Healthcare Accessibility Checker

Accessibility Requirements for Healthcare

Section 1557 is not optional guidance; it is a federal nondiscrimination rule tied directly to funding. If your organization accepts Medicare, Medicaid or CHIP, and most providers do, your website, patient portal and any patient-facing kiosk are in scope.

The rule follows you to your vendors. Booking widgets, patient portals, telehealth platforms and billing tools built by outside vendors are still your responsibility if a patient cannot use them.

Under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, healthcare organizations that accept Medicare, Medicaid or CHIP funding must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA on their websites, mobile apps and patient-facing kiosks. HHS extended the original deadline by a year: recipients with 15 or more employees now have until May 11, 2027, and smaller recipients until May 10, 2028. (opens in a new tab, source: Section 1557 accessibility requirements)

Common Issues on Healthcare Sites

• Appointment booking widgets

  Third-party scheduling tools embedded on provider sites are a frequent source of keyboard traps and unlabeled form fields, blocking patients from booking care.

• Patient portal login and forms

  Login screens and intake forms often lack proper labels and error messages, which is a serious barrier when the content involves personal health information.

• PDF forms and documents

  Intake forms, consent documents and insurance paperwork are frequently unlabeled scanned PDFs that a screen reader cannot read at all.

• Provider directory search

  Search and filter tools for finding a doctor or location often fail to announce results or filter changes to screen reader users.

• Low-contrast text on clinical content

  Medical information pages often use light gray text for secondary details, such as dosage notes or appointment instructions, that fails contrast requirements.

How to Fix What the Scan Finds

1. Audit third-party tools (scheduling, patient portal, telehealth) separately, since Section 1557 makes you responsible for their accessibility even when you did not build them.
2. Prioritize anything in the patient journey to get or manage care first: booking, portal login, and forms, since those carry both the most legal exposure and the most direct impact on patients.
3. Run a free scan above on your homepage and a few key pages, fix issues starting with critical and serious, then rescan to confirm.
4. For ongoing protection, AccessBell Pro monitors up to 500 URLs per domain every day and alerts you when something regresses.

Related Guides

• ADA Website Compliance: What Businesses Need to KnowHow the ADA applies to websites, which WCAG level courts and regulators reference, the Title II rule for public entities, and practical steps to reduce risk.
• ADA Lawsuit Process: Stages, Timeline and What to ExpectThe ADA lawsuit process step by step: service, the 21-day answer deadline, mediation, discovery, settlement and appeal, plus what to do if you are sued.
• WCAG 2.2 Checklist: What Changed and How to Test Each CriterionA practical WCAG 2.2 AA checklist: the nine new success criteria, the one that was removed, and how to test your website against each requirement.
• WCAG Success Criteria LibraryLook up any success criterion the scan flags, in plain language.
• Free Accessibility Statement GeneratorPublish a statement once your known issues are fixed.

Healthcare Accessibility Questions