In the wake of the escalating conflict in Ukraine, the European Kidney Health Alliance (EKHA) and the European Kidney Patients’ Federation (EKPF) published an open letter to Ms Stella Kyriakides, EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Mr Janez Lenarčič, EU Commissioner for Crisis Management, and Ms Mariya Gabriel, EU...
Today EKHA is launching a set of recommendations to tackle Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) at EU level together with its partners: the French nephrology and patient societies: Société Francophone de Néphrologie, Dialyse et Transplantation (SFNDT), France Rein, and Renaloo. The Ministerial Conference on the Resilience of Health Systems to Support Cooperation on a European Scale,...
Prof Raymond Vanholder, European Kidney Health Alliance (EKHA) President, was interviewed for the LIFE 2021 Nephrology Congress. Prof Vanholder presented EKHA’s publication “Fighting the unbearable lightness of neglecting kidney health: the Decade of the Kidney™”, which discusses the unawareness of kidney disease outside the nephrology community and calls...
The European Kidney Patients' Federation (EKPF) new publication 'Living better with CKD - improving the quality of life of CKD patients on dialysis across Europe' discusses the devastating impact of advanced stage kidney disease on the quality of life of patients. In doing so, it provides three recommendations to European...
In 2021, the European Kidney Forum (EKF) addressed the topic of ‘Unmet needs & challenges in access to treatments in Europe: The case of Chronic Kidney Disease’. The event brought together EU policymakers, academics, patient groups and healthcare professionals to discuss practical and forward-looking policy solutions to enhance the availability...
A new article by Prof. Raymond Vanholder, EKHA’s President, and Prof. Norbert Lameire, former EKHA’s Chairman, reviews correlations between health literacy (HL) levels in patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and patient’s outcomes. HL is an important aspect of the lives of CKD patients because of the complexity of self-care...
In the fall of 2020, major global kidney disease organisations met at the first ‘International Home Dialysis Roundtable’ (IHDR) to discuss ways to increase access to and uptake of home dialysis, both peritoneal dialysis and home hemodialysis. COVID-19 shed light on the urgency to increase the access to home dialysis. Kidney...
Brussels, June 21st 2021 Last Friday, on June 18th, the European Kidney Health Alliance (EKHA) and the MEP Group for Kidney Health hosted the 2021 European Kidney Forum ‘Unmet needs & challenges in access to treatments in Europe: The case of Chronic Kidney Disease’. The Forum was introduced by EU Commissioner for...
Although Europe is a leader in organ donation and transplantation, compared to other continents, major discrepancies remain between countries in terms of transplantation activity. This Roadmap, was produced by the EKHA-led Thematic Network on Organ Donation and Transplantation and is based on the Joint Statement on the same subject, published...
The 2021 European Kidney Forum will take place on the 18th June 2021 from 10:30 to 12:00 CEST. The MEP Group for Kidney Health and the European Kidney Health Alliance (EKHA) look forward to the insightful discussions that will emerge from the theme “Unmet needs & challenges in access to...
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.
