Digital experiences are central to modern care delivery, from patient portals to appointment scheduling and telehealth. When these experiences aren’t accessible, it can create barriers and frustration for patients and introduce compliance risks for the organizations responsible for maintaining them. For many healthcare organizations, the challenge isn’t recognizing the importance of accessibility: it’s knowing where to begin. With the right approach, it becomes a manageable, ongoing part of how you design, build, and maintain your digital experiences. This eight-step plan is designed to give you a clear starting point. It outlines practical steps to assess where you are today, prioritize what matters most, and begin building a more sustainable approach to accessibility.

(1) Before you begin, define what digital accessibility means for your organization

Before diving into detailed planning and scoping, it’s important to establish a shared understanding of what accessibility means in your organization. Align on key goals, such as what level of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) conformance you’re working toward, and identify any internal policies or requirements you need to be successful. It’s also helpful to clarify expectations across teams.  Taking the time to align on these points early helps ensure that your assessment and remediation efforts are consistent, measurable, and easier to operationalize.

(2) Start with how patients and staff actually use your digital systems

The first step is to examine how people interact with your digital experience today. Focus on the most critical touchpoints: scheduling appointments, completing forms, checking in for visits, accessing test results, or following up after care. These are the points where accessibility barriers can disrupt independent access. To get a clearer picture, map out a few key journeys from start to finish. Ask yourself key questions such as:

  • Who needs to use this experience? Patients, staff, caregivers, and others may all have different needs and expectations.
  • What are users trying to accomplish? Are they scheduling an appointment, submitting information, or finding care instructions?
  • What steps do they need to take to complete that task?
  • Where could accessibility barriers get in the way, especially for a person who relies on assistive technology (AT) such as screen readers or screen magnifiers?

It also helps to think through specific interactions. For example, forms are the gold standard for submitting information online—how are your forms completed and submitted? How does check-in work, whether online or through a kiosk? How are follow-up instructions or documents shared after a visit? It’s not necessary to map everything at once. Instead, start with a few high-impact scenarios and document them clearly. This gives you a practical foundation for identifying issues and prioritizing improvements.

(3) Identify the systems, pages, and processes behind each key journey

Once you’ve mapped your key journeys, you need to know what’s involved in making them work. Most digital experiences aren’t a single page or tool. Scheduling an appointment might involve multiple web pages, forms, third-party systems, confirmation emails, and follow-up notifications. Each of these systems is part of the overall experience, and each one needs to be evaluated for accessibility. Start by breaking down each journey into its individual components, such as:

  • Web pages and navigation paths
  • Forms and input fields
  • Third-party platforms or integrations
  • Emails, notifications, or confirmations
  • Validation steps, such as phone or identity verification

It can be helpful to document these in a spreadsheet, so you can see how each piece connects. The goal isn’t to create perfect documentation. This step is especially important for elements that sit outside your main website, like emails or external tools, which play a critical role in the patient experience.

(4) Assess accessibility across your highest-priority journeys

The first three steps prepare you to evaluate how accessible your high-priority journeys are in real-world use. Evaluating accessibility includes everything involved in each journey, from your main website to third-party systems such as patient portals, CRMs, or employee tools. If these systems are part of the experience, their accessibility matters just as much. There are two primary ways to assess accessibility:

  • Manual assessment: This is the most comprehensive approach, but also the most time-consuming. A manual assessment provides a more holistic accessibility evaluation that goes beyond conformance to guidelines. A good reviewer will also check whether a person with disabilities can use, consume, or complete items using a screen reader or other form of AT.
  • Automated testing: Automated tools provide a fast way to identify common accessibility issues and get a sense of overall risk. While they don’t catch everything, they are useful for identifying patterns and tracking changes over time.

At this stage, the goal is to identify where barriers exist and how severe they are. This creates a clear foundation for planning and prioritizing remediation work in the next step. You will also need to identify the primary technical owner for each system and establish a process for change requests.

(5) Turn your findings into a clear remediation plan and roadmap

Once you’ve identified accessibility barriers, the next step is to decide how you’re going to address them. Digital accessibility is an ongoing process, and not every issue carries the same weight. Some issues may be relatively simple to fix, while others have a direct impact on a person’s ability to access care. Start by identifying what needs immediate attention, especially in high-impact scenarios where users may be blocked from completing essential tasks. It’s also important to consider what happens when someone encounters a barrier. Is there a clear path forward, or does the experience break down entirely? Issues that prevent independent access should be prioritized. From there, build a roadmap that outlines what will be addressed, in what order, and how progress will be tracked. The goal isn’t to resolve every issue at once, to make steady, meaningful improvement over time. This also helps to show a good-faith effort to align your digital accessibility with key compliance regulations.

(6) Remediation and resolution

With a plan in place, the next step is to begin addressing accessibility issues. This typically involves working with the teams responsible for each system or component and scheduling accessibility fixes into existing development workflows and roadmaps. Clear ownership and coordination are key, especially when multiple systems or teams are involved. Make sure developers have access to the resources they need to implement changes effectively. This may include design guidance, code libraries, testing tools, and access to accessibility expertise for more complex issues. Where possible, incorporate accessibility work into your standard processes, such as CI/CD pipelines and popular ticket-tracking systems like Jira.

(7) Review and validation

Once your team has completed an initial remediation round, the next step is to confirm that the fixes are working as intended. This typically includes validating changes internally and, in many cases, working with a third party to provide an objective review. Documentation such as a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) can help demonstrate how your digital experiences align with accessibility requirements. Maintaining clear records of these efforts is also important, both for internal tracking and to support your organization’s compliance efforts.  As part of your review and verification process, consider testing people with disabilities to ensure your updates reflect real-world users. If direct user testing isn’t possible, tools like JAWS Inspect help development teams understand how a screen reader would interpret your digital experiences without needing deep expertise in the software.

(8) Monitor digital accessibility and maintain progress over time

Accessibility is an ongoing process, and the work doesn’t end once issues are remediated. Digital experiences are always evolving, and new content, features, and updates can introduce new barriers. Ongoing monitoring helps you stay ahead of these changes. Automated testing tools can be especially useful for tracking accessibility over time and identifying regressions as they occur. It’s also important to maintain clear records of your remediation efforts and progress. This makes it easier to understand which issues have been addressed, which still need attention, and how your digital accessibility has improved over time.

Build accessible digital experiences with confidence

Improving digital accessibility across healthcare systems can feel complex, especially when multiple teams, systems, and workflows are involved. These steps serve as a loose guide to help you identify areas for improvement and take practical steps to get started. Having the right support in place can make the process more manageable and more effective.  With more than 30 years of experience in assistive technology and accessibility, Vispero helps healthcare organizations assess current-state accessibility, identify high-impact barriers, and prioritize remediation aligned with key requirements. Our expert-led approach supports sustainable accessibility across websites, patient-facing services, and in-office systems, helping reduce risk while improving the patient experience. Learn how Vispero’s Digital Accessibility Services can support your digital accessibility strategy.