Accessibility and Cultural Inclusivity of Online Glaucoma-Based Video Content for Patient Education

This study is the first to evaluate the ease of access, understandability, and cultural inclusivity of online glaucoma-related video content for patient education. Overall, materials were found to be poorly understandable and not culturally representative.

The purpose of this study is to assess the ease of access, readability, actionability, and cultural inclusivity of glaucoma-specific patient education videos found online.

Cross-sectional study.

Twenty-two glaucoma-based patient education videos were reviewed for this study.

A survey of glaucoma specialists identified commonly recommended patient education Web sites, which were analyzed for video content. Web sites were reviewed by 2 independent reviewers for glaucoma-based patient education videos. Videos with content designated for medical providers, dedicated to research, or affiliated with private practices were excluded. Videos that were not glaucoma-specific or longer than 15 minutes were also excluded. The Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool was used to score videos for understandability and actionability reviewing content, word choice, organization, layout, and use of visual aids. Videos were also reviewed for cultural inclusivity and accessibility measures including language availability. Agreement analysis with a kappa coefficient (κ) over 0.6 was established with the first 5 videos between 2 independent reviewers and scoring discrepancies were resolved via a third independent reviewer.

From 10 recommended Web sites, 22 videos met inclusion criteria for evaluation. The average Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool score was 68.3% (SD = 18.4) for understandability (κ=0.63). Most videos (64%) were accessed within 3 clicks from the homepage. Only 3 videos were available in another language (Spanish). Most actors and images were White individuals (68.9%), followed by Black (22.1%), then Asian (5.7%) and other/ambiguous (3.3%).

There is room for improvement regarding language accessibility, understandability, and cultural inclusivity of glaucoma-based, publicly available patient education video content.