Patient portals & auth flows
Login forms, multi-factor authentication, portal navigation, appointment schedulingall audited for screen-reader compatibility and keyboard access.
For Healthcare
Healthcare accessibility
Patient access is a patient right.
Your patient portals, appointment systems, and medical forms touch some of the most vulnerable people online. Accessibility isn’t compliance theatre — it’s care.
1
Regulated by multiple laws
ADA Title III, Section 1557 of the ACA (incredibly broad), Section 508 if federal, state medical-board rules.
2
Portals are shared responsibility
If your vendor’s patient-facing portal (Epic, Cerner, MyChart) fails, the liability is often shared upstream.
3
Complex content, high stakes
Medical forms, consent PDFs, benefits statements, prescriptionspoor accessibility can harm patient outcomes.
4
Equity isn’t optional
Multi-language support, plain language, accessible formatsdigital inclusion is clinical outcomes.
Legal landscape
Healthcare has more accessibility rules than you think.
Most health systems assume only the ADA applies. Wrong. The ACA, Section 508, state medical boards, and HIPAA (which doesn’t override accessibility) all create overlapping obligations.
ADA Title III applies to most hospitals, clinics, health plans, and pharmacies. Covered entities must make their websites and digital services accessible to people with disabilities. The standard is WCAG 2.1 AA.
Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act is often overlooked but remarkably broad: any healthcare provider or health plan that receives federal funds (Medicare, Medicaid, ACA marketplace subsidies). That includes nearly every hospital, most primary-care practices, and all federally qualified health centres. Scope is healthcare-related websites and digital tools. Standard: WCAG 2.0 AA at minimum.
Section 508 (Rehabilitation Act) applies if you’re a federal agency (VA, HHS, CDC) or a contractor selling to one. Same standard: WCAG 2.0 AA.
State medical-board rules vary widely but increasingly require accessible patient-facing systems. Check your state’s medical board regulations.
Note on HIPAA: HIPAA does not exempt you from accessibility. Both rules coexist. An accessible system that also protects privacy is what’s required.
Our coverage
What healthcare teams actually care about.
We map every failure to the exact WCAG criterion and ADA risk. Patient portals, appointment forms, medical documents, benefits PDFs — fully covered.
Medical forms & consent PDFs
Intake forms, privacy notices, informed-consent documents, benefits statements. We check HTML forms and PDF structure (PDF/UA, Matterhorn Protocol).
Telehealth & video platforms
Video conferencing accessibility, virtual waiting rooms, screen-sharing captions, real-time transcripts. Checked for both synchronous and async scenarios.
Document templates & email
Patient-facing emails, automated appointment reminders, discharge summaries, prescription refill notifications. Checked for plain language and AT compatibility.
Multi-language & plain language
Language-switcher accessibility, right-to-left support for Arabic/Hebrew, readability level analysis. Healthcare must serve all communities.
Vendor accountability (shared portals)
If your portal runs on Epic, Cerner, or MyChart, we audit the hosted instance to identify where remediation sits (your instance vs. vendor platform).
Your path to compliance
How health systems succeed.
Scan, prioritise, remediate, monitorsame method as any other sector, but with healthcare-specific pain points called out.
1
Baseline scan
Audit all patient-facing web properties: portals, appointment systems, telehealth, forms. Get a clear picture of scope and severity before planning.
2
Prioritise by risk
Patient safety first. Schedule failures on life-critical paths (appointment booking, med refills) above cosmetic issues. Assign ownership to clinical and IT teams.
3
Remediate & monitor
Fix in-scope systems (your portal instance, custom forms). For vendor-managed systems, document liability and push remediation to vendor with deadline.
Common questions
Healthcare and accessibility.
Does HIPAA conflict with accessibility?
No. HIPAA and accessibility are orthogonal. HIPAA protects the confidentiality, integrity and availability of patient data. Accessibility makes that data usable by people with disabilities. An accessible system with HIPAA controls is what compliance requires.
What’s Section 1557 and does it apply to our health plan?
Section 1557 is part of the Affordable Care Act. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability, among other protected statuses, in healthcare and health-plan operations. It applies to any provider or plan receiving federal funds (Medicare, Medicaid, ACA subsidies). Scope: any health-related website or digital tool. If your patients see it, it needs to be accessible.
Our patient portal is hosted by Epic. Who’s liable if it’s not accessible?
Both you and Epic. In most cases, courts treat the health system and the vendor as jointly liable. Liability doesn’t end because you outsourced the platform. Your remediation includes pressuring Epic to fix the shared instance and, where possible, using Epic’s customisation tools to improve your tenant. Document all efforts; that paper trail helps in disputes.
How do we handle PDFs at scalemedical forms, benefits statements, consent docs?
Audit your highest-traffic PDFs first (intake forms, EOBs, discharge summaries). For each, decide: remediate (add tags, fix reading order in Acrobat), regenerate from source (Word → tagged PDF via modern office tools), or provide an accessible HTML alternative. Some health systems do all three depending on document type and volume. We can scan your PDF corpus to identify the quick wins and the harder cases.
What about telehealth accessibility?
Telehealth platforms (Zoom, Teladoc, native integrations) have overlapping obligations. Video calls need captions or real-time transcript options. Screen-sharing must be keyboard-accessible. Virtual waiting rooms must not auto-advance. Consent forms presented pre-call need to be accessible. We audit the full telehealth workflow end-to-end.
Can we get sued for an inaccessible patient portal?
Yes, under ADA Title III and/or Section 1557. Some health-system accessibility disputes have settled in the six-figure range. More commonly, the legal outcome is a court order to remediate within a set timeline, plus attorney’s fees to the plaintiff’s counsel. Preventive compliance is far cheaper than litigation.
Next step
Scan your patient portals today. No credit card.
Get a clear report of WCAG gaps, ADA liability, and Section 1557 alignment in under 5 minutes. We map every finding to the exact statute.