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Framework for Accessibility Evaluation of Hospital Websites

Abstract:

Nowadays, the Web has revolutionized our daily life, it has become a source of information and service provision. The trend of eHealth to digitize the services associated with healthcare are becoming more frequent in the same way users who access these services are people with disabilities and the elderly. An initiative that allows improving the quality of life of people are websites, but not all websites are accessible and inclusive. Failures in Web accessibility create exclusion barriers in groups of people. There are several studies on accessibility in which the guidelines suggested by Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 were not adequately applied. This study describes the web accessibility problems identified in 22 hospital websites according to the Webometrics ranking. In the evaluation process, a framework was applied to help in the evaluation of the websites proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium. In this work, several hospital websites and the level of accessibility were validated, the Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology was applied to identify the ease with which a website can be accessed in accordance with WCAG 2.0 standards; of the sites evaluated, the type of patterns most violated in the analysis was the name, role, and value, which represents 13.4% followed by the guidelines of content, information and relationships without text with 12.8%. Due to the barriers encountered, this study presents the need to strengthen legislation and implement web accessibility best practices to make the websites inclusive, making content accessible to all users, including people with disabilities.