Issue link: https://essentialaccessibility.ufcontent.com/i/1422383
5 Best Practices for Digital Accessibility Healthcare organizations have a massive opportunity to ramp up their digital accessibility efforts and make their marketing inclusive. Here are five key steps to making your digital content accessible: 1. Integrate assistive technology with your website. Assistive technology accommodates people who have difficulty typing, moving a mouse, reading a screen, or using a touch-screen smartphone. It allows them to easily navigate your website to research your services, book appointments, and access tests. The technology allows people with physical disabilities to engage with you and receive a consistent experience across all of your digital channels. 2. Ask persons with disabilities to test your website and mobile app. Web developers conduct automated tests to ensure that your site functions. However, automated testing only catches about 30 percent of the issues that people with disabilities will encounter with your content. In addition to automated testing, organizations should have people with disabilities perform manual and functional tests. They can test your site against a range of assistive technologies and report on problems. 3. Allow people who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices to view your online content. When you include AAC devices in your digital accessibility toolkit, you make it easier for people with no or limited speech to communicate with you. They can use the technology to browse your website and book appointments. Making your digital content compliant and accessible doesn't end when you launch your website. Be sure to put a monitoring system in place, so you can quickly catch errors that would prevent persons with disabilities from interacting with your organization. 11 | essentialaccessibility.com