In January 2017, the Federal Register published the final rule of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. According to this mandate, healthcare organizations receiving federal funding need to be compliant with WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standards.
Now, a year later, the compliance date is up — starting January 18, 2018, these organizations need to be compliant.
Furthermore, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality Payment Program has its own requirements that Eligible Participants (also known as EPS) are required to perform regular updates to their websites in order to provide enhancements to both their website and the tools used in order to be Section 508 compliant.
What are WCAG 2.0 AA standards?
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which is an association comprised of experts (both international and vendor-neutral individuals) with the singular goal of creating accessibility standards across the web, developed the standards for WCAG 2.0 AA.
How to know if your medical website is compliant?
WebAIM has generated a basic WCAG 2.0 checklist to help make sure you’re compliant. This checklist, while very helpful, is not the official guidelines.
For that, you’ll need to follow the official guidelines found here.