COVID-19 Vaccine Website Accessibility Dashboard

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated historical inequities for people with disabilities. This includes barriers in accessing online information and healthcare appointment websites, which were brought to the foreground during the vaccine rollout and registration process. Methods: The Johns Hopkins Disability Health Research Center created a COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard, which compiled COVID-19 information and vaccine registration web pages from 56 states and territories in the United States (U.S.) from March 30 through April 5, 2021 and analyzed accessibility using WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE). This tool identifies website accessibility barriers, including insufficient contrast, alternative text, unlabeled buttons, total number of errors, and error density. COVID-19 information and vaccine registration web pages were ranked and grouped into three groups by number of errors, creating comparisons between states on accessibility barriers for people with disabilities. Findings: All 56 U.S states and territories had COVID-19 information web pages and 29 states had centralized state vaccine registration web pages. Total errors, error density, and alert data were utilized to generate accessibility scores for each web page, the median score was 259 (range=14 to 536 and IQR=237) for information pages, and 146 (range=10 to 281 and IQR=105) for state registration pages. Interpretation: These results highlight the barriers that people with disabilities may encounter when accessing information and registering for the COVID-19 vaccine, which underscore inequities in the pandemic response for the disability community and elevate the need to prioritize accessibility of public health information. Funding: American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) Declaration of Interest: All authors declare no competing interests.