Removing Barriers to Healthcare for People with Vision Impairment (the RAMP Program)

The “virtual front door”–websites and digital information–is often the first interaction point that patients have with healthcare systems. However, people who are blind or have low vision face barriers in accessing healthcare information and the appointment-making processes when website information is inaccessible. The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) Foundation reported that in 2022, only 5% of hospitals were compliant with Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) and other legal requirements. Principles of universal design could help people who are blind, have low vision, or other disabilities readily establish care. Universal design improves program uptake and effectiveness but is rare in healthcare. We have developed the RAMP (Removing Barriers to the Management of Patient care) score to evaluate the universal design of healthcare system websites and processes for allowing people to establish necessary specialty care. This project will improve the “virtual front door” to specialty care for people who are blind or have low vision. Aim 1, we will refine our RAMP score to more robustly capture the experience of people who have low vision and or are blind in making healthcare appointments. In Aim 2, we will scale RAMP scoring and develop a publicly available data dashboard to allow comparisons of these scores across academic medical centers. And in Aim 3, we will use implementation science approaches to develop a toolbox of tailorable interventions that outline specific actions which academic medical centers can take to improve RAMP scores. By advancing the science of digital medicine, and we will build tools with which academic medical centers can better provide care to people have low vision or are blind, as well as Americans with other disabilities.