Websites must have functionalities for people with cognitive and medical conditions

The Life Insurance Society of the National Teachers recently incorporated a series of features on its website that make it accessible to the entire population.

In this way, those who need to use this channel can make personalized adjustments for accessibility, content, color and screen and navigation.

These improvements are implemented to benefit people with different medical and cognitive conditions that can be affected by the traditional structures of electronic pages.

For example, flashing and blinking GIFs and animations often found on the internet are dangerous for people with photosensitive epilepsy, so most will avoid such pages and content for fear of attack.

Blind users, meanwhile, require readers to verbally dictate what is on the screen. Most websites lack alt text for images and attributes for content and behavior-related settings that screen readers rely on.

People with cognitive impairment have certain limitations in mental functions that may affect the way in which the content of the website is perceived and understood. Additionally, for those experiencing motor impairment, physical and motor impairments are defined by the inability to use a mouse. Fortunately, a keyboard can replace a mouse and fulfill all the functions of the mouse.

This coupled with the special requirements of users with common visual impairments such as blurred vision, color blindness and glaucoma and with hearing disabilities who need subtitles.

Dennis Córdoba López, Director of Information Technology of the Life Insurance Society explains that “the adjustments made respond to a whole process of change that has been implemented in the institution, with the purpose of offering a better service and converting the site web in a complete electronic branch, accessible to the entire population”.

With these settings, users can carry out different procedures from the web page, such as completing forms, scheduling customer service appointments, whether physical or virtual (through the Zoom application), making calculations or requesting credits, downloading documents and consulting statuses. bill.

To use these features, users must press a button with an icon representing accessibility, located in the lower right corner. There you can find all the settings mentioned above and customize the website according to your needs. For people who can’t use a mouse, they can get to it using the keyboard.

Unfortunately, in Costa Rica, the regulation of accessibility in these electronic tools is far behind. There is only one guideline issued in 2019 on the obligation of public sector companies to provide accessibility tools to guarantee real equality of opportunities.

Despite this, there is still a great lack of adequate accessibility conditions and only some municipalities stand out with small steps, related only to the increase in font size or specific colors.

To carry out these changes on the website, which receives an average of 17,000 monthly users, the Life Insurance Society carried out an audit with the help of the WAVE tool (Web accessibility tool) and the accessibility tool called accesiBe was used. , used by world-renowned brands.

Likewise, world standards of the WCAG 2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and of the W3C: World Wide Web Consortium, which is an international consortium that generates recommendations and standards that ensure the growth of the World Wide Web in the long term, were considered.

Since its launch in May, an interaction of 1700 people has been registered, which represents up to 10% of total visits.