Evaluation of the accessibility of e-health applications for people with visual disabilities

Objective: Web accessibility means that web can be accessed and used by people with disabilities just as effectively as people without any disabilities. The aim of this study is to evaluate the accessibility levels of the most commonly used e-Health applications in Turkey, e-Nabız and MHRS, for people with visual disabilities. Method: When evaluating the accessibility of e-Health applications, both automatic tools and manual accessibility testing methods were used together. In the evaluation, W3C Web Content Accessibility Guideline 2.1 was chosen. Among the success criteria in the guideline, only those that are applicable to people with visual disabilities were included in the study. As evaluation tools, WAVE and Accessibility Insights for Web were used. In manual accessibility testing part, NVDA was used as a screen reader. Evaluation results are shown in tables while the comparisons are demonstrated by graphs. Results: As a result of the assessments carried out with Evaluation Tools, it was reported that WCAG 2.1 criteria was met by approximately 80% in e-Nabız and 75% in MHRS. Through Manual Accessibility Testing, these percentages were concluded to be approximately 64% in e-Nabız and 47% in MHRS. Conclusion: It is observed that the e-Health applications evaluated in this study cannot fully meet the accessibility standards and the Evaluation Tools used in the study are inefficient in detecting the accessibility problems. Furthermore, among the two applications evaluated, e-Nabız is determined to be more accessible than MHRS to visually disabled individuals. Key words: accessibility, visually impaired, W3C, WAVE, Accessibility Insights for Web