Abstract
Hospital websites offer the potential to improve healthcare service delivery. They can provide up-to-date information and services to patients, at low cost and regardless of their level of abilities. This, in turn, can reduce overcrowding in hospitals and reduce spread of disease, especially in circumstances like the current COVID-19 pandemic. It is, therefore, imperative for designers to ensure the accessibility of hospital websites to the widest possible range of people. This study aims to evaluate the accessibility of the websites of top-ranked hospitals in Saudi Arabia using AChecker. The sample included the websites of the top ten hospitals from each of the public and private sectors. The results show that only 20% of the evaluated websites conformed fully to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. No significant difference was found in terms of the accessibility compliance between the websites of the public and private hospitals. The most frequently observed accessibility errors were related to the structure of information, non-text content, labels and instructions, headings, and keyboard access. The study concludes that Saudi hospitals are not doing an adequate job of meeting accessibility guidelines, thereby denying many of their web customers the ability to fully use their websites.
Highlights
The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to provide services related to health, known as e-health, has been introduced to facilitate equal access to healthcare services to all patients regardless of their abilities and disabilities, and to reduce healthcare delivery costs, hospital overcrowding and spread of diseases [1]
A total of 476 known errors were identified in the home pages of the public hospitals (44%), compared to 609 errors discovered in the home pages of the private hospitals (56%), making a grand total of 1085
This study aimed to evaluate the accessibility of the websites of the top-ranked public and private hospitals in Saudi Arabia
Summary
The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to provide services related to health, known as e-health, has been introduced to facilitate equal access to healthcare services to all patients regardless of their abilities and disabilities, and to reduce healthcare delivery costs, hospital overcrowding and spread of diseases [1]. People tend to use the Internet to find a wide range of information related to health, for consultations with health practitioners, and to participate in support groups [2]. An important quality attribute of hospital websites is accessibility, which directly impacts the use of websites by disabled people. If hospital websites are not accessible, patients with disabilities may have difficulty finding and understanding health information [5]
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