Evaluating the accessibility, usability and security of Hospitals websites: An exploratory study

Abstract

Technology offers the potential to improve healthcare service delivery. The objective of healthcare Web site is to provide services and updated information at low cost to all the people regardless of their abilities and disabilities, which can reduce overcrowding in hospitals and reduce spread of disease. In a developing country like India, where hospitals are overcrowded, healthcare Web sites can play a major role in delivering updated healthcare services. Therefore, designing an effective healthcare Web site is becoming essential as numerous people are accessing the Web for gathering information about hospitals and their healthcare services. There are no specific guidelines available for designing the health care Web site. So, it has become extremely important to evaluate hospital Web sites and address the design issues. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the accessibility, usability and security of hospitals Web sites in metro cities of India. Accessibility is evaluated using WCAG 2.0 accessibility guidelines, usability is evaluated using readability score and language analysis. Security analysis takes content management system into account.