Healthcare’s Digital Accessibility Problem

Dev Interrupted
Dev Interrupted
Published in
2 min readJun 15, 2023

The push for digital accessibility aims to ensure equal access and inclusion for all individuals. So why are healthcare companies failing to keep up?

In this week’s episode of Dev Interrupted, we sit down with Plum Ertz, Director of Engineering at Ro, to dissect healthcare’s digital accessibility problem. Following explosive growth in telemedicine due to consumer behavior changes brought on by the pandemic, the healthcare industry has struggled to provide accessible healthcare services on the internet, regardless of the technology or disability someone may have. Plum sheds light on the work being done at Ro to address these challenges, emphasizing the simple steps that teams can take to enhance their digital accessibility.

Plum also shares stories from her time at Buzzfeed, where she accidentally took down the entire site after forgetting a semicolon and once mistakenly calling a midterm election 5 hours too early.

Episode Highlights:

  • (1:35) Defining accessibility
  • (6:20) Why accessibility matters
  • (9:50) An explosion in the number of telemedicine users
  • (12:19) How Ro defines success
  • (16:05) Screwup stories
  • (18:15) Stories from Plum’s time at Buzzfeed
  • (22:50) Getting started with accessibility at your company

Read the full episode transcript

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Originally published at https://devinterrupted.com.

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Dev Interrupted
Dev Interrupted

The Dev Interrupted podcast and its articles and podcasts are made exclusively for dev leaders, featuring expert guests from around the world.