Accessibility
Accessibility is a legal requirement for practice websites and a practical one: the patients most likely to struggle with a website are often the ones who most need the service behind it. Here is what to build, and what to check.
New in 2.2
WCAG 2.2 added success criteria that particularly affect the components practice sites tend to use — sticky headers, chat widgets, maps and forms.
When someone tabs through the page, the focused element must not be hidden behind a sticky header, cookie bar or chat widget.
In practice: Sticky practice headers and live chat bubbles are the usual culprits on GP websites.
Anything that works by dragging needs a single-pointer alternative.
In practice: Affects carousels and map controls used on 'find us' pages.
Interactive targets need to be large enough to hit reliably, with spacing between them.
In practice: Matters on appointment and prescription buttons used on small phones.
Help mechanisms — contact details, chat, help links — should appear in the same relative place on every page.
In practice: Put the reception phone number in a consistent position sitewide.
Do not make people re-enter information they have already given in the same process.
In practice: Applies to multi-step registration and feedback forms.
Do not require a cognitive test such as remembering a puzzle to log in.
In practice: Relevant where a patient area or online form sits behind a login.
Checklist
None of these need specialist software. A keyboard, a browser zoom control and ten minutes will find most real problems.
Questions
