WordPress Accessibility for Healthcare Organizations
Healthcare websites combine public information, forms, patient resources, location information, appointment workflows, documents, portals, and third-party services. Very little of that is a simple page.
HHS has set web accessibility deadlines too
For organizations receiving certain HHS federal financial assistance, Section 504 now includes specific web and mobile accessibility requirements based on WCAG 2.1 Level AA. HHS extended the compliance dates to:
HHS Section 504
May 11, 2027
Recipients of HHS federal financial assistance with 15 or more employees
About 8 months from today.
HHS Section 504
May 10, 2028
Recipients of HHS federal financial assistance with fewer than 15 employees
About 20 months from today.
Confirm whether the rule reaches you
Whether and how the rule applies depends on the assistance an organization receives and how it is structured. Confirm through current HHS guidance and appropriate legal counsel — we are a technical service, not a legal one.
A public hospital or health district can also be a public entity under the ADA Title II rule. When both reach the same organization, the earlier of the two dates is the one that governs planning.
Where these dates come from. Verify current guidance before relying on any date for planning — both rules have already moved once.
- U.S. Department of Justice — ADA Title II web rule: ada.gov/resources/web-rule-first-steps
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — Section 504 deadline extension: hhs.gov press release
MakeWPCompliant provides technical accessibility services, not legal advice. How a rule applies to a specific organization is a question for current federal guidance and, where appropriate, qualified legal counsel.
Healthcare WordPress sites can be complicated
Accessibility issues tend to appear in:
- Provider and location directories
- Appointment request forms
- Patient information
- Downloadable forms
- Contact and intake forms
- Navigation and search
- Interactive maps
- Embedded video
- Third-party scheduling
- Patient portals
- Payment systems
- PDF documents
- Notices and instructions
Some of those systems are part of WordPress. Others are third-party services linked or embedded from the WordPress site. The first step is understanding the actual user experience, not the org chart of who owns which system.
Remediate what you control
Within WordPress, we can investigate and remediate problems in:
- Themes
- Templates
- Page builders
- Plugins
- Forms
- CSS
- JavaScript
- Content
- Images
- Navigation
- Keyboard and focus behavior
When a problem belongs to an external system, we identify it as a dependency — clearly enough that you can take it to the vendor — even where the remediation itself has to happen on their side.
Accessibility is ongoing
Healthcare content changes constantly. New providers, service pages, documents, forms, campaigns and plugins can all introduce new accessibility issues after the initial remediation project is signed off.
Optional regression testing can catch new problems before they accumulate into another project.
All four dates, in full
| Compliance date | Rule | Who it applies to |
|---|---|---|
| April 26, 2027 | ADA Title II | Public entities with a population of 50,000 or more |
| April 26, 2028 | ADA Title II | Public entities with a population under 50,000, and special district governments |
| May 11, 2027 | HHS Section 504 | Recipients of HHS federal financial assistance with 15 or more employees |
| May 10, 2028 | HHS Section 504 | Recipients of HHS federal financial assistance with fewer than 15 employees |
Healthcare accessibility work is bigger than the homepage
Forms, patient information, documents, directories and third-party systems are all part of the picture. Start by finding out what is actually wrong.