Issue link: https://essentialaccessibility.ufcontent.com/i/1422383
How Healthcare Websites Stack Up Our study found five key areas where healthcare provider websites fail to provide patients with disabilities an inclusive digital experience: 1. Lack of a Notice of Non-Discrimination Section 1557 of the ACA requires covered entities to post a notice of non-discrimination on their websites. The notice must inform consumers of the availability of accommodations and how they can access them. In addition to posting the Notice in English, covered entities must post taglines in at least fifteen of their state's most widely-spoken languages. The taglines inform consumers of the language services available to them. For example, the French tagline taken from the HCA website's non-discrimination Notice translates to "ATTENTION: If you speak French, language help services are offered free of charge." Fifty percent of the healthcare system websites that we examined contained a notice of non-discrimination at the bottom of their homepages. Of these websites, only four posted taglines in at least 15 languages. 2. Focusing on Investors, Not Patients All of the websites that we visited focused on procuring investors, as opposed to assisting patients. They offer little information on accessing services, with the exception of a location finder. Many of the sites fell short when it came to providing information for people with disabilities. Only one for-profit healthcare system mentioned disabilities when they discussed their services. One healthcare system boasted a page titled "Accessibility Policy" at the bottom of their homepage. But upon further exploration, this page was simply a reiteration of the notice of non-discrimination. 3. Failure to Comply with WCAG 2.0 For a website to be fully compliant, it must contain zero issues. We used HTML CodeSniffer, an open source, automated testing tool, to determine the number of problems on each healthcare provider website. However, manual and functional testing by people with disabilities must also be conducted to uncover accessibility issues. On average, each site had 12.5 issues with Level A compliance and 27.9 issues with Level AA compliance. 7 | essentialaccessibility.com