change sound output settings if not automatic.
  3. Make sure the camera is not facing a window or bright light. You will not be seen except as a silhouette.
  4. Check for glare on the screen.
  5. Plan for being able to aim the camera at a tabletop surface or a floor space if you will be doing fine motor skills or movement activities. Experiment with best positioning of device and a way to hold the device in its position if you are using a handheld device or tablet.
girl wearing headphone while looking at a tablet

Dedicate your device to the visit only:

  1. Quit and close all other apps that may be running, before connecting for visit.
  2. You may want to disable automatic mail and messages being received by putting phone or tablet device on DoNotDisturb mode, or you may want to set up mail and messages to not download videos and photos automatically, but to leave them for you to download later when you open the mail or message.
  3. Do a speed-test on your internet service, and bookmark the link so you can do it at different times of day.
  4. Make sure other household members who share your internet service are not using high demand apps during your video call. Internet games, video streaming, and video meetings are all higher bandwidth apps that compete for your internet service and will impact the quality of your telehealth call.
mom and daughter on laptop

Learn the App:

Telehealth apps use common videoconferencing symbols while in your virtual visit:

Touching this videocamera icon turns the camera on or off. It may show with a line through it, when it is turned off.

Touching this microphone icon turns your sound on or off. It may show with a line through it, when it is turned off

Touching this phone icon ends the connection. It is red when you are connected. If the call “freezes” temporarily, the app will try to reconnect automatically and you do not need to take action if the red phone is still showing. If you wish to start over and re-entering the waiting room, be sure to touch the red phone to fully disconnect first.

This gear icon lets you change settings. Adjust your speaker volume if you are having trouble hearing your provider or they are too loud, or before you step further from your device, such as when asked to do movement. Adjust your video to lower quality video to reduce the demand, if you are experiencing video “freezes”. Adjust video to higher quality if you cannot read what is being shared.

If you have no sound or picture in a call and the video and microphone icons aren’t fixing the problem, use settings to give security permission for the app to use your built in microphone and camera and to save the permission for your next visit.

Online Children’s Therapy looks forward to helping you have the best possible experience in online visits. We will support you in using the technology so you can focus on your therapy activities and experiences.

You can download a pdf version of this guide

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