I Looked at 1,243 Health Tech Websites. Here’s What I Uncovered on Digital Accessibility.

If you missed the first piece, the short version is this. I started asking questions about digital accessibility with a focus towards health tech and the marketing lens. I could not find any GTM/marketing community talking about it, so I decided to start educating myself (and hopefully others) and go looking for data that highlights the opportunity we all have here.

I pulled the exhibitor lists from ViVE 2026 and HIMSS 2026, two of the biggest stages in health tech in the first half of the year, and ran an analysis to answer one simple question: do the exhibiting and sponsoring companies even say anything about accessibility on their websites?

That’s the most simple and most basic checkbox of all: is there any public statement, on any page of your site, that acknowledges accessibility as something your company thinks about? That is the lowest possible bar. And here is what I found. It’s not doom and gloom, but it’s not great either.

Survey Says… Here’s How I Gathered The Data

Nearly 70% of health tech companies exhibiting at the two most visible and notable events of the year have no public accessibility statement anywhere on their website.

I pulled the full exhibitor lists from ViVE 2026 (561 companies) and HIMSS 2026 (895 companies after intra-list deduplication) and combined them into a single dataset. After normalization and cross-list deduplication, 199 companies appeared at both events, yielding 1,257 total entries. Fourteen were HIMSS show-floor features rather than actual exhibitors, leaving 1,243 real companies in scope.

For each company we (Claude and I) ran a targeted web search combining the company name with the phrase ‘accessibility statement WCAG’ and classified results into three categories.

Roughly 7 in 10 companies that showed up on the floors of ViVE and HIMSS all talk about improving healthcare in some way, shape or form — and yet cannot confirm, publicly, that anyone can actually use their website.

Only about 1 in 6 companies (16.5%) maintained a dedicated accessibility page. These are the companies that have put a stake in the ground: here is what I believe, here is what I have done, here is how to reach us with accessibility concerns. That is what good looks like. And 16.5% is a very small room.

The remaining companies, roughly 13.5%, had something — often a line or two buried in a legal document. Better than nothing, but not a signal of much intentionality.

When I broke the data down by event, the pattern held, but the numbers told a more nuanced story. ViVE-only exhibitors (362 companies) had the lowest rate: 12.2% had a dedicated page and 22.7% had any content. HIMSS-only exhibitors (682 companies) fared better: 18.0% formal, 29.6% any mention. Companies at both events (199) posted the highest: 19.1% dedicated, 37.2% any content — and even among them, nearly two-thirds have nothing publicly visible.

Would They Pass? A Note on the Conference Hosts Themselves

HIMSS does address accessibility on their website, specifically for the physical event — ADA-compliant parking, accessible restrooms, elevator access, wheelchair seating near the keynote room, scooter rentals, and more. What is not there is a digital accessibility statement. No WCAG conformance claim, no statement about the conference website or registration app, no accessibility contact channel for digital issues. ViVE does not have one either.

This matters because tone comes from the top. If the conferences themselves have not put a stake in the ground on digital accessibility, it is less surprising that the majority of their exhibitors have not either. There is an opportunity here for both organizations to lead, inspire and educate.

The Big Guys: What Good Looks Like

The companies with dedicated accessibility pages were largely the established enterprise names you would expect — Adobe, Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce, Medtronic, Roche, and eClinicalWorks among them. Several are not healthcare-specific. These organizations have the resources to treat this as a sustained effort, but resources alone are not the reason they got there. At some point, someone decided this mattered enough to prioritize. That is a leadership decision — and it does not require a Fortune 500 budget.

This Is Far More Than Another Checkbox to Check

An accessibility statement is a signal, not a solution. Having one does not guarantee your product is fully accessible; not having one does not mean it isn’t. But it tells you whether the conversation has started. And the legal landscape is making this urgent: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (federal funding), Section 1557 of the ACA (disability non-discrimination), continued DOJ ADA Title III digital cases, and updated HHS guidance all put digital accessibility on the radar for covered entities.

This is not a future problem. It is a present and very real one. And don’t think that if you’re B2B and don’t interface with patients directly you’re immune. You’re not — your own employees and the public still apply.

When It Comes to Digital Accessibility, Here’s Where You Can Start

Start with your own website. Search your homepage, privacy policy, terms of service, and legal pages for the word “accessibility.” If you find nothing, that is useful information. From there, bring it to your team and be the squeaky wheel. Digital accessibility doesn’t fit neatly in just marketing or IT or product — it’s an organizational question about what your company believes about the people it serves. If your mission mentions patient access, health equity, or closing gaps in care, accessibility belongs in that same conversation.

And if you want to go further than a statement: WCAG conformance testing, VPATs, accessible design systems, and screen reader audits are all real and achievable. This is part two of a long series — as May 21 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, use it as a catalyst to check your website and start to champion the conversation.