Accessibility: Is Healthcare Behind?
Written October 3rd, 2007 by Thomas AmesWhile we often talk about the latest and greatest in terms of glittery technology like blogging, message boards, podcasts, and the like, we often forget some of the basics. We’ve seen more posts lately about stressing great content over superficial advancements, but we’ve forgotten to touch on something so basic that it could very well ruin our efforts of taking advantage of both content and technology: accessibility.
Being healthcare Web professionals, accessibility should be on the forefront of our minds. But as I browse many of our Web sites, including my own, basic options that increase accessibility such as modifiable text size, screen resolution adjustments, and multi-browser friendly are missing. Advanced accessibility options such as mobile/PDA capabilities are missing, as well. Have we overlooked these options?
In some cases it seems that we did, indeed, overlook some of the basics. And in other cases, our sites were made before such options were prevalent. But in a society that stresses accessibility for all, it’s important that we now, with each upgrade, continue to make adjustments to our sites based on the end-user. We should stress that while new, neat capabilities in blogging and podcasting are nice, it’s perhaps even more important, especially as healthcare institutions, to provide the best accessibility options available. And, even further, we should be on the forefront of directing those technologies to meet and exceed our visitors’ needs.
Although the boom of healthcare-proficient/specialized vendors is making these accessibility options standard, I would be interested to hear how your organization promotes accessibility and what direction you see your organization taking with future technologies. Do you consider your site sufficient in terms of accessibility? Are you on the cusp of breaking technologies?
October 3rd, 2007 at 7:48 am
As a follow-up, today a federal judge is allowing a class action lawsuit against Target for a claim that it’s inaccessible to the blind.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071003/ts_nm/target_blind_dc
This case could set new standards in Web design, and it will be prudent for healthcare organizations (and commercial organizations, alike) to watch this case.
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Nice find Thomas. I know this was an issue a while back – I’m wondering if it’s the same issue.
The site itself looks nice and all – but take if you take a look at the code you’ll want to rip your hair out. Ick, I can’t imagine they had accessibility in mind when they were laying everything out.
Well the best we can do is keep chugging away at it – it’s a constant struggle – especially when it’s ‘easier’ or ‘faster’ to do it the old non-accessible way.
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:52 pm
The first thing I think when someone says, “… accessibility…” to me is: if you coded your pages in an appropriate manner and took current standards into account, you wouldn’t have to give accessibility more than a passing care. The second thing I think is: why did I come to this party and why is everyone here so boring.
We’re currently at the end of the design phase of our site relaunch. One of the funny things that I noticed about a lot of the comps was that they featured text resizing tools but the tools themselves were small enough to where someone with vision problems would never find them.
Use alt/title attributes, set your line-height to 1.4em or greater, never dip below 1em for font size and aim for XHTML 1.0 strict.
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Another ‘funny’ thing is when you see someone that has gone out of their way to incorporate usability tools into their site but coded it so poorly that it is broken in Firefox/Opera/Safari. What percentage of your audience uses those three browsers (probably about 20%) and what percentage of your audience is sight-impaired (
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:57 pm
The end of the last post was:
(less than 1%…)
And I just reread what I first wrote and it seems like I came off as kind of a jerk – I would like to clarify that I wasn’t suggesting this was a boring topic of conversation. Just that it would be if I was at a party and someone was talking about it. Sarcasm and dry humor are so hard to convey across this medium of ours.
October 4th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Haha, Markle.
I too thought, “I wonder if those text resizing tools are too small for sight-impaired people to see.” But I was also thinking of these tools from the perspective of my father. Sure, browsers also have resizing options, but my technologically-deficient father wouldn’t have the slightest clue those tools are there. So he would probably be more likely to see tools that are presented on the page. Making them prevalent enough to be seen even by those who aren’t necessarily looking for the tool is another issue.
And sure, it’s a boring topic, but it’s one that I’ve seen is neglected all too often. Plus, it’s a nice breather from the recent content-related topics.
October 4th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
We have text size, monitor resolution, and Firefox on the radar for our site redesign. We’re also thinking about language accessibility issues. Our proximity to the Mexican border and general population demographic make Spanish versions of some pages an imperative.
Our current site has very few pages in Spanish, but we hope to increase that number moving forward. In addition to local Spanish speakers, we’ve heard that some services regularly attract patients from inside Mexico, so it would stand to reason that the new cardiac center’s web presence, for example, should have a Spanish component.
Some health care sites do have Spanish versions, though the content seems sparse. But what about other languages? Our institutions are often located near communities with specific ethnic identities that we’ve completely overlooked. Are we missing an opportunity?
Obviously, it comes down to time and resources. You have to prioritize which services and features will be translated, and find a good translator. (Preferably one that knows web writing.
) Not to mention any technical intricacies.