This guide provides practical support to help make sure health information websites are accessible to all. It offers guidance based on guidelines set by the World Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
PIF’s Health and Digital Literacy Survey report, published in October 2020, made 10 recommendations to help overcome the health and digital literacy challenges faced by the UK population. A central recommendation was to ensure health websites met WCAG 2.1 global accessibility guidelines. In summary, this meant organisations should:
Organisations providing NHS or publicly-funded care must meet the Accessible Information Standard. It is good practice for other organisations to meet this standard.
Since the original guide was published in 2021 WCAG 2.2 guidelines have been released. We have also repeated our Health and Digital Literacy Survey. A core recommendation was for all organisations to consider the equalities impact of digital tools.
Accessibility is built into the PIF TICK criteria for trusted health information.
A working draft of WCAG 3 guidance was released in July 2023. WCAG 3 will explain how to make the web more accessible to people with disabilities. WCAG 3 applies to web content, apps, tools, publishing, and emerging technologies on the web.
This guide was developed in collaboration with accessibility specialist and long-standing PIF partner TextHelp.
This guide supports the following PIF TICK criteria:
Published May 2021
Last review: September 2023
Next review date: September 2026
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