Availability of basic first aid training for cardiac arrest for people with disabilities

Abstract

Aim. Basic first aid digital training for cardiac arrest opens up opportunities for mass dissemination of knowledge, popularization and motivation of the population to provide assistance, and can also replace the theoretical part of classroom training, reducing the cost of training. However, due to poor design, such training may not be available to people with disabilities (PWD), who constitute a large population of more than one billion potential participants in first aid. The aim was to study the digital accessibility (web accessibility) of massive open online courses in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for PWD.Material and methods. A search was carried out for free English-language online courses teaching the principles and rules of providing first aid in cardiac arrest. In addition, the digital content of online courses was assessed for compliance with the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.Results. All basic CPR online courses analyzed (n=28) were characterized by poor web accessibility. For each course, between 26,9% and 51,3% of the WCAG 2.1 guideline success criteria were not met. All courses have web accessibility errors related to text contrast and visual issues, lack of alternative text descriptions for non-text content, missing abbreviations, and web page layout issues that prevent the use of assistive technologies (such as text-to-speech software). Overall, none of the courses meet all of the criteria for the minimum acceptable level of compliance with WCAG 2.1 guidelines. The discovered problems of web accessibility can serve as serious, sometimes insurmountable barriers to the mastery of courses by students (including older people) with visual impairments, hearing loss, motor, cognitive and neurological disorders.Conclusion. All free mass online courses on basic CPR have deficiencies in the availability of digital content, which significantly complicate the learning of educational materials by PWD. The development of uniform guidelines for accessible educational content, along with the intensification of research and the implementation of organizational and methodological measures to ensure the availability of educational resources on first aid for various categories of the population, should help create equal opportunities for quality training. In addition, this should significantly expand the population coverage with training, and increase the frequency and effectiveness of first aid.