Evaluation of Web Accessibility of Healthcare Information Sites

School Name

Spring Valley High School

Grade Level

11th Grade

Presentation Topic

Computer Science

Presentation Type

Non-Mentored

Abstract

Making the web accessible for the disabled or impaired community is vital to making sure they are open to equivalent information (Friedman & Bryen, 2008). Healthcare websites are some of the most important sites that disabled people would need access to. Healthcare information websites are a way for patients to get details on certain symptoms or conditions urgently. Although this is not an ideal way to get advice on one’s health, accessing these sites directly on their phone might be the most efficient way to quickly know what to do for minor health issues that might not require travelling to a doctor. Disabled or impaired people benefit greatly from these types of sites as they would often need access to health information (Inderscience, 2011). The purpose of this study was to determine the popular healthcare sites that meet web accessibility guidelines and which of these guidelines are being missed the most in these healthcare information sites. The hypothesis that was constructed for this study was that the guidelines in the category of factors that would make the website “understandable” would be missed the most. This is because these types of accessibility guidelines are often not considered. To conduct this research, the database, WAVE (WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool, n.d.) was used in order to score the websites on web accessibility and find the specific guidelines that were missed. A one-way ANOVA determined that the results turned out to be statistically significant at p<0.05 [F(13 , 686)=10.111 , p = 0]. The details most often missed were “Very low contrast”, “Broken ARIA reference”, and “Missing alternative text.” The factor that web designers should consider to improve accessibility of their healthcare information sites should be the contrast of their sites.

Location

HSS 206

Start Date

4-2-2022 11:00 AM

Presentation Format

Oral and Written

Group Project

No

COinS
 
Apr 2nd, 11:00 AM

Evaluation of Web Accessibility of Healthcare Information Sites

HSS 206

Making the web accessible for the disabled or impaired community is vital to making sure they are open to equivalent information (Friedman & Bryen, 2008). Healthcare websites are some of the most important sites that disabled people would need access to. Healthcare information websites are a way for patients to get details on certain symptoms or conditions urgently. Although this is not an ideal way to get advice on one’s health, accessing these sites directly on their phone might be the most efficient way to quickly know what to do for minor health issues that might not require travelling to a doctor. Disabled or impaired people benefit greatly from these types of sites as they would often need access to health information (Inderscience, 2011). The purpose of this study was to determine the popular healthcare sites that meet web accessibility guidelines and which of these guidelines are being missed the most in these healthcare information sites. The hypothesis that was constructed for this study was that the guidelines in the category of factors that would make the website “understandable” would be missed the most. This is because these types of accessibility guidelines are often not considered. To conduct this research, the database, WAVE (WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool, n.d.) was used in order to score the websites on web accessibility and find the specific guidelines that were missed. A one-way ANOVA determined that the results turned out to be statistically significant at p<0.05 [F(13 , 686)=10.111 , p = 0]. The details most often missed were “Very low contrast”, “Broken ARIA reference”, and “Missing alternative text.” The factor that web designers should consider to improve accessibility of their healthcare information sites should be the contrast of their sites.