Healthcare

Appoint a digital accessibility coordinator and provide a digital accessibility statement on your public sites and apps.  Also, consider talking with legal counsel about adopting (or editing) corporate accessibility policies and procedures to include the digital space as well as physical ADA Law.  These key first steps can reduce the risk of litigation and potential damages.

With help from O8 and a subject matter expert (SME) such as Accessible360 who can work with your internal marketing team, compliance and risk managers, and attorneys, you can determine a proper scope of work to bring your organization into compliance. This work is often done in phases.  External facing (B-to-C) websites meant for the general public are often the first to be tackled, with other high-visibility sites and apps done soon after.

For sites and apps currently in the design-stage, bring together the design and digital expertise of O8 with A360’s Live User Auditors to catch issues before they are coded, preventing costly corrections later on.

Audits need to incorporate certified live-user testing. While there are automated scanning tools available, these tools only catch a small percentage of accessibility issues while also flagging false-positives, causing wasted development time.  The U. S. Government, General Services Administration states, “Automated scanning tools cannot apply human subjectivity, and therefore either produce excessive false positives or – when configured to eliminate false positives – test for only a small portion of the requirement.”

Much of what gets flagged during an audit is often from third-party content, which is content that the healthcare organization does not have direct control over.  It is important to make accessibility part of your procurement of software and digital services and to put pressure on your existing vendors to become compliant. Review contracts with all of your digital vendors and require a live-user audit and letter of conformance to WCAG 2.0AA from each.