21 May Accessibility Is Not a Feature. It Is a Foundation.
Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, and I want to talk about something that does not get enough honest attention in the digital health space.
We build platforms, apps, and communication tools meant to help people navigate their health. But if those tools are not accessible, we are not actually reaching everyone we say we want to reach.
That gap is bigger than most people realize.
The Numbers Tell a Sobering Story
More than 1.3 billion people globally live with some form of disability. That is roughly 1 in 6 people on the planet, and that number continues to grow as populations age and chronic health conditions increase.
Now consider this: according to WebAIM’s most recent analysis of the top one million websites, nearly 95% of home pages have at least one detectable accessibility failure. The most recent 2026 data shows that number has actually ticked back up to nearly 96%, reversing a small trend of gradual improvement.
The average homepage has 51 detectable errors. Low contrast text alone appears on nearly 8 out of 10 pages. Missing image descriptions affect more than half of all sites analyzed.
These are not edge cases. They are the norm.
The Gap Between Intent and Execution
Here is what I find most striking about these numbers. The guidelines are not new. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines have been around for decades. Most organizations building digital products genuinely want to be inclusive. And still, less than 5% of the most visited websites fully meet basic accessibility standards.
That is not a motivation problem. It is an execution problem.
Accessibility tends to get treated as a final checklist item rather than something woven into how a product is designed and built from the start. It gets scoped as a compliance requirement rather than a user experience priority. And in fast-moving development environments, it is often the first thing that slips.
The result is that millions of people with disabilities encounter barriers every single day while trying to access information that was built for everyone.
Why This Matters Specifically in Healthcare
In healthcare, the stakes of inaccessibility are not abstract.
When a patient cannot navigate a portal because it was not built to work with a screen reader, they may miss a care instruction or delay scheduling a follow-up. When a form requires fine motor input that someone cannot provide, they disengage entirely. When health information is written at a reading level that does not account for cognitive accessibility, the message does not land.
Accessible design is not just good practice. In this context, it is directly connected to whether people can actually participate in their own care.
At Muse Health, this shapes how we think about every touchpoint we build. If the experience we create only works for some of the people we are trying to reach, it is not doing what we intended.
What Getting It Right Looks Like
The organizations making real progress on accessibility are treating it the same way they treat security or performance. Not as an add-on. Not as a compliance box to check once. As a continuous requirement embedded across design, development, and content.
It means testing with real users, including people with disabilities. It means building accessibility into design systems from the beginning. It means making it someone’s actual job to monitor and maintain, not just review before launch.
It also means being honest about where gaps exist and committing to close them over time, not just on days like today.
A Note on GAAD
Global Accessibility Awareness Day started with a single blog post in 2011. Fifteen years later, it has grown into a global conversation involving developers, designers, healthcare organizations, educators, and policymakers.
That conversation matters. Awareness is still one of the biggest barriers to progress in this space. But awareness without action is just a milestone we pass through every May.
The question worth sitting with today is not whether your organization values accessibility. It is whether your products actually reflect that value when someone with a disability tries to use them.
That is where the real work is.
References
- World Health Organization — Disability and Health: who.int
- WebAIM — The WebAIM Million 2025 Report: webaim.org
- WebAIM — The WebAIM Million 2026 Report: webaim.org
- GAAD Foundation — Global Accessibility Awareness Day: accessibility.day
- Level Access — State of Accessibility Report 2025-2026: levelaccess.com