Written by: Anne Stefanyk, CEO/Founder, Kanopi Studios
Over a quarter of U.S. adults live with a disability. For these individuals, an inaccessible healthcare website can prevent them from scheduling appointments, accessing medical information, or communicating with providers.
This guide offers a step-by-step process for evaluating and improving the accessibility of your healthcare website, from web development to testing. Use these best practices to build trust and loyalty with your audience by ensuring your website is an equitable resource for your community.
1. Survey your audience to understand their accessibility needs.
The core of accessibility is putting your users first. You don’t have to guess which accessibility features patients need—just ask them.
Gather insights from your audience by taking these steps:
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Send a survey to your healthcare audience. Ask your audience questions such as, “Have you experienced any difficulties using our website because of a disability or assistive technology needs?” and “What’s one thing we could do to make our website more accessible to you?” Determine whether you should adjust your accessibility approach to address unmet needs. For example, if respondents note difficulties interpreting auto-generated captions, manually write captions for informational health videos.
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Compile survey results to help steer your accessibility changes. Evaluate survey responses to identify overarching trends. Based on response patterns, choose the highest-priority accessibility concerns and outline a clear plan for addressing them. Share your plan and implementation timeline with your audience promptly so they know you take their recommendations seriously.
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Keep in mind that your healthcare audience might have intersectional needs. For example, let’s say your organization is a hospital that operates in a rural area. According to U.S. Census data, rural residents (about 20% of the U.S. population) were more likely (14.7%) than their urban counterparts to experience disability. As a result, you should prioritize fast website performance so rural residents can access the digital information and resources they need despite potential internet access issues.
Make sure your surveys are accessible by using clear form labels, ensuring all form fields have keyboard focus states, and testing with a screen reader before launch. To reach the widest possible audience, send surveys via email, social media, and your website.
2. Follow WCAG 2.2 Guidelines.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a set of internationally accepted standards for web accessibility. They provide organizations with a clear playbook for creating accessible websites that make online content more inclusive to people with disabilities.
The guidelines are sorted into four principles, along with relevant requirements. These principles include:
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Perceivable: Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
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Provide alternative text for images, such as medical diagrams, so users with low vision can understand them. Ensure color contrast meets the 4.5:1 ratio and that vital content, like lab result charts, is distinguishable without relying on color alone. Offer adjustable font sizes and line spacing for low-vision users.
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Operable: User interface components and navigation must be operable.
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Ensure all site functions are available via keyboard navigation and avoid content that auto-plays without controls like pause functionality. For example, if you have a homepage video showing doctors and patients interacting, it should include pause and mute functionality.
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Understandable: Information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable.
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Use plain language for instructions, labels, and error messages; avoid unnecessary medical jargon where possible. Structure content with clear headings, bullet points, and short paragraphs for easier scanning. Provide multiple language options and easy-to-find translation tools for multicultural audiences.
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Robust: Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.
According to Kanopi Studio’s healthcare content management system (CMS) guide, your CMS plays an important role in helping “promote equitable access to healthcare resources for all communities.” Top CMS platforms like Drupal and WordPress make it easy to add these accessible elements, such as alt text, video transcripts, and high-contrast elements.
3. Create inclusive and accessible forms.
Forms connect patients with healthcare professionals who can help them; by making website forms as accessible and inclusive as possible, you fulfill your mission of serving your community’s healthcare needs.
Follow these steps to improve your forms:
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Implement form accessibility. Ensure forms have functioning keyboard navigation, meaningful form labels, clear and concise instructions, and high color contrast.
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Ensure forms are respectful and inclusive of a wide range of identities. Offer multiple pronoun and honorific options, allow hyphens and apostrophes in name fields, and provide an open text field for gender rather than limiting to a dropdown list.
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Critically evaluate your forms to ensure you’re only asking necessary questions. For example, if gender information isn’t really needed, leave the question out or provide an option to “prefer not to say.”
Track data associated with form performance and act on the results. For example, if you see a lower form completion rate than usual, test your forms by completing them and noting any usability issues that could cause patients to abandon them.
4. Test your website with the help of real users and assistive technology.
Take a multi-tool approach to accessibility testing to establish a variety of checkpoints and safeguards and ensure that you don’t overlook any accessibility issues. Your approach should include the following measures:
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Conduct manual testing. Use assistive technologies like screen readers, keyboard navigation, voice-to-text, and text-to-voice to navigate and browse your website. Note any incompatibility issues between your site and the tools and take steps to correct them. For example, if you’re seeing keyboard navigation issues, review your site’s HTML to ensure the backend code matches the front-end user interface as much as possible.
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Hire people with disabilities to test your website. Explore resources like Fable and UsableNet to connect with real people with disabilities who have experience with assistive technology.
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Use automated testing tools strategically. These tools are too often seen as the end-all be-all of accessibility testing, when in fact, they often miss crucial errors. However, they can be a great starting point for your accessibility testing process. They can often catch basic errors that you should fix as soon as possible. The best automated tools include Lighthouse, Axe, and WAVE.
Re-test your website after any major CMS update or redesign. Check your site’s compatibility with the latest screen reader versions and verify that voice-to-text features still work with interactive forms.
5. Be wary of accessibility “quick fixes.”
Relying too heavily on tech in the accessibility process is a common pitfall of healthcare web design. The human element of accessibility is essential to achieving your website usability goals.
Here are two accessibility “quick fixes” to be cautious about:
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Accessibility overlays: These tools are third-party, automated software solutions that seek to correct common accessibility issues. They often come in the form of widgets or overlays that website visitors can use to adjust site settings like text size or color contrast. It’s important not to rely too heavily on these solutions because they can slow down your website, pose security risks, and provide a false sense of confidence that you’ve done all you can when it comes to accessibility. Many of these tools are also inaccessible themselves, with buttons or toolbars that are challenging to navigate with assistive technology like eye tracking and keyboard navigation.
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AI accessibility tools: There’s a ton of hype surrounding AI use in web design and development right now, but it’s important to cut through the noise to get the real facts on how these solutions work. They offer several accessibility benefits, such as generating video and audio transcripts or providing a conversational user-driven search interface. But don’t ignore drawbacks like AI bias, poor translations, and limited voice recognition.
Instead of relying on quick tech fixes, we recommend making accessibility a core component of your website strategy from the start. Consult with your web design, marketing, and legal teams to ensure your site is usable, accessible, and compliant with ADA regulations.
Every aspect of your healthcare website must be accessible so you can serve your patients as effectively as possible. Your community relies on your website as an essential source of healthcare information and appointment booking. Earn their trust by exceeding their needs and creating an online presence that’s welcoming to all.