A Study of Global Hospital Websites for Accessibility Compliance

The research investigated accessibility problems of 160 hospital websites, located in 16 countries across 4 continents using Tawdis accessibility software tool. Statistics were analyzed from two layers of WCAG guidance, levels A and AAA, revealing a high incidence of problems at both levels. Asian hospital websites had the greatest number of accessibility issues, although the vast majority of sites in all countries had some type of issues. Only two of the hospital websites included in the study were fully Level A compliant. The study concludes that hospitals are not doing an adequate job of complying with accessibility standards or government legislation, thus depriving many of their web customers the ability to fully use the sites.