Accessibility and Public Health Tools

For decades, the digital needs of people with disabilities have largely been ignored, despite the existence of international standards for designing and building with accessibility in mind. The vast majority of websites and web apps (97.4% of homepages) do not meet the standards laid out in the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

It's clear something is failing when it comes to digital accessibility.

The COVID-19 pandemic has both highlighted and exacerbated this problem. Inaccessible public health sites and tools lead to disjointed experiences for people with disabilities at best and the loss of critical information at worst. As multidisciplinary teams around the country scrambled to provide information, accessible practices often were not prioritized. The resulting digital products – information sources, testing platforms, and vaccination schedulers – were inconsistent in their accessibility.

We at Viget believe accessibility best practices should be foundational to digital design and development. As creators, we can and must lean on international standards for accessibility as we build to manage the challenges presented by COVID-19. In a recent article, I shared just a few of the areas of accessibility we focused on when building Vaxfinder, a vaccine locator for the state of Massachusetts. Give it a read to learn how we approached creating this timely public health tool.