In a letter to the Flemish daily newspaper 'De Standaard' published in Belgium, EKHA President Prof Raymond Vanholder calls attention to the burden of kidney disease in Europe and explains why EU policymakers should do more to support scientific research in the field of renal failure. COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the...
EKHA President, Prof. Raymond Vanholder published an article on ‘Friends of Europe’s’ website which illustrates the need to implement more resilient and sustainable approaches to chronic disease prevention, treatment and care during and in the aftermath of COVID-19, taking the case of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) as an example. The article...
REGISTER HERE EKHA is pleased to announce its upcoming webinar: “Towards a resilient and patient centered approach to kidney care in Europe - “Learning from the COVID-19 pandemic and harnessing future preparedness” taking place on Tuesday 27 October from 10:00 to 11:45. As Europe’s healthcare systems face unprecedented challenges against the...
On 20th October 2020, the European Commission will hold a Hearing of the “Expert Panel on effective ways of investing in health” on the organization of resilient health and social care following the COVID-19 pandemic. By means of input, EKHA has drafted a
Over the summer, EKHA has sent its contribution to the public consultation on the EU pharmaceutical strategy. The European Commission is expected to launch its new strategy to improve and accelerate patients’ access to safe and affordable medicines and to support innovation in the EU pharmaceutical...
On 22 September, EKHA has issued an open letter to ensure that kidney patients’ needs are not overlooked in current negotiations on the various instruments of the EU recovery plan and the overall budget. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the incredibly high vulnerability of CKD patients. Data show that CKD...
EKHA has contributed to a new publication discussing the challenges and opportunities in raising the awareness of public health authorities on the burden of kidney disease and the need to establish kidney research funding as a priority. Kidney research remains largely underfunded in Europe. Scientific societies can play an important role...
A new EKHA article published in Nature Reviews Nephrology explores the current and future landscape of dialysis and highlights that the rate of true patient-centred innovation has slowed in the field. According to the article, current trends are particularly concerning from a global perspective, as costs are not sustainable even for...
EKHA has contributed to an article recently published in the Clinical Journal of American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). The article compares and contrasts transnational dialysis-related health policies, with focus on key levers including payment, finance, regulation, and organization. It further describes how policy levers can incentivise favorable practice patterns...
On 9 June EKHA organised a webinar on the need for innovation in Renal Replacement Therapy (RRT) as a side meeting of the 57th ERA-EDTA Congress. The webinar format allowed for an interactive participation from all around the world. Patients shared their stories, needs and expectations from the future. Interviews...
European Kidney Health Alliance
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out via contact form.
