Patient portals have become the center of how I manage my healthcare. I use mine to schedule appointments, check test results, message my providers, and upload insurance documents. In 2026, almost every provider I see runs some kind of portal. Below, I'll walk through where patient portal accessibility breaks down for me as a screen reader user.
I've written before about the intake side of digital healthcare. The portal is what I deal with after the visit, and it has its own set of issues.
Navigating Test Results
Pulling up my test results on my own is one of the things I appreciate most about portals. Where I used to wait days for blood work or exam results from a follow-up visit, I can now read them within hours of leaving the office. The catch is that getting through those screens with a screen reader has its own set of headaches.
When I open something like a blood test, each value sits next to a small marker showing whether my number falls inside or outside the expected range. Most of the time the marker is a letter H for high or L for low. The trouble starts when those letters are styled in some decorative font instead of plain text. I assume the styling is meant to catch a sighted reader's eye while they scan for anything out of range.
My screen reader treats those stylized characters as unlabeled images and skips right past them. So I have no way to tell which numbers are flagged and which ones I should follow up on with my provider.
Imaging tests like x-rays show up a little differently. The portal will display the scan along with a written account from the radiologist describing what was found. The description will reference specific spots on the image, like marks or arrows pointing to areas of concern.
My screen reader can't tell me anything about the image itself. When the report says something like "see the area marked in the upper right," I'm left guessing what the radiologist is actually pointing at. Without alt text on those marked points, the written account on its own only gets me halfway there.
Provider Communications
Messaging through the portal is how I do most of my back-and-forth with my providers now. The interfaces look different from one portal to the next, but the same accessibility issues seem to follow me wherever I go.
The first is unlabeled buttons and fields in the inbox. Send buttons, edit buttons, and read/unread indicators all show up as nameless controls when the labels in the code are missing or wrong. I end up tabbing through a row of "button, button, button" with no idea what any of them do.
Long replies from providers are usually collapsed by default to save space. Clicking the message is supposed to expand it. But hitting enter on the collapsed message with my screen reader sometimes does nothing, and I'm stuck staring at a one-line preview of a five-paragraph response.
Replies sometimes include a link to a specific result or another part of the portal. My screen reader reads the link out loud, but pressing enter does nothing because the code marks it as plain text. A link I can't follow isn't really a link.
Issues On Mobile
The portals I use all have a mobile app version, and I open mine when I want to check something quickly while I'm out. The smaller screen brings its own pile of issues.
To save space, the word-based menu items from the desktop site get replaced with icons. Without proper labels in the code, my screen reader either says nothing or just announces "button" when I land on one.
The home screen of every portal app I've opened is a dashboard showing upcoming appointments, recent results, and pending tasks. My screen reader reads through everything on it just fine. The trouble is acting on what I'm hearing.
There might be a notification reminding me to confirm an appointment, or a reminder that a bill is waiting to be paid. I hear the full notification clearly. But double tapping to confirm sometimes does nothing at all.
My guess is that the whole notification is supposed to act as the button, and when the code isn't clean, my screen reader latches onto the text instead of the control. Direct touch on the screen will sometimes work as a workaround, but a workaround isn't accessibility.
FAQ
Are some portals better than others?
A few I've used are noticeably less painful. The more proprietary the system, the more inconsistent the experience feels from one section to the next.
Do you ever just call the office instead?
Sometimes, yes. If a result page is unreadable or a message won't expand, it's faster to pick up the phone. But that kind of defeats the point of having a portal.
What's the single biggest issue you'd want fixed?
Properly labeled, properly activatable buttons everywhere. If I can hear it, I should be able to press it. That alone would solve about half of what I run into
Closing thoughts
Patient portals are doing a lot of the work that used to happen at a front desk or over the phone. They need to be just as accessible as the public side of any healthcare site. I'm sharing this with the May 11 HHS Section 504 deadline in mind, since the portal experience doesn't always come up in that conversation.
If you want more on this, last week's live webinar on what still breaks for blind patients in healthcare covered ground I couldn't fit here. The recording is available to sign up for now.
. This is a guest post from our marketing contributor, Michael Taylor. It reflects his opinions and experiences. Read more about Michael and some other posts on his experience online here.
