Count On Coffey

By Jeremy Dietz, Director of AI Strategy and Content

Accessibility has long been important for healthcare websites. But did you know that making your website accessible to people who use assistive technologies, like screen readers, also makes the site easier for artificial intelligence (AI) tools to navigate? This is increasingly important as more patients use AI tools, like ChatGPT and Gemini, and as new AI-powered browsers, like Atlas from OpenAI, emerge that can navigate and interact with websites on users' behalf.

What are ARIA attributes?

ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) attributes are bits of HTML that give screen readers and other tools information about how elements work—such as whether a dropdown menu is open, what a button does, or whether an element is decorative or functional.

Because ARIA improves navigation for people using assistive technologies, it has long been essential for meeting accessibility standards. Now it can also help AI tools interpret your site. AI agents don't "see" pages visually—they use structured cues like semantic HTML and ARIA to understand what's on the page and how to move through it.

ARIA helps AI tools:

• Navigate your site and identify relevant content.
• Present your information more accurately in AI-powered results.
• Recognize which buttons and forms are meaningful—helping agents guide users to actions like "Schedule an appointment."

How to check your ARIA implementation

A technical review by a developer can tell you if your site has proper ARIA implementation. If you don't have a developer handy, try these quick checks to get a sense of how well your site performs:

• Try navigating your site using only the tab key. If elements are skipped or you lose track of where the cursor is, there may be a problem.
• Check your most recent accessibility scan. Low scores or "missing ARIA label" warnings are red flags.
• If your site isn't scanned regularly for accessibility, try a free tool like Lighthouse (built into Chrome) to get a quick read on basic issues.

Categories: Digital