Public health websites are regarded as official references that citizens of any country rely on for domestic and individual health affairs. For people with disabilities, public health resources are often of greater importance; they additionally provide disability context-specific information. However, to leverage the benefits of such resources for the widest demographic groups, Web accessibility requirements should be met at an acceptable level (e.g., WCAG 2.0, Level AA). This study evaluates the accessibility of a number of public health websites from 25 countries. The choice of the selected websites is determined by the extent of the COVID-19 outbreak in the corresponding countries and their rank as of late April, 2020. Ultimately, this study aims at shedding light on the current situation of accessibility to health information and pinpointing the aspects where accessibility to information falls short in public health websites. Using different evaluation tools, the overall results show that the vast majority of public health websites, of a number of different countries, still have many critical accessibility barriers, especially with regards to the perception of information and operability of the interface items. The findings of this study suggest a need for major efforts toward ensuring accessible public health resources in most of the evaluated websites. As this pattern has repeatedly occurred in many relevant studies in different parts of the world, legislation along with educating Web developers regarding Web accessibility requirements and universal design principles become an urgent necessity.

公共卫生网站被视为任何国家公民处理国内和个人健康事务所依赖的官方参考。对于残疾人来说，公共卫生资源往往更为重要；它们还提供特定于残疾情况的信息。然而，为了让最广泛的人口群体受益​​于这些资源，Web 可访问性要求应满足在可接受的水平（例如，WCAG 2.0，AA 级）。本研究评估了 25 个国家/地区的一些公共卫生网站的可访问性。所选网站的选择取决于相应国家/地区 COVID-19 疫情的严重程度以及截至 2020 年 4 月下旬的排名。最终，本研究旨在揭示健康信息的获取现状并确定公共卫生网站中信息获取不足的方面。使用不同的评估工具，总体结果表明，多个国家的绝大多数公共卫生网站仍然存在许多关键的可访问性障碍，特别是在信息感知和界面项目的可操作性方面。这项研究的结果表明，需要做出重大努力，确保大多数接受评估的网站都能获得公共卫生资源。由于这种模式在世界不同地区的许多相关研究中反复出现，因此迫切需要立法并教育 Web 开发人员了解 Web 可访问性要求和通用设计原则。