Accessibility: Global Gateway to Health Literacy

Abstract

Health literacy, cited as essential to achieving Healthy People 2010's goals to "increase quality and years of healthy life" and to "eliminate health disparities," is defined by Healthy People as "the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions." Accessibility, by definition, the aforementioned "capacity to obtain," thus is health literacy's primary prerequisite. Accessibility's designation as the global gateway to health literacy is predicated also on life's realities: global aging and climate change, war and terrorism, and life-extending medical and technological advances. People with diverse access needs are health professionals' raison d'être. However, accessibility, consummately cross-cultural and universal, is virtually absent as a topic of health promotion and practice research and scholarly discussion of health literacy and equity. A call to action to place accessibility in its rightful premier position on the profession's agenda is issued.

Design preferences for global scale: A mixed-methods study of “glocalization” of an animated, video-based health communication intervention.

“…Applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to the practice of creating globally scalable digital health tools, is a potentially powerful strategy for improving access to health information. 3 The UDL framework was originally developed to increase accessibility of educational materials for children with special needs. 23 Certainly, we are not equating cultural a liations with special needs.…”

“…4 2) Universal design for learning (UDL), a theoretical framework originally developed to accommodate those with learning differences, has been successfully applied to the design of culturally inclusive health literacy interventions. 3 3) The digital simplicity of vector-based, two-dimensional character animations facilitates compression into small les and optimization for mobile viewing.…”

Consent for all

“…Rather we argue that even before one addresses such things, the primary barrier of readability prohibits engagement with the text. Given the general literacy levels of the population, this in itself renders such text inaccessible in that accessibility relies upon the capacity of an individual to obtain, use, understand or appreciate the object in question [31]. In this way, as we increasingly make the digital available to all, there is a danger we concurrently introduce a subtler variant of the digital divisions of the past.…”

Renewing Perspectives on Men's Prostate Cancer Literacy and Engagement Along the Disease Continuum

“…Together with a supportive environment, health literacy may influence individuals' response to particular health situations and contexts as well as their awareness of existing resources and ways to accessing them. Perlow (2010) reports that low health literacy has major impacts on health disparities and adverse health outcomes throughout the lifespan, including hospitalization, chronic disease, and higher health care costs.…”