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Web accessibility in the Mid-Atlantic United States: A study of 50 homepages
Universal Access in the Information Society
Abstract
This paper reports on a study of 50 home pages in the Mid-Atlantic United States, to determine what accessibility problems exist. The 50 home pages were evaluated using both the U.S. Government's Section 508 guidelines, as well as the Web Accessibility Initiative's (WAI) Priority Level 1 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). According to both sets of guidelines, 49/50 sites were found to have accessibility problems, although some of the accessibility problems were minor and easy to fix. There are two troubling findings from this study. The web sites that had the most accessibility problems were organizations in the web development and information technology field, which ideally should be the leaders in making the web more accessible. The web accessibility software testing tools, which are available to assist people in making their web sites more accessible, are flawed, inconsistent, and require large numbers of manual checks, which many developers may not be able to do. More people need to become aware of the topic of web accessibility, and the testing tools need to be improved so that
... Be that as it may, Indian society has officially understood the extent of Web accessibility, and changes have been made to advance this idea [1]. All over the world, many researchers are discussed about the websites which fail to reach the level of Web accessibility [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], to improve the accessibility problems in India, still there is a lack of investigation in private and public websites. The main aim of this study is to investigate the level of Web accessibility of private and public websites in India between 2017 and another in 2018. ...
... Some researchers have assessed WWW accessibility [9,10] or analyzed the various types of websites accessibility level [11]. All over the world, the investigation states that satisfactory level of the Web accessibility is too far. ...
... Three categories of Web accessibility for private and public website to check the number of violations [10]; Table 2 shows that the websites are evaluated with Priority 1 (Level A) to meet the 25 guidelines of WCAG 2.0, which displays the report as known problems, likely problems, and potential problems. In study 1, 2 out of 13 websites are low-level inaccessible. ...
... The literature (Jaeger, 2002;J. Lazar, Beere, Greenidge, & Nagappa, 2003;Stowers, 2002) Loiacono, 2004;Loiacono & McCoy, 2006;Mankoff, Fait, & Tran, 2005;Paris, 2006;Ritchie & Blanck, 2003;Rowan, Gregor, Sloan, & Booth, 2000;Rowland, 2000;Spindler, 2002 This dissertation evaluates two under-researched approaches to mitigating barriers to accessibility for persons who are blind. These approaches fall within th ...
... xperience that is most likely unsatisfactory. INTRODUCTION Jakob Nielsen (Nielsen, 2000) argues that the homepage is the gateway to the website and therefore sets the tone of the entire website for the user. There are many studies of Web accessibility that evaluate only the homepages (Davis, 2002;Flowers, Bray, & Algozzine, 1999;Klein et al., 2003;J. Lazar et al., 2003;Jonathan Lazar & Greenidge, 2006;Loiacono & McCoy, 2006;Paris, 2006;Spindler, 2002;Yu, 2002), a selected handful of pages (Diaper & Worman, 2003;D. Sloan, Gregor, Booth, & Gibson, 2002;Thompson, 2003), or limit the levels of pages evaluated for the website (S. Hackett, Parmanto, & Zeng, 2004;Jackson-Sanborn et al., 2002). ...
... a rejection of the hypothesis that homepage accessibility is indicative of the accessibility of the entire website. These results demonstrate that evaluating the homepage alone is not sufficient when evaluating Web pages for accessibility. Previous studies using only the homepage in the analysis (Davis, 2002;Flowers et al., 1999;Klein et al., 2003;J. Lazar et al., 2003;Jonathan Lazar & Greenidge, 2006;Loiacono & McCoy, 2006;Paris, 2006;Spindler, 2002;Yu, 2002) may not have show the whole picture of accessibility. However, the WAB scores for levels 1, 2, and 3 of these websites are highly correlated and previous studies that included more pages than just the homepage (Diaper & Worman, 2003;D. Sloan et a ...
A model is presented depicting the driving forces (Web industry, consumers, U.S. federal government, and technology) promoting an accessible Web and potential solutions within those forces. This project examines two distinct solutions, lawsuits (a consumer-driven solution) and AcceSS 2.1 transcoder (a technology-driven solution) to provide more information on two under-researched methods that could have far-reaching impacts on Web accessibility for the blind. First, an evaluation of the intraclass correlation (ICC) between homepage Web Accessibility Barrier (WAB) scores and WAB scores of levels 1-3 found that the homepage is not sufficient to detect the accessibility of the website. ICC of the homepage and average of levels 1-3 is 0.250 (p=0.062) and ICC of levels 1, 2, & 3 is 0.784 (p < 0.0001). Evaluating the homepage and first-level pages gives more accurate results of entire site accessibility. Second, an evaluation of the WAB scores of the homepage and first-level pages of websites of five companies sued for alleged inaccessible websites found mixed results: lawsuits worked in two cases, but didn't in three. This is seen through an examination of accessibility and complexity of the websites for years surrounding the lawsuits. Each sued website is compared to a control website within the same industry and to a random group of websites representing the general Web. Third, a usability study of the AcceSS 2.1 transcoding intermediary found that technology can increase users' efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction in Web interaction, regardless of universal design. The study entails a within-subject cross-over design wherein 15 users performed tasks on three websites: one universally designed, one non-universally designed, and one reference site. Paired t-tests examine the effect of AcceSS 2.1 on time, errors, and subjective satisfaction and mixed-model analysis examines the effect of study design on outcomes. Results show that users perform tasks faster, with fewer errors, and with greater satisfaction when accessing pages via AcceSS 2.1, but users where less satisfied with the universally designed website and significant differences were found in the universally designed website and not the non-universally designed website. Website usability and ease of navigation are more important to users than simple accessibility.
... Given the fact that many websites fail to achieve web accessibility, a phenomenon that has been widely revealed by many researchers [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], there is likelihood that Chinese websites may have major accessibility problems; however, there is a lack of research into the accessibility of Chinese websites. This paper thus aims to provide an overview of the status of web accessibility in China according to two evaluations, one in 2009 and the other in 2013. ...
... Researchers have investigated the accessibility of websites in the USA [1][2][3][4], UK [5], Australia [6], and Korea [7]. Some other researchers have evaluated web accessibility worldwide [8,9] or compared the accessibility of different kinds of websites [10]. All studies have demonstrated that web accessibility is far from satisfactory all over the world. ...
... In Study 2, 14 out of 50 websites passed the automatic evaluation; however, none of them got through the user checking. The sample websites were classified into four categories based on the number of violated checkpoints [9]; these are shown in Table 1, followed by an explanation of the findings. ...
The objective of this study was to provide an overview of the status of web accessibility in China and to reveal any improvements during the period 2009 to 2013. Two evaluation studies were carried out in 2009 and 2013, respectively. Thirty-eight popular Chinese websites were evaluated in 2009 and fifty in 2013 with reference to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG). The studies applied the conformance evaluation method with the help of the automatic evaluation tool Hera. The evaluation results indicated that none of the surveyed websites passed all the checkpoints of Priority 1 in both studies, which means no website met the minimum requirement for web accessibility. The average level of web accessibility worsened between 2009 and 2013 due to the increase of website complexity and the amount of content. However, e-government websites had made some significant improvement during these 4 years, which indicated that the government had realized the web accessibility issues and made some effort to address them. The evaluation also revealed five major accessibility barriers existing in both studies, and these barriers also served as technical suggestions for web content providers. The web accessibility of Chinese websites is far from satisfactory, and it is getting worse from 2009 to 2013. However, e-government websites had improved significantly in regards to accessibility due to the release of accessibility regulations. Thus, the reason that explains low web accessibility in China is the lack of awareness rather than lack of technical skills.
... The importance of web accessibility has been outlined in several studies (Carnevale, 1999;Rowan, Gregor, Sloan & Booth 2000) and is supported by governmental efforts in several countries. Unfortunately, many web sites are not accessible for people with disabilities (Lazar, Beere, Greenidge, andNagappa, 2003, Sullivan andMatson, 2000). Web-based information becomes increasingly important in the educational environment. ...
... Violation instances show the total number of violations that occurred. The number of guidelines violated is also important, since it is more difficult for a user to deal with 10 different guidelines violated, rather than 10 instances of the same guideline violated (Lazar, Beere, Greenidge, and Nagappa, 2003). Results in Figure 1 clearly show a concentration of Section 508 violations in six areas. ...
... Although the number of accessibility problems may seem high, the results are actually mixed. Only 6 out of 16 guidelines from Section 508 are violated, and it is generally easier to correct several violations of the same guideline, rather than correcting violations that occur in several different guidelines (Lazar, Beere, Greenidge, and Nagappa, 2003). Most violations are reported in the areas of scripting, color contrast, and forms, and could probably be corrected with little effort, for example labels for forms and alternate text for images. ...
This paper discusses the accessibility of a course management system. Course management systems are online learning environments supporting instructors in managing course content, communication, and assessment. Many instructors use this type of software to present course material on the World Wide Web and to create course material for the World Wide Web. Online class materials hold much potential for students with disabilities. However, studies report that a large number of web sites are inaccessible to users with disabilities. In this paper, Blackboard, a popular course management software will be evaluated for accessibility using the U.S. Government Section 508 Guidelines.
... Despite the vast resources available, the Internet still lacks accessibility [1], [2], [3], [4]. This paper investigates the factors that impact the implementation of accessibility on the web. ...
... However, these tools are not always 100% accurate, and they can sometimes produce unclear or inconclusive results [14]. Therefore, it's essential to perform manual checks to confirm the accuracy of the automated testing tool results [14], [3], [26]. Manual checks are timeconsuming and require a critical understanding of accessibility and technical guidance to effectively perform the audit [16]. ...
This research explores the factors that affect the implementation of web accessibility, as seen from the perspective of web developers. Recognizing the crucial role that developers play in shaping the digital landscape, this study aims to shed light on the complex challenges and considerations that influence the integration of accessibility features into the web development process. As a key stakeholder of any web development process, web developers should be considerably equipped to develop accessible websites or web pages. However, this has not been the case as they are faced with several drawbacks such as exposure to accessibility, limitations in technology, lack of time, guideline ambiguity, and organizational structure. These drawbacks limit their ability to develop accessible websites. This paper discusses these limitations as well as possible solutions such as accessibility education beyond the computing field, guideline simplicity, and a comprehensive auditing tool.
... We observe that studies of our set evaluated the accessibility of e-government at different levels. Four studies were focused on one or multiples states [47][48][49], seven performed an analysis at a national level [50][51][52][53][54][55], and one took interest at an international level [56]. All evaluations reveal that government websites had limited accessibility for people with disabilities, although the law requires it to be taken into account (e.g., [49,54]). ...
... All evaluations reveal that government websites had limited accessibility for people with disabilities, although the law requires it to be taken into account (e.g., [49,54]). Authors argue that accessibility unawareness [49,50], limited adoption [55], limited resources (e.g., financial, human) [49,52,55,56], and limited methods [55] and tools [47] are the main reason to explain such results. Studies suggest addressing the developers of e-government websites themselves, for instance by considering accessibility during site design [53,54]. ...
Access to information and digital services is a fundamental right. To this end, websites and digital services must be designed in accordance with international technical standards, in particular the guidelines for the accessibility of Internet pages issued by the World Wide Web Consortium and, in addition, with national technical standards. However, people with disabilities are still at great risk of digital exclusion. Thus, our research is interested in examining (1) to what extent do technical standards support people with visual impairments (PVI) to overcome the digital divide, and (2) to what extent the digital information of an electronic state voting system is understood by PVI. To answer these research questions, we combined an interpretive literature review with a bibliometric analysis and conducted a three cycles action research in the context of an electronic state voting system in Switzerland. Inspired by the communication theory of Shannon and Weaver, our results show that to bridge the digital divide for PVI, it is necessary to improve (1) the technical accessibility of information and (2) the semantic intelligibility of information. Considering the comments of PVI on semantic intelligibility of information helps to improve information systems (IS) and to overcome the digital divide. IS designers and coders must rely on ex ante standards during development.
... It uses similar tools and techniques as e-commerce to offer government services to their stakeholders [27]. Many countries have implemented e-government services to their citizens [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][32][33][34]. The key benefits of e-government include minimizing corruption, increasing efficiency, transparency, convenience, cost reductions, etc. [36]. ...
... A number of earlier studies examined the accessibility of e-government websites in various developed and developing nations [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][32][33][34]. These studies have highlighted the presence of accessibility issues in e-government sites across various countries based on accessibility guidelines of WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 standards. ...
E-government is a global phenomenon. Many governments throughout the world are using e-government websites to deliver government services to their stakeholders. Consequently, it is now quite crucial for the governments to make sure that e-government websites must be accessible to all stakeholders regardless of their visual, cognitive, and hearing ability. However, many prior studies have shown that most of the e-government websites in different countries do not meet the accessibility guidelines prescribed in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In this article, we present the evaluation of the accessibility of Indian e-government websites using a sample of 65 websites of various ministries based on the WCAG 2.1 standard. We found that the majority of e-government websites do not meet Level A conformance with WCAG 2.1. Our findings suggest that designers and developers of e-government websites should pay due attention to the accessibility features during the design and development of these websites to achieve universal accessibility.
... Despite the importance of the net for disabled people and the legal requirements, recent research [eg 7,14,16] reveals that the majority of websites are still not accessible. 81% of 1000 websites tested in 2004 [7] had accessibility failings, and tests with disabled users revealed that it is impossible for people with certain impairments to make use of the services provided. ...
... Each study had used WCAG 1.0 and one [14] also used Section 508 guidelines. All but one [11] used automated testing with Bobby (now called WebXact [23]) as their preferred testing tool. ...
... It is important that organizations are (made) aware of this and have sufficient knowledge. This includes activities like setting requirements for CMS systems, checking the skills of outsourced parties (Lazar et al., 2003;Lazar et al., 2004) and providing training to improve skills within the organization (Abdelgawad et al., 2010;Katsanos et al., 2012;Kline, 2011;Loiacono, Romano, & McCoy, 2009;Nambisan & Wang, 2000;Rogers, 1983). ...
... Giorgio Brajnik et al., 2012;Donnelly & Magennis, 2003;Duchateau, Miesenberger, Klaus, Zagler, & Karshmer, 2010;Kapsi et al., 2009), some on the test quality (G.Brajnik et al., 2010), some on evaluations using the standards(Lazar, Beere, Greenidge, & Nagappa, 2003;; E. Velleman, C. Strobbe, J. Koch, C. A. Velasco, & M. and some are comparative(Li et al., 2012;Vigo et al., 2013). There are also many studies that measure the actual status of accessibility of websites in certain countries or areas at a certain time. ...
There are laws and regulations in place requiring public sector bodies to adopt and implement international standards for web accessibility. Municipalities in the Netherlands have collectively adopted these standards. However, they often seem unable to fully implement web accessibility standards even if the law requires them to and they are actively pursuing it. Based on existing models, literature, questionnaires and extensive audits of the websites of participating municipalities, this dissertation identifies processes that support or resist implementation of the standards within the specific context of web accessibility for local government websites. Awareness of these processes is important for stakeholders willing to implement web accessibility standards. The result is a set of recommendations for local governments that help them identify processes that support or resist the actual implementation of web accessibility standards. This not only contributes to the accessibility of the web for people with disabilities, it may also be helpful for the implementation of other guidelines and (open) standards within local governments.
... However, at present many university Web sites are failing to deliver accessible content to all users and, in particular, to those who require assistive technologies such as screen readers or Braille embossers. Because of increased awareness about accessibility issues [17], especially in university settings, there have been a significant number of research studies focused on the accessibility level of higher education Web sites. These studies have helped to raise awareness about the importance of identifying accessibility issues, and creating tools and strategies for resolving them. ...
... In evaluating the Web sites of 102 public research universities, Thompson et al. [33] found that while the majority of the sites exhibited accessibility issues, many could be resolved or improved to meet WC3 guidelines through the implementation of very basic accessibility enhancement techniques. Similarly, an investigation of 50 varied types of Web sites, including those of 6 universities, concluded that ''while the majority of Web sites are inaccessible, at the same time many of these web sites require only a small amount of work to become fully accessible'' ( [17], p. 339). ...
In 2010, the author of this paper conducted an evaluation of the accessibility level of the home pages of Turkish Universities (Kurt in Univers Access Inf Soc 10(1):101–110, 2011). That investigation, which utilized a variety of different evaluative techniques, as recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium, found that none of the reviewed home pages met the minimum criteria for Web accessibility. In 2015, the author completed a follow-up audit of the same universities’ home pages, using a similar methodological approach. The goal of the audit was to determine whether Web site accessibility had increased or improved during the intervening 5-year period. This paper, which details the results of the second study, demonstrates that in general accessibility levels have actually decreased slightly. Each of the university Web sites reviewed contains at least one of a variety of components that makes it inaccessible to some users. Of these, the most prominent is neglecting to provide equivalent text alternative for content that has been presented in non-text formats, although doing so would be a relatively simple matter.
... En el área de la accesibilidad Web se han realizado numerosos estudios en diferentes países sobre el estado de la accesibilidad de sus sitios [12] [22] [23] [24] donde se puede apreciar que casi la totalidad de los sitios analizados no cumplían con el nivel de conformidad mínimo de las guías WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 1.0 y 2.0. En un estudio realizado en el Reino Unido [23], se dictaminó que un desarrollador Web debe satisfacer no solo los puntos de verificación de Prioridad 1 de la WCAG 1.0, sino que también los de Prioridad 2. Por otra parte, sobre 50 sitios analizados en Estados Unidos [24], se evaluó además la guía Section 508 1 y como resultado de esta evaluación también se aportó que las actuales herramientas de evaluación, requieren de una alta intervención humana, para la verificación de errores reportados como dudosos denominados "falsos positivos" como para la reparación de errores concretos, resultando estas herramientas de evaluación en algunos casos, ineficientes e inconsistentes, ya que insumen un tiempo considerable en la verificación de los errores. ...
... En el área de la accesibilidad Web se han realizado numerosos estudios en diferentes países sobre el estado de la accesibilidad de sus sitios [12] [22] [23] [24] donde se puede apreciar que casi la totalidad de los sitios analizados no cumplían con el nivel de conformidad mínimo de las guías WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 1.0 y 2.0. En un estudio realizado en el Reino Unido [23], se dictaminó que un desarrollador Web debe satisfacer no solo los puntos de verificación de Prioridad 1 de la WCAG 1.0, sino que también los de Prioridad 2. Por otra parte, sobre 50 sitios analizados en Estados Unidos [24], se evaluó además la guía Section 508 1 y como resultado de esta evaluación también se aportó que las actuales herramientas de evaluación, requieren de una alta intervención humana, para la verificación de errores reportados como dudosos denominados "falsos positivos" como para la reparación de errores concretos, resultando estas herramientas de evaluación en algunos casos, ineficientes e inconsistentes, ya que insumen un tiempo considerable en la verificación de los errores. ...
La Web 2.0 propone nuevos desafíos para asegurar la “Accesibilidad Universal.” Los diferentes tipos de usuarios Web se enfrentan con numerosas barreras de accesibilidad cuando interactúan con los diferentes tipos de sitios y aplicaciones que coexisten hoy en la Web 2.0, desde los denominados Simple Web Presence hasta las Rich Internet Applications o las Mobile Web Applications. En este escenario, la Accesibilidad Web es un atributo de calidad clave para propiciar el acceso a la información y a los servicios Web y proveer beneficios en el desarrollo de productos para la Web tales como la optimización de motores de búsqueda y
la escalabilidad de aplicaciones multi-dispositivo. Los enfoques que asisten a la evaluación de la Accesibilidad de productos Web existentes, son semi-automáticos y requieren de la intervención humana en la detección de “falsos positivos”/“falsos negativos” y en la corrección de errores comprobados automática y manualmente. Para simplificar el proceso de toma de decisiones y reducir la intervención humana, las herramientas de evaluación, reparación, transformación y filtrado incorporan técnicas de automatización basadas en conceptos de inteligencia artificial. En este trabajo, se presentan y describen los enfoques y/o herramientas basados en agentes inteligentes y luego se propone una comparativa para analizar las contribuciones que estos hacen a la mejora de la accesibilidad, ya sea aplicando técnicas propias o las Web Content Accessibility Guidelines propuestas por el consorcio W3C.
... Government, companies, and universities in the United Kingdom (Bailey & Burd, 2005) Government web sites in Taiwan (Chen, Chen, & Shao, 2005) Government web sites in Brazil (Freire, Bittar, & Fortes, 2008) Government web sites in Nepal (Shah & Shakya, 2007) Government web sites in Northern Ireland (Paris, 2006) Non-governmental web sites in the Mid-Atlantic United States (Lazar, Beere, Greenidge, & Nagappa, 2003) 50 of the web's most popular sites (Sullivan & Matson, 2000) Universities around the world (Kane, Shulman, Shockley, & Ladner, 2007) Large companies in the United States (Loiacono & McCoy, 2004) , approximately a third of the state government home pages had at least one WCAG priority level 1 accessibility violation, and therefore were not accessible. (Goette, Collier, & Whilte, 2006). ...
... Out of 15 web sites, 14 of those web sites violated at least one of the Maryland state guidelines related to web accessibility. The number of guidelines violated is generally considered to be a more accurate reflection of accessibility than the number of actual violations, because multiple violations of the same guideline are much easier to fix than multiple guidelines being violated (Lazar et al., 2003). ...
... Approaching users for input also helps in identifying barriers. While automated tools can verify the validity of code structure or the presence of alternative text for images, they provide varying results depending on the tool [48] or may fail to ascertain whether the alt-text accurately describes the image [34]. Consequently, a comprehensive approach considering diverse contexts and users' unique needs is beneficial. ...
The digital world is rapidly expanding in content, but not all individuals have equal access. In particular, it is challenging to recognize accessibility issues in dynamic web content. Advanced tools provide help, but can not identify and mitigate all accessibility issues with sufficient quality and reliability. This makes human feedback exceedingly valuable. However, existing accessibility feedback tools are inadequate. They lack comprehensiveness and guidance for users with disabilities. This study addresses this gap by proposing a universal feedback form that prioritizes the perspectives of users with disabilities, particularly visual impairment. Following a participatory approach, our proposed form incorporates design rationales based on insights from an exploratory literature review, online survey (N=40), focus group discussions (N=12), and expert interviews with web developers specialized in web accessibility (N=3). Furthermore, the form’s effectiveness was evaluated with in-depth feedback from users with visual impairments (N=5). Our evaluation confirms that comprehensible sub-tasks and compatibility with assistive technology aid users with disabilities in providing useful accessibility feedback. Based on our findings, we contribute design recommendations to the future advancement of universal web accessibility feedback forms.
... This final area, which is encapsulated in Title III of the ADA, provided that "no individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation." 6 Title III stated that qualifying organizations operating a "place of public accommodation" were required to "take such steps as may be necessary to ensure that no individual with a disability is excluded, denied services, segregated or otherwise treated differently than other individuals because of the absence of auxiliary aids and services." ...
Millions of people have physical or mental limitations that make it difficult or impossible to access web content and fully participate in the online marketplace. Because many small businesses and web developers do not take such issues into consideration when building or updating a website, many web pages are incompatible with assistive technologies and are therefore inaccessible. The remedy often involves a suit filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This study provides a systematic analysis of ADA-related judicial rulings pertaining to companies that operate a purely standalone commercial website with no physical place open to the public. The results clearly reveal that there is no consensus amongst federal courts over whether ADA Title III applies to website-only businesses. It is also apparent that the problems addressed in this study are pervasive, and there are no simple solutions. Maintaining disabled user rights under the law, and reducing the number of inaccessible websites, will require a multidimensional approach. Congress and the DOJ need to specify that websites must be accessible and provide regulations outlining how a website can be ADA compliant. This will provide guidance to the judicial system. Technology companies need to develop screen readers that are better able to handle submenus and pop-up windows. Website owners need to be motivated to spend the time and money necessary to make their sites accessible. Moreover, website developers need better tools and training to help them design accessible websites more quickly and effectively.
... The more people who can get to a website, the easier it is to get to. Online accessibility's main focus is on making websites user-friendly for people with impairments, and it entails taking down access hurdles that could be brought about by careless website design (Lazar et al. 2003). The majority of the benefits of web accessibility are for disabled individuals. ...
The impact of technological advancements in construct the web in order to make it accessible for people with impairments was examined through a retrospective analysis of websites. For the years 1997–2002, an arbitrary illustration of overall webpages and a suitability illustration of the US administration webpages were researched and related. The accessing the web becomes barrier and difficulty ratings remained computed. ANOVA and Tukey's HSD remained recycled to detect alterations between centuries for overall positions. ANOVA repeat measurements were utilized to analyze changes in the US government websites, and Pearson's connection factor (r) was calculated toward assess the connection among convenience and difficulty. Arbitrary webpages gradually develop unreachable as difficulty rises. The complexity of the US government websites is increasing while they are still accessible through fuzzy classifier. It is not necessary for increasing complexity, which is frequently brought on by adding complicated components to a Web page, to result in greater accessibility hurdles reducing the use of scripts in webpage design will increase complexity.
... The more people who can get to a website, the easier it is to get to. Online accessibility's main focus is on making websites user-friendly for people with impairments, and it entails taking down access hurdles that could be brought about by careless website design [25]. The majority of the bene ts of web accessibility are for disabled individuals. ...
The impact of technological advancements in construct the web in order tomake it accessible for people with impairments was examined through a retrospective analysis of websites. For the years 1997-2002, anarbitraryillustration of overall webpages and a suitabilityillustration of US administration webpages were researched and related. The accessing the web becomes barrier (WAB) and difficulty ratings remained computed. ANOVA and Tukey's HSD remainedrecycled to detect alterations between centuries for overallpositions. ANOVA repeat measurements wereutilized to analyze changes in US government websites, and Pearson's connection factor (r) was calculated toward assess the connection among convenience and difficulty. Arbitrary webpages gradually develop unreachable as difficulty rises. The complexity of US government websites is increasing while they are still accessible through fuzzy classifier. It's not necessary for increasing complexity, which is frequently brought on by adding complicated components to a Web page, to result in greater accessibility hurdles reducing the use of scripts in webpage design will increase complexity.
... However, they generally fall into two categories: those to be used during design and development, and those that run evaluations after development. Automated accessibility checking generally results in missing some issues compared to manual assessment [14], and there is also a lack of consistency among accessibility evaluation tools [6,18]. However, there is potential with accessibility tools that support people in meeting WCAG (e.g., color contrast checkers), especially if they are designed to be used earlier in the design process (e.g., the Accessible Colour Evaluator, which was developed through a User-Centered Design process [22]). ...
Many digital systems are found to be inaccessible and a large part of the issue is that accessibility is not considered early enough in the design process. Digital prototyping tools are a powerful resource for designers to quickly explore both low and high fidelity design mockups during initial stages of product design and development. We evaluated 10 popular prototyping tools to understand their built-in and third-party accessibility features. We found that accessible design support is largely from third-party plug-ins rather than prototyping tools' built-in features, and the availability of accessibility support varies from tool to tool. There is potential to improve accessible design by increasing the potential for accessibility to be consider earlier in the design process.
... Ideally, the schema provides a header row that helps humans to understand and machines to effectively process the columns. In general, a table's header row is among the most widely used types of meta-data in many scenarios: For example, headers are essential for human accessibility to the content of a table and, hence, of priority level 1 item in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines [2]. Furthermore, the majority of traditional schema matching approaches make use of column headers to find table mappings [3]. ...
... Firstly, this study employed specific query/keywords to locate initial list of scholar works published as indexed by Scopus. Nevertheless, this practice has been commonplace for earlier bibliometrics related studies [53][54][55][56][57][58]. Despite the fact that Scopus is among the largest online databases that indexes all scholarly works, it does not perfectly cover all available sources. ...
Having considered that website has becoming an essential platform to communicate, exchange of information and enabling transactions for organizations, making it accessible to the widest range of visitors is getting paramount. Web accessibility concerns mainly on formulating reliable framework to web developers in ensuring accessibility of the web to all visitors regardless of their physical disabilities and limited capabilities. Owing to the growing numbers of research on this domain, this paper analyses and reports various types of published works related to the web accessibility. This study adopted a bibliometric analysis based on the data obtained from Scopus online database as of May 2018. Based on the 'key words' search results, the study finalized 1,103 valid documents for further analysis. Authors then employed VOS viewer for data visualization purpose. This article reports the results using standard bibliometric indicators , particularly on the growth rate of publications, analysis of the citation, and research productivity. As the results revealed, there is an increased growth rate of web accessibility literature over the years since 2001. Meanwhile, a total of 897 (81.32%) documents were multi-authored with a mean collaboration index of 2.87 authors per article. An analysis by country, The United States of America (USA) is ranked first in productivity with 265 (20.87%) published documents. With respect to the frequency of citations, Lawrence and Giles (1999)'s article emerges as the most cited article with an average of 48 citations per year. Overall, the increase number of works on web accessibility indicates growing awareness on its importance and specific requirements.
... States: a study of 50 homepages" revealed that 98% of studied Websites present accessibility issues (Lazar, Beere, Greenidge, & Nagappa, 2003). ...
Currently, students consider the Internet as an efficient tool and technology and the Websites of universities play a significant role in their daily activities. Due to the increasing number of students with a disability, accessibility of these Websites is essential. Thus, in the current study, the Websites of medical universities of Iran were investigated to identify accessibility issues if any exists. The homepage of Websites of the medical universities of Iran was evaluated using the AChecker and FAE tools. Moreover, the web pages of each university were evaluated by FAE. To examine the differences in accessibility issues rate among three types of medical universities, Kruskal–Wallis test was performed. The results showed that all three types of universities have accessibility issues. Amongst 50 university websites, only 2 out of them did not display any accessibility problem based on Achecker tool. The score of FAE tool showed that the websites of all Iranian universities of medical sciences are in the NI-R category, which indicates that the accessibility has not been considered in the design of those websites. Moreover, according to Spearman's correlation test, there was a significant inverse correlation between the score of homepage and the number of known problems (P-value= 0.043). Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between the homepage score and score of other pages (P-value <0.001). The accessibility of medical universities’ Websites is not in an optimal situation, which severely affects the achievement of universities’ visions and missions concerning expanding medical education and improving educational equity. Therefore, it is necessary to make fundamental modifications in this respect. To do so, university, as well as web developers should pay special consideration to accessibility guidelines to make their Websites more accessible.
... Cells next to the criteria used checkboxes and formulas to track the total number of criteria that were violated (rather than the number of times each individual criterion was violated). The tracking of total criteria versus number of total violations per criterion is comparable to prior research in other domains utilizing accessibility evaluations of a similar nature [19]. The template also allowed for additional comments next to each criterion flagged as a violation. ...
Digital access to banking and financial systems is no longer merely a way to augment physical transactions or experiences. It is now the primary way that consumers interact with banking and financial services. As a result, it is essential and equitable that full digital access to these services be provided for people with disabilities. Building on a recently published survey that investigated the accessibility issues within banking and financial systems for blind users, this evaluation of 100 banking and financial websites in the USA provides a current analysis of the broader state of banking and finance website accessibility for people with disabilities. The results of our research not only document these current findings as an accessibility baseline for banking and finance websites but also reveal common problems and strategies that may benefit the banking and finance industries.
... In assessing whether a website is accessible or not, this study adopted website accessibility measurement scale presented by Lazar et al. (2003). The measurement scale requires the website to have zero rule violated to be considered as accessible, otherwise it is considered as inaccessible. ...
... A contradiction could be perceived to exist between the object and tools, in that there appears to be some agreement that some of the tools at the disposal of users have been poorly designed. A review of the research and practice literature reveals some evidence that tools may not be good enough to help users meet the objective of accessible elearning activities due to: Difficulties in interpreting accessibility guidelines (Witt & McDermott 2002); Non specificity of guidelines to service, organisation, disability, media, or technology contexts (Guenaga et al. 2004;Koivunen 2004); Difficulties in interpreting the results of evaluation and repair tools (Faulkner & Arch 2003;Lazar et al. 2003) The perceived weakness of tools has lead some to call for tool developers to do better: ...
This paper discusses the potential of Activity Theory as a tool for analyzing accessible e-learning practice in higher education and uses Activity Theory to explore the factors that may be mediating accessible e-learning practice. This exploration in underpinned by two central questions: do tools, rules and division of labour mediate accessible e-learning activities? Are there contradictions between central components of an accessible e-learning system and can identification of these contradictions help to develop and progress future practice? In exploring these questions, this paper concludes that accessible e-learning activity will not develop until tools, rules, roles and responsibilities are developed that all the relevant communities can apply comfortably and consistently.
... Kullanıcıların web sitesinin tüm içeriğine erişebilmek istedikleri bir gerçektir (Richards ve Hanson, 2004). Bir web sitesi için erişilebilirlik, her kullanıcının herhangi bir engel veya ortam zorluğuna takılmadan içeriğe ulaşabilmesi olarak tanımlanmaktadır (Mankoff, Fait, ve Tran, 2005 Bir web sitesi ancak engelli kullanıcıların da kullanabileceği standartta hazırlanmışsa tamamen erişilebilirdir (Lazar, 2003). Çoğu web sitesi erişilebilirlik ve evrensel tasarım ile ilgili ilkeleri görmezden gelmektedir (Sullivan ve Matson, 2000). ...
The main purpose of this study was to explain the main requirements for websites and investigate the functionality of Faculty of Education websites in Turkey based on content, usability, accessibility, and search engine optimization. A total of ninety-four websites were scored with the ‘Web Site Functionality Evaluation Form’, which was consisted of 23 items. Descriptive statistics, t-test and ANOVAanalyses were used to interpret the obtained data. In general the web sites were satisfactory based on the content. However, they had some drawbacks regarding to accessibility. The web sites’ quality did not differ based on the types of the institutions. On the other hand, it was found that when the ages of institutions were considered, the websites’ content of new institutions are significantly less satisfactory than the institutions that are more than 10 years old. Finally, suggestions were reported to increase the quality of websites.
... Most authors choose Bobby as one of the automatic tools in their studies to assess the web accessibility [10,[13][14][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], probably due to its 86% coverage of the WCAG 1.0 checkpoints. This was also noticed in the case of the Higher Education context, that many accessibility studies used Bobby as one of the assessment tools, for instance: − − − − In 2002, in the United Kingdom has conducted a survey using the Bobby web-based tool to analyse the accessibility of university web sites [26]. ...
Objective. This paper reports about a project developed in Portugal, designed to assess the Portuguese ATM accessibility, when evaluated by visual impaired users. It also reports the main concerns in the choice of more adequate methodologies, instruments and techniques in the involvement of visual impaired in these studies. Main Content. Description of the research cornerstones in users' role accessibility assessment. Key advantages and limitations, as well as, the main concerns to design and implement telephonic and electronic surveys to visual impaired adults: quality assurance and suggestions for future research. Report of the survey applied to 74 visual impaired individuals (ATM users and non-users), including the analyses. Results. The methodology choice directly influences the users' role in product or services assessment and therefore the research outcomes. The survey shows that some characteristics can be related to ATM usage: younger age, higher schooling, profession, job appropriate to academic skills, use of braille and frequent reader. The main difficulties experienced by the users were: ATM localization, ATM layout identification and timeouts too short. Conclusion. The main conclusions were: there is a need to improve the ATM software and hardware design in Portugal; there must be more and better audiofeedback; and, is important to research more about users' evaluation methodologies regarding people with specific needs and abilities.
... A contradiction could be perceived to exist between the object and tools, in that there appears to be some agreement that some of the tools at the disposal of users have been poorly designed. A review of the research and practice literature reveals some evidence that tools may not be good enough to help users meet the objective of accessible elearning activities due to: Difficulties in interpreting accessibility guidelines (Witt & McDermott 2002); Non specificity of guidelines to service, organisation, disability, media, or technology contexts (Guenaga et al. 2004;Koivunen 2004); Difficulties in interpreting the results of evaluation and repair tools (Faulkner & Arch 2003;Lazar et al. 2003) The perceived weakness of tools has lead some to call for tool developers to do better: ...
This paper discusses the potential of Activity Theory as a tool for analyzing accessible e-learning practice in higher education and uses Activity Theory to explore the factors that may be mediating accessible e-learning practice. This exploration in underpinned by two central questions: do tools, rules and division of labour mediate accessible e-learning activities? Are there contradictions between central components of an accessible e-learning system and can identification of these contradictions help to develop and progress future practice? In exploring these questions, this paper concludes that accessible e-learning activity will not develop until tools, rules, roles and responsibilities are developed that all the relevant communities can apply comfortably and consistently.
... Kullanıcıların web sitesinin tüm içeriğine erişebilmek istedikleri bir gerçektir (Richards ve Hanson, 2004). Bir web sitesi için erişilebilirlik, her kullanıcının herhangi bir engel veya ortam zorluğuna takılmadan içeriğe ulaşabilmesi olarak tanımlanmaktadır (Mankoff, Fait, ve Tran, 2005 Bir web sitesi ancak engelli kullanıcıların da kullanabileceği standartta hazırlanmışsa tamamen erişilebilirdir (Lazar, 2003). Çoğu web sitesi erişilebilirlik ve evrensel tasarım ile ilgili ilkeleri görmezden gelmektedir (Sullivan ve Matson, 2000). ...
Bu çalışmanın amacı; web sitelerinde bulunması gereken özellikleri açıklayarak Türkiye’de bul
unan eğitim fakültesi web sitelerinin işlevselliklerinin içerik, kullanılabilirlik, erişilebilirlik ve arama
motoru uyumluluğu yönünden incelenerek eksikliklerinin tespit edilip çözüm önerilerinin sunu
lmasıdır. Araştırmanın verile ri, 94 adet eğitim fakültesi web sitesi incelenerek elde edilmiştir. Web
sitelerinin puanlamasında, 23 maddeden oluşan ‘Web Sayfalarının İşlevselliğini Değerlendirme
Formu’ kullanılmıştır. Elde edilen verilerin anlamlandırılmasında betimsel istatistikler,
t-testi ve ANOVA analizleri kullanılmıştır. Genel olarak web siteleri içerik yönünden olumlu bulunurken, en
fazla erişilebilirlik yönünden eksiklikleri olduğu gözlemlenmiştir. Analiz sonuçları eğitim fakültesi
web sitelerinin işlevselliklerinin kurum türüne göre farklılaşmadığını göstermektedir. Ancak 10 yaşından küçük olan eğitim fakültesi web sitelerinin daha önceki dönemde kurulan fakültelere göre içerik yönünden daha fazla eksiklikleri bulunmaktadır. Sonuç olarak, elde edilen veriler ışığında web sitele rinde bulunan eksiklikler tartışılarak çözüm önerileri sunulmuştur.
... Figure 5 indicates the total number of errors found across the nine university sites for the seven pages tested in each of those sites. The results show that the university homepages had the most number of accessibility errors, not an uncommon finding in the literature [23] [24] followed closely by the library pages. This is due in part to the number of links, content and multimedia items that both of these pages tended to contain, with contact us pages being problematic due to poor form design (lack of labels) and that the correct page language was not indicated (having English instead of Thai). ...
This paper examines web accessibility compliance in a sample of universities in Thailand. The Thai government has made a commitment to higher education and e-learning and has also signed on to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This paper shows that the web accessibility does not appear to be adopted by the universities examined in this study, with minimal compliance to the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. In particular, the Perceivable and Operable aspects of the guidelines seemed problematic in terms of the numbers of reported accessibility errors.
Розглянуто практики інклюзії як один з процесів, що забезпечує рівність можливостей для безпосередніх користувачів ІТ-продукції. Наведено статистику, що вказує на актуальність поточного дослідження. Перераховано ухвалені акти США та країн ЄС, що покликані врегулювати критерії доступності, та вказано на передумови виникнення стандарту WCAG. Проаналізовано останні напрацювання українських фахівців у практиках доступності, що стосуються таких напрямів, як інформаційно-технічний супровід інклюзивного навчання, навчання осіб з розладами аутичного спектра, дослідження впливу мультимедіа у середовищах доповненої та віртуальної реальностей, бібліотечне обслуговування та, як наслідок, окреслено доцільність цього дослідження. Визначено основоположні чинники одного з найпоширеніших у світі стандартів – WCAG. Досліджено доступність як складову частину розроблення програмного забезпечення, проаналізовано зв'язки між загальним поняттям та впливом на технічний напрям. Проаналізовано чинники, що перешкоджають успішному впровадженню доступності в ІТ-продукції. Наведено статистику на підставі розробленої системи, де досліджено співвідношення дефектів доступності з іншими типами недоліків та проілюстровано динаміку їх виправлення. Запропоновано концептуальну модель системи, що відповідатиме вимогам доступності та визначено критерії успішного впровадження інклюзії з урахуванням наявних рівнів класифікації WCAG. Окрім викликів та перешкод у практиці доступності ІТ-продукції, також проаналізовано роль інклюзії у сучасному світі. Додатково окреслено передумови та надано рекомендації щодо успішного розвитку доступності в Україні та цифровому секторі загалом. Перераховано позитивні зрушення у застосуванні практик інклюзії за участі міжнародних організацій та партнерів. У цій роботі обґрунтовано необхідність відповідати поточним викликам та запропоновано застосувати рекомендації на практиці і проконтролювати хід розроблення інформаційних систем згідно з сучасними вимогами у практиці вебдоступності, що, водночас, закладає підвалини для подальших досліджень.
The World Wide Web (Web) has become an essential part of our daily life. Web accessibility remains an important issue because many people have limited access to the Web. It is essential to make this content accessible to all people. This chapter provides an overview of the importance of web accessibility. It explains the current status of the issue, accessibility guidelines and techniques to evaluate and achieve web accessibility. Useful resources and practical recommendations to increase accessibility are also included.
Today, the web constitutes an essential segment of higher education institutions. Using their websites, universities can effectively, efficiently, and satisfactorily provide information and services to their target groups, regardless of disabilities. As the number of disabled students in higher education rises, universities have to make the necessary design modifications to ensure web content accessibility. This paper presents an evaluation of accessibility, usability, quality performance, and readability aspects of all Turkish state and private university websites. The majority did not meet WCAG 2.0 accessibility criteria. Out of 110 state university websites and 69 private university websites, only 10 state and four private university websites attained conformance Level A. These results indicate low usability, quality performance, and readability that highlights the need for Turkish universities to devote more resources for making their websites more accessible, usable, high-quality performance, and readable for all their potential users.
Se presenta una visión general de la producción científica internacional sobre la accesibilidad a la web a través de una encuesta sobre las principales áreas de conocimiento que publican acerca del tema dos de los países y universidades que tienen producción internacional relevante; se identifican los principales autores y medios donde éstos publican y se señalan los principales términos adoptados en la investigación realizada por ellos. La metodología empleada es descriptiva con un enfoque cuantitativo-cualitativo que se dividió en dos etapas, a saber: 1) encuesta sobre la producción internacional de accesibilidad en la web utilizando la base de datos Scopus como fuente, y 2) análisis de los principales conceptos. Los resultados mostraron que las principales áreas de conocimiento que producen publicaciones sobre el tema son informática, matemáticas y ciencias sociales. Estados Unidos está a la vanguardia de la producción científica en la materia y destacan España y el Reino Unido, Brasil ocupa el cuarto lugar. Los términos más utilizados son “web”, “accesibilidad” y la unión de las dos palabras “accesibilidad a la web”. Como resultado, se identificaron 2 448 autores diferentes, de los cuales 622 publicaron más de un texto, y se preparó un análisis sobre la coautoría en la red. Se sugiere que otros estudios utilicen un enfoque cualitativo que permita un mayor análisis de los conceptos principales e identifique cuáles son los más utilizados y verifique eventuales diferencias de comprensión sobre la temática.
E-government provides a platform to deliver government services to stakeholders, and many countries have adopted e-government websites for good governance. Successful e-government implementation and service delivery depend on how the underlying information present in government websites is made accessible and usable to every individual. This article investigates the accessibility and usability of e-government sites in India. Our sample consists of 65 Indian e-government websites. The analysis was carried out using automatic evaluation tools. The results of the accessibility tests highlight the existence of accessibility issues based on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0) and WCAG 2.0. Usability tests also reveal that e-government websites give low priority to such aspects during website design and development. Hence, there is a need to improve the overall accessibility and usability of Indian e-government websites in order to improve the quality and in turn the E-Government Development Index rank of India.
Web accessibility evaluation checks the accessibility of the website to help improve the user experiences for disabled people. Due to the massive number of web pages in a website, manually reviewing all the pages becomes totally impractical. But the complexities of evaluating some checkpoints require certain human involvements. To address this issue, we develop the semi-supervised group sparse regression algorithm which takes advantages of the high precision of a small amount of manual evaluation results along with the global distribution of all the web pages and efficiently gives out the overall evaluation result of the website. Moreover, the proposed method can tell the importance of each feature in evaluating each checkpoint. The experiments on various websites demonstrate the superiority of our proposed algorithm.
The World Wide Web is an extremely powerful source of information, inspiration, ideas, and opportunities. As such, it has become an integral part of daily life for a great majority of people. Yet for a significant number of others, the internet offers only limited value due to the existence of barriers which make accessing the Web difficult, if not impossible. This article illustrates some of the reasons that achieving equality of access to the online world of education is so critical, explores the current status of Web accessibility, discusses evaluative tools and methods that can help identify accessibility issues in educational websites, and provides practical recommendations and guidelines for resolving some of the obstacles that currently hinder the achievability of the goal of universal Web access.
To evaluate the accessibility level of a website, we need to obtain the accessibility evaluation results of the pages in this website. Due to the massive number of pages in a website and possible involvement of human inspection for conformance checking, directly evaluating all the pages is prohibitively expensive. In practice, we usually select a representative sample for accessibility evaluation of the whole site. This makes the evaluation results heavily dependent on the pages selected. Undersampling may lead to a large bias in evaluation. But oversampling will incur high evaluation expense. To address this issue, this paper proposes a semi-supervised machine learning method, called active-prediction, to obtain the accessibility evaluation results for all pages in a site. Active-prediction casts the website accessibility evaluation into a prediction problem by building learning models for each checkpoint in evaluation and consequently avoids the expensive cost in human inspection. To achieve a higher prediction accuracy with only a small number of training data, active-prediction exploits active learning techniques to select the most informative pages to train the models. Experimental results show that the active-prediction could achieve a high accuracy on predicting the accessibility results and better reflect the accessibility level of the websites than the existing methods.
Despite the existence of web accessibility guidelines - e.g. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines - to help developers and designers to create more accessible websites, many websites are still not accessible. Studies showed that guidelines do not cover all the problems encounter by users with disabilities. This study investigates the problems found by seven accessibility experts in 62 accessibility evaluation reviews of mobile and desktop websites as well as mobile applications. Each evaluation conducted an accessibility review using Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 AA. In addition, experts highlighted potential issues which were not covered by these guidelines but could be potential issues encountered by people with disabilities. The study depicts those issues that were raised by experts during those audits but were not covered by the WCAG 2.0 guidelines. Finally, the study provides additional knowledge into potential problems as identified by experts and recommends techniques that developers and designers can use to create more accessible websites.
Having looked at the theorising of disability and theories of technology singly, this chapter explores the intersection of and thinking on disability and technology. What then were the earliest conceptual constructions of technology and disability? Prior to the 1980s, academic research on disability and technology was largely confined to rehabilitation or occupational therapy focused work. This was largely but not entirely framed as technical appraisal of new or existing aids to living, including wheelchairs, orthotics, prosthetics, leg callipers and mobility aids. A small number of studies went beyond this technical evaluation brief to begin to conceptualise how technology was comprehended and the wider personal and social implications of it for disabled people. Put simply, people began to emerge from being mere biomedical units of assessment to acquiring the ontological status of social actors who in time became a key part of specific clinical research. It would be wrong, however, to assume a sort of linear progress towards greater social contexualisation of disabled people or any clear handing over of power to them; indeed the words ‘patient’ and ‘service user’ continue to have very different connotations and to shape research frameworks (McLaughlin 2009). The following captures the mental landscape of academic work before 1980. As with a lot of the funded research on disability back then, it was sponsored by medical and royal societies which were the arbiters of much disability provision. This quote is taken from the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine:
Today, many public services are available online through Web sites. The accessibility of the sites, also to people with disabilities, is important because the accessibility concerns equality of citizens, a cornerstone of democracy. In the current study we carried out a meta-analysis of 17 studies concerning the accessibility of the Web sites of public administration. Furthermore, we assessed the accessibility of Web pages of 12 ministries of the Finnish government. The assessments were based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The results showed that in terms of the WCAG guidelines, the average accessibility of public Web sites is poor. Moreover, there was no improvement in the accessibility in the 2000’s and many of the accessibility failures were so simple that they could have been easily avoided. This may indicate that the building of information society is driven by technology, rather than principles of democracy and well-being.
The World Wide Web (Web) has become an essential part of our daily life. Web accessibility remains an important issue because many people have limited access to the Web. It is essential to make this content accessible to all people. This chapter provides an overview of the importance of web accessibility. It explains the current status of the issue, accessibility guidelines and techniques to evaluate and achieve web accessibility. Useful resources and practical recommendations to increase accessibility are also included.
This chapter describes an interaction technique wherein web pages are parsed so as to automatically generate a corresponding 3D virtual environment with haptic feedback. The automatically created 3D scene is composed of "hapgets" (haptically-enhanced widgets), which are three dimensional widgets providing a behavior that is analogous to the behavior of the original HTML components but are also enhanced with haptic feedback. Moreover, for each 2D map included in a web page a corresponding multimodal (haptic-aural) map is automatically generated. The proposed interaction technique enables the haptic navigation through the internet as well as the haptic exploration of conventional 2D maps for the visually impaired users. A rendering engine of web pages that was developed according to the proposed interaction technique is also presented.
Most of the international e-Government benchmarking studies have focused on national government websites such as portal of ministries at the national level. This paper examines the level of sophistication of e-Government websites for different states in Malaysia, as opposed to a national level assessment, both in terms of the breadth and depth of e-Government service offering. This paper adds to the existing body of knowledge in relation to e-Government web portal assessment in two ways. First, studies pertaining to e-Government in Malaysia focus mainly on implementation issues at the Federal/National level- The authors examined State level implementation of e-Government services. Secondly, they used a predetermined instrument to assess the sophistication level of State government web portals, by consolidating different measurement items from our review of literature over the past ten years. The authors analyzed the website for a total of thirteen states in Malaysia, in relation to six different dimension measures of e-Government service offerings, as prescribed by literature. These six dimension measures are the extent of transparency, interactivity, usability and accessibility of the portal, citizen participation, security and privacy, and maturity level of services. A content analysis of the web portal was done, using a predetermined instrument developed based on our review of literature on this topic, in the past ten years. Their findings suggest that different State Governments in Malaysia demonstrate different levels of maturity in relation to the six dimensions measured.
One of the main challenges of e-Government is the communication of these services to citizens. In the context of people with disabilities, communication channels should be equally accessible, in particular those based on innovative media such as e-Services. This paper, illustrates Pasmao, an initiative for the diffusion of e-Government, using accessible media for people with disabilities. Pasmao is an accessible multimedia platform aimed to promote the use of information technology (IT), specifically, the digital signature within Legan?s, a town near Madrid, Spain. The results of the evaluation of the experimental implementation of Pasmao reveal a new and promising way to promote e-Services among people with disabilities.
Public libraries in the United States have a long and proud tradition of providing access to information for all residents. Public libraries have been the equaliser - providing access to books, and both printed and electronic information, regardless of race, gender, religion, economic status, or disability. Since the mid-1990s, public libraries have also been providing direct access to the Internet for patrons who come to visit. And since that first burst of access to the Internet within public library buildings, libraries have been pushing to provide access to their resources
through the Internet, so that patrons can search library catalogues, reserve resources and renew materials, and even access digital libraries of documents, all wherever the patrons happen to have Internet access - at home, work, or using mobile phones (Jaeger et al., 2011)
At present about 6,437 million people are suffering by various forms of disability. Realising the importance of disabled for economic and social development, policymakers of both developed and developing countries have recommended different strategies and among them most noticeable recommendation is to provide the disabled the equitable access to information and communication technology (ICT) facilities as ICT interventions are recognised as the most powerful transmission mechanism for exploiting competitive advantages in the new economy. For this reason different ICT interventions are implemented for disabled people. In this paper, we have tried to find the impact of these interventions from actual beneficiary perspective. We have used technology acceptance model to know about perceived usefulness and perceived easiness of different ICT interventions from the disabled person in our paper from visually impaired person's perspective. Our research finds that though technology has improved a lot but still visually impaired persons are facing many difficulties especially in terms of local language as most of the facilities are not customised for local language. Study also shows that besides technological development, changes in attitude of social variables are important for getting acceptance of disabled people.
Content accessibility is a key feature in highly usable Web sites, but reports in the popular press typically report that 95% or more of all Web sites are inaccessible to users with disabilities. The present study is a content accessibility compliance audit of 50 of the Web's most popular sites, undertaken to determine if content accessibility can be conceived and reported in continuous, rather than dichotomous, terms. Preliminary results suggest that a meaningful ordinal ranking of content accessibility is not only possible, but also correlates significantly with the results of independent automated usability assessment procedures.
Through 2 experiments, we examined both international differences and the effects of high-end graphical enhancements on the perceived usability of World Wide Web (WWW) sites. To accomplish this goal, we recruited Internet users from Switzerland and the United States to explore 1 of 2 versions of a Web site with the goal of retrieving specific information from the site. The first Web site was a self-contained subset of a large corporate Web site, and the second was a systematically simplified version of the first. After retrieving the required information from the site, participants responded to questions regarding their perception of the Web site's usability and its information presentation. Their responses provided detailed insights into significant differences between WWW users from 2 different cultures with respect to how they perceive the same Web sites. The importance of basic user demographics is documented, and empirical evidence is provided that devalues some high-end graphical enhancements.
Although animation is commonly used in the web environment, scant scientific evidence can be found either on the effects of animation on viewer information seeking performance or on the implications for online advertising. This paper reports a limited study that provides such scientific evidence. Using research results from visual attention and perception literature to guide the discovery, the study confirms four hypotheses. (1) Animation as a secondary stimulus deteriorates viewer information seeking performance. Journal of the Association for Information Systems 2 (2) As the difficulty of the task increases, viewer performance is less affected by animation. (3) Animation that is similar but irrelevant to a task has more negative impact on viewer performance than animation that is dissimilar to the task. (4) Animation that is brightly colored has a stronger negative effect on viewer performance than does dull colored animation. The study sheds light on the applicability of research results in visual attention to the web environment. It also provides practical guidance for content providers and online advertisers as they design and place online ads in web pages.
With the increasingly rapid uptake of the World Wide Web, even those pages classed as ‘the best of the web’ are not immune
to large download latencies. This paper investigates whether the latency between requesting a page and receiving it influence
user perceptions of the page. The paper describes a study in which users are presented with seven different web pages with
delays ranging from 2 s to 2 min, and are then asked to rate the pages on a number of criteria. Predetermined delays were
injected into the page loading process. Pages which were retrieved faster were judged significantly more interesting than
their slower counterparts. The implications for web page design are discussed.
An analysis of the home pages of all fifty US states reveals great variety in key design features that influence efficacy. Some states had excessively large byte counts that would slow users connected by commonly-used 56 K modems. Many web sites had low numbers of or poorly organized links that would make it hard for citizens to find what they were interested in. Features such as search boxes, privacy policies, online help, or contact information need to be added by several states. Our analysis concludes with ten recommendations and finds many further opportunities for individual states to improve their Websites. However still greater benefits will come through collaboration among the states that would lead to consistency, appropriate tagging, and common tools.
Advocates of people with disabilities take online stores to task. The New York Times
- Tedeschi
Tedeschi B (2001) Advocates of people with disabilities take online stores to task. The New York Times, January 1, 2001
User-centered Web development
- Lazar
Lazar J (2001) User-centered Web development. Jones and Bartlett, Sudbury, MA
Novice user percep-tion of errors on the web: experimental results. UAIS, in press
- J Lazar
- G Meiselwitz
- Norcio
Lazar J, Meiselwitz G, Norcio A (2003) Novice user percep-tion of errors on the web: experimental results. UAIS, in press
Computer and web resources for people with disabilities
Alliance for Technology Access (2000). Computer and web resources for people
with disabilities. Berkeley, CA: Hunter House Publishers.
The Baltimore Business Journal Book of Lists
Baltimore Business Journal (2002). The Baltimore Business Journal Book of Lists
2002.
Novice user perception of errors on the web: Experimental results
- J Lazar
- G Meiselwitz
- A Norcio
Lazar, J., Meiselwitz G., and Norcio, A. (2002). Novice user perception of errors
on the web: Experimental results. Submitted for publication.