Embedded librarians: An innovative experience in health and wellness communication.

The article discusses the experiences of Italian librarians taking part in an institutional project to produce a new general-public-oriented health web portal. The web portal was set up to provide verified and easily understandable health information, and to debunk health-related fake news circulating on the internet. The different roles, knowledge and skills acquired in during the project this are discussed and show how the librarian's knowledge and skills were of fundamental importance for the success of the Web Portal. By collaborating with other professions new skills such as social media management, video creation and Search Engine Optimization were gained, which enhanced the information literacy role of the service.

Health information in Italian public health websites: moving from inaccessibility to accessibility.

AIMS: In January 2004, the Italian government passed new legislation designed to give people with disabilities access to online services. Starting from the new legislation requirements, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether Italian Local Health Authorities websites are accessible to users with different abilities. METHODS: One hundred and seventy websites were analysed evaluating their compliance to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Priority 1 guidelines via a combination of appropriate accessibility testing methods. This review was carried out twice: the first time it took place between the end of 2003 and May-June 2004. The same survey was repeated again in December 2004, after the issuing of the draft of the Implementation Regulations for The Stanca Law in July 2004. In this second survey, all the websites analysed before were checked again to establish if some measures to make those sites accessible were taken. RESULTS: Seventy-six per cent of the analysed websites fail to satisfy the most basic W3C requirements, but Italian Local Health Authorities websites are likely to present significant improvements to access for some disabled user groups: the number of accessible websites increased consistently between the first and the second review. CONCLUSIONS: It seems that awareness of web accessibility issues is increasing among developers of health information websites because of law enforcement. Recommendations for future research and development are offered.