COMMUNITY CASE STUDY article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Aging and Public Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1586514
This article is part of the Research TopicAssistive Technologies in Aging and DisabilityView all 8 articles
Confronting the Public Health Challenge of Inaccessible COVID-19 Home Tests: Insights from the RADx® Tech Accessibility Initiative
Provisionally accepted
Emily B. Kennedy1*
Kimberly Noble2Kevin Leite3Maren Downing4
Samuel Dolphin5
Mia Cirrincione6Brian Walsh7- 1OOMVELT, LLC, Lakewood, OH, United States
- 2Kimberly Noble Consulting, LLC, Hermosa Beach, CA, United States
- 3Leite Consulting LLC, Holly Springs, NC, United States
- 4M Biomedical LLC, McCormick, SC, United States
- 5Independent Contractor, Cambridge, MA, United States
- 6MJC Innovation LLC, Chicago, IL, United States
- 7Innova Group, LLC, Alpharetta, GA, United States
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COVID-19 home tests first distributed by the U.S. Government in early 2022 proved inaccessible to Americans with no vision, low vision, limited dexterity, and certain aging-related impairments. The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) leveraged a multimillion-dollar investment to address this challenge via the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx®) Tech Accessibility Initiative. What follows is a case study report on the March 2022-June 2023 implementation of this initiative, which was later expanded into a larger-scale program called RADx Tech III (September 2022-present). The initiative unveiled a substantial gap in resources guiding accessible product development and applied crisis response funding to bridge this gap. Beyond the primary goal of improving accessibility of COVID-19 home tests, the initiative was successful in developing an expert resource pool, documenting best practices for design of accessible home tests, and generating/validating a framework for future accessibility initiatives.
Keywords: accessibility, Aging Population, COVID-19, Disability, human factors, in vitro diagnostics, medical devices, product design
Received: 03 Mar 2025; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kennedy, Noble, Leite, Downing, Dolphin, Cirrincione and Walsh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Emily B. Kennedy, OOMVELT, LLC, Lakewood, OH, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.