Evaluating the accessibility of public health websites: An exploratory cross-country study

Public health websites are regarded as official references that citizens of any country rely on for domestic and individual health affairs. For people with disabilities, public health resources are often of greater importance; they additionally provide disability context-specific information. However, to leverage the benefits of such resources for the widest demographic groups, Web accessibility requirements should be met at an acceptable level (e.g., WCAG 2.0, Level AA). This study evaluates the accessibility of a number of public health websites from 25 countries. The choice of the selected websites is determined by the extent of the COVID-19 outbreak in the corresponding countries and their rank as of late April, 2020. Ultimately, this study aims at shedding light on the current situation of accessibility to health information and pinpointing the aspects where accessibility to information falls short in public health websites. Using different evaluation tools, the overall results show that the vast majority of public health websites, of a number of different countries, still have many critical accessibility barriers, especially with regards to the perception of information and operability of the interface items. The findings of this study suggest a need for major efforts toward ensuring accessible public health resources in most of the evaluated websites. As this pattern has repeatedly occurred in many relevant studies in different parts of the world, legislation along with educating Web developers regarding Web accessibility requirements and universal design principles become an urgent necessity.