Exploring health websites with people with learning disabilities
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Using a focus group methodology to explore ways of making a health website accessible and useable for people with learning disabilities.
IRAS ID
225701
Contact name
Mary Waight
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
This project aims to work with adults with learning disabilities to look at ways of making websites more accessible and useable for them.
This will be a pilot study lasting approximately a year. This study will aim to create a website evaluation tool and a hierarchy of website features that people with learning disabilities find helpful and useful alongside a protocol and resources which could be used with different groups of people with learning disabilities to examine this topic at a later date.
The pilot study will work by recruiting to a focus group of people with learning disabilities which will examine the following over a period of four weeks:
1. How do people find out about:
a. Health services
b. Living healthy lives
2. What do they want to know about these subjects
3. Using existing websites including health trust sites, sites using video, mock-ups of sites using different media for information provision to examine what features people find accessible and useful:
a. Layout
b. Navigation
c. Language content e.g. text
d. Pictures
e. Multi-media support e.g. audio, video
Group sessions to be audio recorded and transcribed. The data gathered will be grouped into themes using grounded theory. There will be a final meeting of the focus group members to validate findings and the protocol for further groups.
The information gathered will be disseminated through a project report for Health Education England – Thames Valley and Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust along with presentations at relevant conferences and articles for relevant publications. The project report will form the basis for influencing website design for relevant health trusts in the Berkshire and possibly Thames Valley areas.REC name
London - West London & GTAC Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/LO/1455
Date of REC Opinion
5 Oct 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion