Making Personal Health Data More Accessible, Actionable, and Trustworthy
A product accessibility opportunity brief on how Function Health could make member health data easier to navigate, read, and trust.
This is a self-initiated portfolio brief based on my own review of the Function Health member experience.
Health data only helps if people can find it, understand it, and act on it.
As a Function Health member and accessibility-focused product designer, I reviewed the member experience through the lens of accessibility, health literacy, and trust. I was not trying to produce a full audit. I was looking for the changes that would make the biggest difference for people moving through complex results.
- Accessible Get to the information without fighting the interface.
- Actionable Understand what changed and what it means.
- Trustworthy Feel confident the product is telling the full story.
Health Data Raises the Bar
Function Health gives members access to complex, personal health information. That raises the bar for the product: the experience needs to be easy to move through, easy to read, and steady enough to trust.
Accessibility is not just a compliance concern here. It affects whether members can find results, compare changes over time, and decide what to ask or do next.
For a health data product, accessibility is product quality.
Review Lens
I looked at the member experience through three questions:
- Can members navigate the experience independently?
- Can members understand complex health information clearly?
- Can the product scale accessibility through reusable patterns instead of one-off fixes?
The biggest opportunity is not just to fix isolated issues. It is to shape the structure of the experience so results, trends, alerts, and recommendations all behave consistently across devices and assistive technologies.
Opportunity Themes
These themes connect individual accessibility issues to member confidence, fewer dead ends, and patterns the team can reuse.
Screen reader and assistive technology support
Some parts of the experience may work visually but still miss important context for screen reader users. That can make it harder to know where you are, what actions are available, or what changed after an interaction.
What I would improve
Tighten labels, headings, landmarks, button names, form instructions, and status messages for result changes, expandable biomarker details, and modal states.
Why it matters
When the structure is clear, the product feels more dependable and members can move with less friction.
Keyboard access and focus management
The core flows need to work cleanly without a mouse. If focus order, modals, or interaction patterns are inconsistent, members can get stuck or lose their place.
What I would improve
Audit the main journeys for keyboard access, logical focus order, visible focus states, modal behavior, skip paths, and mouse-dependent components.
Why it matters
Better keyboard support reduces friction and makes the experience more resilient across input methods.
Visual readability and contrast
Health products rely on color, hierarchy, cards, status indicators, and charts. If contrast, spacing, type size, or hierarchy are weak, members can miss the most important information.
What I would improve
Strengthen color contrast, readable type sizes, spacing, non-color indicators, and hierarchy across summaries, lab details, recommendations, and dashboard states.
Why it matters
Clearer visual structure helps people read and process information during moments that already carry some emotional weight.
Data visualization and lab result comprehension
Charts and indicators are useful, but members still need a plain-language way to understand what changed, what is in or out of range, and what to do next.
What I would improve
Pair charts with accessible summaries, data tables, trend descriptions, plain-language explanations, and next-step guidance for result changes, ranges, and chart filters.
Why it matters
Accessible data patterns help members move from seeing results to understanding meaning and possible action.
Semantic structure and content hierarchy
Headings, groups, labels, regions, and predictable page hierarchy help people scan, navigate, and build a mental model of dense health information.
What I would improve
Create reusable content and component patterns for dashboards, result pages, biomarker details, alerts, recommendations, and educational content.
Why it matters
A stronger semantic foundation reduces cognitive load, improves consistency, and gives the product room to scale without getting messy.
Where I’d Start
I would start with the highest-value member flows, fix the blocking accessibility issues, and then turn the good solutions into repeatable patterns for results, trends, alerts, and next steps.
Now
- Audit core flows
- Fix blocking assistive technology issues
- Improve focus states and labels
Next
- Add accessible chart and result patterns
- Document design-system guidance
- Add QA checkpoints
Scale
- Build accessibility governance into product rituals
- Measure accessibility maturity
- Extend patterns across member journeys
What Better Access Could Change
Trust
People are more likely to trust a product that feels clear, stable, and usable.
Comprehension
Better structure helps members understand complex health information faster.
Next steps
Accessible summaries, recommendations, and data patterns help people know what to do next.
Scalability
Reusable accessible patterns reduce rework as the product grows and make well-labeled health content easier for future accessibility tooling to interpret.
How I Think About This Work
My strength is translating accessibility findings into product priorities, design-system improvements, and cross-functional practices that help teams ship better experiences sooner.
For a product like Function Health, I would treat accessibility as part of product quality: identify the barriers, focus on the highest-impact member flows, work closely with product and engineering, and turn the fixes into standards the team can reuse.
In a personal health data product, accessibility is not a separate layer. It is part of trust.
Personal health data should be understandable, navigable, and actionable for every member. Accessibility can help Function Health move closer to that goal by making complex information easier to reach, easier to interpret, and easier to trust.