In the framework of EU “Action Plan on organ donation and transplantation (2009-2015): Strengthened Cooperation between Member States”, nominated experts from national competent authorities members of the Working Group on Living Donation have developed a comprehensive toolbox aimed at providing reference guidance to EU Member States on living organ donation...
On the occasion of the World Kidney Day (10th of March) and in line with their MEP Group for Kidney Health memberships, MEP Karin Kadenbach (AT, S&D), MEP Aldo Patriciello (IT, EPP) and MEP Annie Schreijer-Pierik (NL, EPP) published articles in The Parliament Magazine - a political magazine highly...
The 2016 World Kidney Day campaign draws attention to prevention. It builds on the “Move Your Feet” campaign to raise awareness on Kidney Disease and encourage people to make healthy lifestyle choices. With a similar focus, the EU Kidney Forum, to be convened by EKHA on the 19th...
Today, MEPs gathering for the March plenary session in Strasbourg adopted a draft new regulation increasing budgets for school milk, fruits and vegetables schemes and promoting better eating habits for children. The text, which had been agreed with EU Member States’ responsible Ministers in December 2015, provides for the merging of...
On the 1st of March, the European Commission published the 2016 Annual Work Plan under EU Health Programme 2014-2020, in which Chronic Diseases are amongst the key priorities. EKHA welcomes the European Commission's approach and action to address the diseases. The Work Plan includes two dedicated major actions, to which...
Reformulating foods to reduce salt and sugar, therefore making the healthy food choice, the easy choice, in order to reduce the burden of chronic diseases in Europe, is the main challenge being discussed by EU member states, food industry and NGOs at a conference on improving food products hosted by...
EKHA has recently joined the social media Twitter to advocate for kidney health and participate to the overall discussions on health issues at EU level online. EKHA's handle on Twitter is @EKHA_EU, you can visit EKHA's account using it.
The Dutch Kidney Foundation and the Dutch Kidney Patient Association have launched a joint initiative to inform and support potential living kidney donors and kidney patients, with the overall aim to increase living kidney donation in the Netherlands. A new website “Nierdonatie bij leven” (“living kidney donation”) has...
Multi-morbidity – the co-occurrence of at least two chronic conditions in one person - is affecting an increasing number of European citizens. As it is becoming a major public health threat, the European Union enhanced a reflexion aimed at developing a framework to address the related challenges and improve patient’s...
3D printing has been used for the first time in the world to support kidney transplant surgery between an adult donor and a child recipient, Lucy, a three-year-old girl from Northern Ireland. Lucy suffered heart failure and developed supraventricular tachycardia – a condition that makes the heart beating irregularly faster than...
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.
