EKHA's first article, "Reducing the costs of chronic kidney disease while delivering quality health care: a call to action" is published in the Nature Reviews Nephrology Journal, a peer-reviewed medical journal for nephrologists. The article points out the substantial societal costs imposed by the treatment of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD)...
On World Kidney Day 2017, MEP Karin Kadenbach, Chair of the MEP Group for Kidney Health raised her voice to highlight the underestimated health problems of obesity and chronic kidney disease. Her article issued in the EU news outlet "Parliament Magazine" is available here.
The Pilot Project “the Effect of Differing Kidney Disease Treatment Modalities and Organ Donation and Transplantation Practices on Health Expenditure and Patient Outcomes" (EDITH) kicked off on the 16-17th of February in Brussels. EDITH will assess the different treatment modalities for chronic kidney diseases currently used in the EU and the...
2017 European Kidney Forum: Patients choice of treatment Hosted by the MEP Group for Kidney Health Tuesday, 11 April 2017 from 17:00-21:00 Forum and Networking Dinner at the EU Thon Hotel, Brussels There is a wide range of treatments for chronic kidney disease, ranging from traditional hospital dialysis, through to self- or...
Building on the report "Reducing the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and their negative impact in Estonia" produced by the World Health Organisation’s Evidence-informed Policy Network (EVIPNet) and supported by WHO Europe, Estonia recently unveiled plans to tackle obesity through reducing sugar consumption. The report highlighted the links between the consumption...
As part of the pluri-annual framework of the European Commission in health (Third Health programme), the European Commission issued its annual work plan for 2017 to guide its work over the year. With the 2017 plan, the European Commission has set a priority on addressing disease risk factors including unhealthy...
Member of the European Parliament Mr Brando Benifei (Italy, S&D group) recently joined the MEP Group for Kidney Health. Mr Benifei is a member of the parliamentary committee on employment and social affairs. He is an advocate for better health in Europe and greater patient empowerment and has in this...
In its capacity as member of the ECDA and having been elected by the Board of the Alliance, EKHA takes over as of January 2017 the Secretariat of the ECDA – a rotating Presidency - from the European Society of Cardiology for the coming two years. During this time, Professor Vanholder...
The French 2017 budget law foresees the expansion of the national telemedicine pilot project, launched two years ago to develop telemedicine as a means to improve the follow up of patients after hospital discharge. As of 2017, priority will be set on telesurveillance of patients with chronic diseases and especially...
On the 1st of January 2017, Malta’s term at the helm of the Council of the EU started for a six month period until the end of June 2017, taking over from Slovakia. Malta participated to the setting of the trio Presidency (The Netherlands and Slovakia) programme, defining the...
European Kidney Health Alliance
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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.
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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.
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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.
