When Digital Barriers Become Barriers to Care
A patient needs to schedule an appointment. Another needs to complete an intake form. Someone else needs to review test results, communicate with a provider, or pay a bill.
These should be straightforward tasks. But when healthcare technology is inaccessible, confusing, or difficult to navigate, patients can find themselves unable to manage even routine parts of their care independently.
For healthcare organizations, those barriers can mean frustrated patients, additional work for staff, accessibility complaints, and potential legal exposure.
Real Life Access helps healthcare providers identify what’s getting in the way and develop practical solutions that improve patient access while reducing avoidable organizational risk.
Schedule a Healthcare Accessibility Consultation
Where Healthcare Accessibility Problems Happen
Digital accessibility problems aren’t limited to a hospital or medical practice website. They can appear anywhere a patient or employee needs to interact with technology.
Appointment Scheduling
Can patients find a provider, select an appointment, complete required fields, and submit their request independently? Or does the process break down when someone uses a screen reader or keyboard?
Patient Portals
Can patients access their information, read messages, review test results, and communicate with their care team? Are essential features accessible, or do patients need assistance to complete tasks that should be private and independent?
Intake Forms and Patient Communications
Registration forms, medical histories, consent documents, downloadable PDFs, and electronic communications can all create barriers. When these materials aren’t accessible, staff may have to intervene, information may be delayed, and patients may be unable to participate fully in their own care.
Third-Party Healthcare Technology
Many healthcare organizations rely on outside vendors for scheduling, forms, portals, and other essential services. An inaccessible third-party system can still create a problem for the patients who depend on your organization.
Real Life Access can evaluate these systems, document barriers, and help your team communicate with vendors about necessary improvements.
Accessibility, Compliance, and Risk Reduction
Healthcare organizations face increasing expectations to make digital services accessible to people with disabilities.
Depending on the organization, applicable requirements may include the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and federal accessibility regulations governing websites and mobile applications.
But compliance isn’t the only consideration. An inaccessible scheduling system or patient portal can create problems long before a formal complaint arrives.
Real Life Access helps organizations take a proactive approach by identifying barriers, documenting their impact, and developing practical recommendations for correction.
For organizations already dealing with accessibility complaints, demand letters, or legal concerns, we can provide technical evaluations, remediation guidance, and retesting to support corrective action.
Important: Real Life Access provides accessibility consulting and technical expertise, not legal advice or legal representation. We can work alongside your legal counsel when appropriate.
How Real Life Access Helps
Patient Journey Assessments
We examine the steps patients take to complete important tasks, from finding information and scheduling appointments to completing forms and using online services.
Rather than looking only at individual pages, we evaluate whether people can successfully complete the entire process.
Digital Accessibility Audits
We evaluate websites, applications, forms, and digital services using manual accessibility testing, assistive technology, keyboard navigation, and supporting automated tools.
Findings include relevant accessibility requirements, the impact on users, and actionable recommendations for remediation.
Remediation Support and Vendor Coordination
Finding problems is only the beginning. We can help your team understand what needs to change, coordinate with developers or technology vendors, and verify whether completed fixes resolve the identified barriers.
Staff Training and Leadership Consultation
Not every accessibility barrier is caused by software. Policies, procedures, communication practices, and staff assumptions can also prevent patients from getting what they need.
We provide practical training and consultation to help healthcare teams recognize barriers, respond effectively, and improve the experience for patients and employees.
Start with a Patient Access Reality Check
You don’t have to evaluate every digital system at once to start making progress.
A Patient Access Reality Check is a focused assessment of one important digital patient journey, such as appointment scheduling, online registration, or access to patient information.
We work with your organization to define the scope, examine the experience, and identify the barriers most likely to interfere with successful task completion.
What You’ll Receive
- A focused evaluation of the agreed-upon patient journey
- Documentation of identified accessibility and usability barriers
- An explanation of how those barriers affect patients and your organization
- Prioritized recommendations for addressing the findings
- A practical discussion of next steps, including whether additional testing or remediation is needed
The assessment can serve as a starting point for broader accessibility improvements or help your organization address a specific concern.
Discuss a Patient Access Reality Check
Why Work with Real Life Access?
Real Life Access is led by Angela Fowler, an accessibility strategist and user experience professional who has been blind since birth.
Angela brings extensive experience in assistive technology, manual accessibility testing, digital systems, training, and organizational problem-solving. Her professional background includes accessibility work with government agencies, businesses, and organizations serving the public.
That combination of technical expertise, lived experience, and organizational understanding helps us identify problems that automated tools and routine compliance checks may overlook.
Our approach is straightforward: understand what people are trying to accomplish, find what’s preventing them from doing it, and recommend practical ways to remove the barriers.
Healthcare Accessibility Training and Speaking
Angela also delivers presentations and workshops for healthcare leaders, patient experience professionals, compliance teams, and staff responsible for digital services.
Topics include accessibility as patient access, digital barriers in healthcare, practical risk reduction, and improving the patient journey.
Explore Speaking and Training Opportunities
Let’s Make Patient Access Easier
Whether you’re responding to an accessibility concern, preparing for regulatory requirements, evaluating a patient portal, or simply trying to improve the patient experience, Real Life Access can help you identify where to start.
You don’t need to know exactly what’s wrong before contacting us. That’s part of what we help you figure out.
Prefer to reach out directly? Contact Real Life Access.