The cover of the May issue of the Nephrology, Dialysis, Transplantation (NDT) journal displays EKHA’s visual for the Decade of the Kidney™. The journal also includes EKHA’s article on the Decade of the Kidney™, which details the activities of EKHA at the EU level, as well as EKHA’s...
In the Health Europa Quarterly Issue 25 (May 2023), EKHA President Raymond Vanholder and General Manager Eveline Scheres highlight where further efforts are needed to improve the prevention and care of kidney diseases in the article ‘Improving care and awareness of CKD’. The article describes the main challenges in the...
World Kidney Day 2023 – Kidney Health for All Preparing for the unexpected, supporting the vulnerable! This year, World Kidney Day highlights the significant impact of disastrous events on the kidney community with the theme ‘Preparing for the unexpected, supporting the vulnerable!’. Both natural and man-made disasters result in serious disruptions of...
EKHA co-signed ProTransplant’s open letter calling for a fundamental reform of the German transplant legislation. The open letter calls on the German federal and state health ministers to implement five critical measures to maximize organ donation and transplantation in the country, ultimately providing adequate medical care to patients concerned: Opt-out-system (presumed...
New campaign for kidney health. 9 March 2023 EKHA and partners launches new campaign for kidney health : Show your kidneys love! Worldwide, 700 to 800 million people already suffer from chronic kidney disease (CKD), including 1 in 7 Europeans. Many of these patients are undiagnosed as symptoms only appear when the disease...
EKHA's recent article urges policymakers to foster climate-resilient kidney care systems through accountable and environmentally sustainable low-carbon healthcare solutions. The article highlights the devastating threat of unaddressed climate change to people's health and equity, particularly those with kidney diseases as well as the substantial environmental impact of kidney replacement therapies (KRTs). KRTs...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJszzHDzF90 This video explains why we urgently need to transform the way we prevent and treat kidney disease. Health is an essential indicator of any country’s prosperity. But in our aging societies, healthcare systems need a paradigm shift to cope with increasing demand and spiraling costs. In Europe, nearly 100 million people...
EKHA released a Consensus Statement together with the DESCARTES Working Group and the Ethics Committee of the European Renal Association (ERA), analyzing the effects of massive disasters on kidney transplantation. There have been relatively few studies on this issue. Therefore, this analysis of the evolution of kidney transplantation during the...
EDTNA/ERCA published a new set of recommendations for improving sustainable kidney care and providing support to patients and healthcare providers to decrease the environmental impact of nephrology and more. Healthcare is a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions as well as resource depletion, and during the current climate crisis patients...
EKHA recently published an article discussing the effects armed conflicts have on kidney patients. The article highlights the unique challenges armed conflicts present to patients with kidney disease and presents suggestions about how to mitigate these issues. Conflicts have detrimental impact on the healthcare system as a whole by damaging infrastructure, limiting...
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.
