Digital health services have developed significantly in recent years: appointment booking, patient monitoring, teleconsultation. However, one question remains largely underestimated: are these tools truly accessible to everyone?
For some users, access to healthcare is becoming a digital obstacle course. This situation goes beyond a purely technical issue: it directly questions the quality, safety, and equity of healthcare pathways.
Why access to healthcare is becoming a digital obstacle course
Marie, aged 67, gave up after twenty minutes trying to validate an appointment form. Thomas, who is visually impaired, uses a screen reader to check his test results. Except that the laboratory's website only displays graphics that are illegible for his software. Léa, in a wheelchair, navigates her tablet with one hand. It's impossible to fill in certain fields that require multiple interactions.
These three people represent 28 % of French people living with a lasting functional limitation. And yet, in 2025, most health platforms still ignore them, including some major players in the sector. These situations are not isolated cases. They reflect an inability of the digital system to respond to the real diversity of uses.
Digital health promises to bring patients closer to care, but in all the talk of innovation, haven't we forgotten one essential thing: access for all? The groups affected by the lack of’digital accessibility are not marginal.
Almost a third of the French population could regularly come up against interfaces that have not been designed with them in mind. Contrasts too low, forms incompatible with screen readers, buttons impossible to reach with a keyboard. The result? A digital divide on top of the medical divide. An intolerable paradox for an area that is supposed to embody solidarity, and a major brake on the promise of a universal healthcare system.
THE FIGURES
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- Around 28 % of French people live with a lasting functional limitation (DREES - Le handicap en chiffres 2024)
- 43 % of the over 65s have difficulty using digital services. (IFOP)
Even today, accessibility declarations on hospital sites are not systematic, and compliance with 100% is unfortunately the exception rather than the rule. See also Monitoring compliance with digital accessibility obligations - Public hospitals sector
An inaccessible device doesn't just degrade the user experience. It can compromise access to medical information, delay care, or generate errors in the patient pathway. Beyond regulatory obligations (RGAA), accessibility is a matter of responsibility for healthcare facilities.
How to integrate accessibility into digital health projects
The good news is that reconciliation is not only possible, but is already underway for some players. Every day, public institutions, start-ups and product teams are demonstrating that digital accessibility and innovation are not opposites in healthcare - they feed off each other.
Integrate accessibility from the outset
Accessibility can always be implemented on an existing digital product, but this is often laborious and costly. The solution? Integrate accessibility from the outset.
Some hospitals are now naming an accessibility consultant from the outset of a digital project. Its role? To challenge design choices to take account of all uses.
- Including personas with disabilities in design workshops
- Include accessible user stories in each development sprint
- Allocate a specific budget for accessibility, not a «reserve if we have time».»
Confronting devices with real-world usage
Automatic audit tools are not very reliable: they detect 30 to 40% accessibility problems. The remaining 60%? They only emerge in real-life situations, with real users. Some healthcare platforms are already working with patient associations to co-construct their interfaces.
- Set up a panel of testers with disabilities (visually impaired, motor impairment, cognitive impairment, etc.)
- Organise user test sessions at each key stage of the project
- Paying testers fairly for their expertise
- Document and prioritise their feedback in the same way as critical bugs
Structuring an accessibility culture
Preparing healthcare establishments for digital accessibility also means offering, through training, a new way of looking at the design of content made available to patients. Training means enabling all teams to think beyond their personal situation and open up to a more universal way of thinking.
- Offering accessibility training for all professions
- Organise immersions: browse for an hour with a screen reader, use the site using only the keyboard
- Share internal case studies: «here's what didn't work and why».»
- Creating specific accessibility guidelines for the healthcare sector
Digital accessibility should not only be considered at the level of the establishment's website. It also concerns PDF documents, forms and all the digital procedures that are part of the patient journey.
Gradually, accessibility through training will become a design reflex rather than a regulatory constraint or a postponed adjustment.
The performance of a digital health device cannot be separated from its accessibility. A service that excludes a portion of its users cannot be considered fully functional. The issue goes beyond regulatory compliance: it concerns the quality of patient pathways, the safety of use, and the ability of organisations to fulfil their service mission.