Showing papers on "Web accessibility published in 2017"

Web site accessibility, usability and security: a survey of government web sites in Kyrgyz Republic

Abstract: The information in government web sites, which are widely adopted in many countries, must be accessible for all people, easy to use, accurate and secure. The main objective of this study is to investigate the usability, accessibility and security aspects of e-government web sites in Kyrgyz Republic. The analysis of web government pages covered 55 sites listed in the State Information Resources of the Kyrgyz Republic and five government web sites which were not included in the list. Analysis was conducted using several automatic evaluation tools. Results suggested that government web sites in Kyrgyz Republic have a usability error rate of 46.3 % and accessibility error rate of 69.38 %. The study also revealed security vulnerabilities in these web sites. Although the "Concept of Creation and Development of Information Network of the Kyrgyz Republic" was launched at September 23, 1994, government web sites in the Kyrgyz Republic have not been reviewed and still need great efforts to improve accessibility, usability and security.

A framework for improving web accessibility and usability of Open Course Ware sites

Abstract: Since its inception, one of the primary goals of the Internet has been the open access of information and documents online. This openness aims to allow access to universal knowledge. The Open Educational Resources (OER) have promoted this goal in the context of education. The OER of higher education are supported by means of the Open Course Ware (OCW) initiative. OCW aims to provide access to the knowledge produced by universities. However, the level of access to and use of OCW do not meet expectations. For this reason, it is necessary to provide solutions to increase the accessibility and usability of OCW. As a result, this paper presents a methodology for the evaluation of the accessibility and usability of OCW sites, as well as a framework for improving their accessibility and usability. This methodology and framework have been applied to evaluate and improve the accessibility and usability of a real case study, the OCW initiative of the Universidad Tcnica Particular de Loja (UTPL). This case study has allowed us to validate the methodology and the framework in a real setting in order to determine if they were able to identify and suggest improvement for the accessibility and usability of OCW when required. Quantification of accessibility and usability of websites that offer Open CourseWare.Integration of web accessibility and usability standards to the domain Open Educational Resources such as Open Courseware.Proposal and implementation of a methodology for assessing accessibility and usability in OER such as Open CourseWare sites.Proposal and implementation of a framework to increase the accessibility and usability OER such as Open CourseWare sites.

Revisiting the accessibility of Saudi Arabia government websites

Abstract: With the significant inclusion of the Internet in nearly all aspects of our daily lives, achieving accessible e-government services that enable citizens to benefit from them and fulfill different users’ requirements, regardless of time and location constraints, has become a global aim. Although the Saudi government has initiated efforts to cope with this type of online services, the results from a study carried out in 2010 show a serious problem reaching the minimum requirement of WCAG 2.0 guidelines, implying a lack of equality between disabled and non-disabled people in benefiting from online governmental services. In order to track how Saudi e-government accessibility evolved from 2010 to 2016, this paper aims to evaluate the same websites visited previously. This may help in gaining an idea regarding the level of awareness about accessible e-government services in Saudi Arabia and whether the new policies the Saudi government has enforced on governmental websites have been effective or not. The results show an improvement in the accessibility of Saudi government websites since 2010, yet future recommendations are highlighted to further improve their accessibility.

Web site accessibility and quality in use: a comparative study of government Web sites in Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkey

Abstract: Government Web sites aim to provide information to the citizens of the country; therefore, they should be accessible, easy to use and visible via search engines. Based on this assumption, in this paper, the ministry Web sites of four countries namely the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Republic of Turkey were analyzed in terms of accessibility and quality in use. Tests were carried out utilizing online automated tools. Results indicate that the usage rate of Information and Communication Technologies by the government is higher in Turkey, which affects the visibility of government Web sites but not their quality in use. Very few ministry Web sites of the four countries achieved AA conformance level on accessibility, many failed to pass conformance level A and AA checkpoints for accessibility errors. In order to ensure equal access to all their citizens, the countries in this study need to put more emphasis on designing government Web sites to be more accessible.

The Effects of "Not Knowing What You Don't Know" on Web Accessibility for Blind Web Users

Abstract: Web accessibility and usability have been extensively studied for blind web users. The focus has generally been on making it technically possible for blind users to access content, or on helping to make the web more usable. This paper explores a challenge at the intersection of these two lenses, which is the effects of blind web users not knowing what they don't know. On the web, this often means that the user is having a problem completing a task, but does not know whether the problem is because the information is there and not accessible, whether the information is simply difficult to access, or whether the information is not present at all. We first discuss how this issue has manifested itself in other work in this space. We then present the results of a study with 30 sighted web users and 30 blind web users exploring the phenomenon, demonstrating that not knowing the source of a problem causes frustration and wastes time. We conclude with recommendations for future research to help understand and address this problem, as well as design implications for future technology that may assist non-visual web navigation.

Universities of the Kyrgyz Republic on the Web: accessibility and usability

Abstract: Today the Internet is the easiest way to find information about any kind of organization, and the first impression about an organization is almost always based on its Web site. This study investigated whether the Web sites of the universities in the Kyrgyz Republic comply with prevailing standards of accessibility and usability and whether these qualities depend on location and type of ownership of the universities. The analysis was conducted using online evaluation tools. Based on the data collected, the hypotheses were further tested using the SPSS statistical package. The results show a low usability rating for the vast majority of the universities’ Web sites. For 90.47 % of the Web sites upload time exceeds 30 s; 52.38 % of the Web sites have broken links; and 100 % have browser compatibility problems. The results of accessibility tests show low compliance with W3C-WCAG 1.0: error rates for Priority 1, 2, and 3 checkpoints of 83.33, 92.85, and 95.24 %, respectively. The results obtained and the results of an independent t test indicate that most of the issues of all Web sites tested are not of a technical nature, and occur mainly due to human factors related to Web application development.

ACE: A Colour Palette Design Tool for Balancing Aesthetics and Accessibility

Abstract: Colour can convey a mood or elicit a particular emotion and, in terms of web design, colour can influence attitudes, perceptions, and behaviours. However, many websites demonstrate inaccessible colour choices. Numerous online colour palette design tools only focus on assisting designers with either the aesthetics or accessibility of colours. With a user-centered design approach, we developed the Accessible Colour Evaluator (ACE, daprlab.com/ace) which enhances web developers’ and designers’ ability to balance aesthetic and accessibility constraints. We distributed an online questionnaire to 28 web developers and designers to understand their attitudes and utilisation of accessibility guidelines, as well as to gather initial design requirements for ACE. With this information, we created three low-fidelity paper prototypes that were used to create two high-fidelity prototypes. The high-fidelity prototypes were discussed with 4 web developers and designers during a design workshop, and their feedback was used to develop the final version of ACE. A comparative evaluation of ACE and three existing alternative tools was conducted with 10 new web developers and designers. All participants were able to complete a colour palette design task when using ACE and identified ACE as their most preferred tool. The mean scores for the six TLX measures show ACE as providing the best performance and causing the lowest frustration. Finally, we conducted a small focus group with 3 web developers and designers to gather qualitative feedback about ACE. Participants identified a number of ACE’s strengths and made suggestions for future extensions and improvements.

A Systematic Literature Review to Determine the Web Accessibility Issues in Saudi Arabian University and Government Websites for Disable People

Abstract: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has shown great commitment and support in past 10 years towards the higher education and transformation of manual governmental services to online through web. As a result number of university and e-government websites increased but without following the proper accessibility guidelines. Due to this many disable peoples may not be fully benefited the contents available on university and government websites. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) report, there are more than one billion people all over the world facing different kind of disabilities. Almost 720,000 Saudi nationals are disable which is about 4% of total Saudi population. The objective of this study is to review the existing literature to identify the web accessibility issues in Saudi Arabian university and government websites through a systematic literature review. Several scholarly databases were searched for the research studies published on web accessibility evaluation globally and in Saudi Arabia from 2009 to 2017. Only 15 (6 based on Saudi Arabia and 9 global) research articles out of 123 articles fulfilled the selection criteria. Literature review reveals that web accessibility is a global issue and many countries around the world including Saudi Arabia are facing web accessibility challenges. Moreover web accessibility guidelines WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 are not addressing many problems which are faced by user and some guidelines were not effective to avoid the user problems. However, findings in this study open a new dimension in web accessibility to do extensive research to determine the web accessibility criterions/standards in context of Saudi Arabia.

Factors explaining adoption and implementation processes for web accessibility standards within eGovernment systems and organizations

Abstract: Local government organizations such as municipalities often seem unable to fully adopt or implement web accessibility standards even if they are actively pursuing it. Based on existing adoption models, this study identifies factors in five categories that influence the adoption and implementation of accessibility standards for local government websites. Awareness of these factors is important for stakeholders adopting and implementing web accessibility standards. To further develop and understand these factors, this study has identified and interviewed experts in the field of (organizational) accessibility. This has led to an extension of the existing models. The extended model was then validated by interviews with key stakeholders. The outcome of this study places existing adoption models in a new context. The result is an adoption model that contributes better to explaining adoption and implementation processes within eGovernment systems and organizations. This adoption model aims to better help local governments in the identification of factors influencing the actual adoption and implementation of web accessibility standards in their situation. The model explains how factors in the different categories contribute to the adoption and implementation of web accessibility standards. The model may also be applicable to the adoption and implementation of other guidelines and (open) standards within local government.

Accessibility of Turkish university Web sites

Abstract: 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.

Evaluating the accessibility, usability and security of Hospitals websites: An exploratory study

Abstract: Technology offers the potential to improve healthcare service delivery. The objective of healthcare website is to provide services and updated information at low cost to all the people regardless of their abilities and disabilities, which can reduce overcrowding in hospitals and reduce spread of disease. In a developing country like India, where hospitals are overcrowded, healthcare websites can play a major role in delivering updated healthcare services. Therefore, designing an effective healthcare website is becoming essential as numerous people are accessing the web for gathering information about hospitals and their healthcare services. There are no specific guidelines available for designing the health care website. So, it has become extremely important to evaluate hospital websites and address the design issues. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the accessibility, usability and security of hospitals websites in metro cities of India. Accessibility is evaluated using WCAG 2.0 accessibility guidelines, usability is evaluated using readability score and language analysis. Security analysis takes content management system into account.

Implementing Recommendations From Web Accessibility Guidelines: A Comparative Study of Nondisabled Users and Users With Visual Impairments.

Abstract: Objective:The present study examined whether implementing recommendations of Web accessibility guidelines would have different effects on nondisabled users than on users with visual impairments.Bac...

Do Web Users with Autism Experience Barriers When Searching for Information Within Web Pages

Abstract: Elements related to cognitive disability are given lower priority in web accessibility guidelines due to limited understanding of the requirements of neurodiverse web users. Meanwhile, eye tracking has received a lot of interest in the accessibility community as a way to understand user behaviours. In this study, we combine results from information location tasks and eye tracking data to find out whether users with high-functioning autism experience barriers while using the web compared to users without autism. Our results show that such barriers exist and there is higher variance in the scanpaths of the participants with high-functioning autism while searching for the right answer within web pages.

Chromium based Framework to Include Gaze Interaction in Web Browser

Abstract: Enabling Web interaction by non-conventional input sources like eyes has great potential to enhance Web accessibility. In this paper, we present a Chromium based inclusive framework to adapt eye gaze events in Web interfaces. The framework provides more utility and control to develop a full-featured interactive browser, compared to the related approaches of gaze-based mouse and keyboard emulation or browser extensions. We demonstrate the framework through a sophisticated gaze driven Web browser, which effectively supports all browsing operations like search, navigation, bookmarks, and tab management.

Open to all? Nationwide evaluation of high-priority web accessibility considerations among higher education websites

Abstract: This study seeks to evaluate the basic Priority 1 web accessibility of all college and university websites in the US (n = 3141) Utilizing web scraping and automated content analysis, the study establishes that even in the case of high-priority, simple-to-address accessibility requirements, colleges and universities generally fail to make their sites accessible Results should be used to determine reasonable and simple steps for moving toward accessible design in institutional websites, which is necessary to ensure that institutional resources can be open and useable by all

Usability, Accessibility and Web Security Assessment of E-government Websites in Tanzania

Abstract: In spite of the fact that e-government agency (ega) in Tanzania emphasize on the use of ICT within public institutions in Tanzania, accessibility, usability and web security vulnerabilities are still not considered by the majority of web developers. The main objective of this study is to assess the usability, accessibility and web security vulnerabilities of selected Tanzania e-government websites. Using several automatic diagnostic (evaluation) tools such as pingdom, google speed insight, wave, w3c checker and acunetix, this study assess the usability, accessibility and web security vulnerabilities of 79 selected e-government websites in Tanzania. The results reveal several issues on usability, accessibility and security of Tanzania e-government websites. There is high number of usability problems where 100% of websites were found to have broken links and 52 out of 79 websites have loading time of more than five (5) seconds for their main page. The accessibility results show that all 79 selected websites have accessibility errors and violate w3c Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0. The results on web security vulnerabilities indicate that 40 out of 79 (50.6%) assessed websites have one or more high-severity vulnerability (SQL injection or cross site scripting-XSS) while 51 out of 79 (64.5%) have one or more medium-severity vulnerabilities (Cross site request forgery or Denial of Service). Based on these results, this study provides some recommendations for improving the usability, accessibility and web security vulnerabilities of public institutions in Tanzania.

E-Commerce Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities

Abstract: In recent years online shopping has grown significantly worldwide. As the technology advanced, new techniques such as (HTML 5 and Flash-based content, JavaScript etc.) are used in e-commerce websites to visually present information. However, these new techniques have accessibility problems for people with disabilities when accessed using assistive technology. Therefore, it is also important to adopt web accessibility such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce websites to increase the consumer’s satisfaction of all ages and with disabilities. This study analyses 30 Australian B2C websites in accordance to WCAG 2.0 using an automated web service. The result shows that B2C websites in Australia are not paying attention to web accessibility for people with disabilities. However, e-commerce will succeed in meeting WCAG 2.0 by making B2C e-commerce websites accessible to consumer of all ages and with disabilities. Recommendations are proposed in order to improve web accessibility for people with sensory (hearing and vision), motor (limited use of hands) and cognition (language and learning) disabilities in B2C e-commerce websites.

Quality evaluation of government websites

Abstract: This article describes a study on the quality evaluation of governmental websites of 20 countries with the highest level of competitiveness. The accessibility assessment was carried out to verify compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The main goal of this study is to determine whether people with disabilities are able to access and use government websites. In addition, we considered the Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) to determine how easily a website can be accessed according to WCAG 2.0. The WCAG-EM provides guidance on how to use the methodology and considerations for specific situations. From the results, we conclude that the majority of the websites do not achieve an acceptable level of compliance. The websites of governmental institutions with the highest level of competitiveness do not show a greater level of web accessibility. Several non-compliance errors were found on the websites; by performing this evaluation, we have identified that there are major barriers for a large number of users. Therefore, there is significant work pending to make the websites examples of best practice in e-government sites.

La accesibilidad de los portales web de las universidades públicas andaluzas

Abstract: This paper describes an analysis conducted in 2015 to evaluate the accessibility of content on Andalusian public university websites. In order to determinate whether these websites are accessible, an assessment has been carried out to check conformance with the latest Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). For this purpose, we have designed a methodology for analysis that combines the use of three automatic tools (eXaminator, MINHAP web accessibility tool, and TAW) with a manual analysis to provide a greater reliability and validity of the results. Although the results are acceptable overall, a detailed analysis shows that more is still needed for achieving full accessibility for the entire university community. In this respect, we suggest several corrections to common accessibility errors for facilitating the design of university web portals.

Towards Automated Web Accessibility Evaluation: A Comparative Study

Abstract: With each passing day, the Web is becoming increasingly important in our lives. Hence, the need of making it more accessible to everyone, especially for the disabled and elderly spurred a great interest in automated tools, the total registered number of which has been continuously increasing and reached from forty-five software bids in 2014 to ninety-three in 2017. The purpose of this empirical research is to assess and compare eight popular and free online automated Web accessibility evaluation tools (AWAETs) such as AChecker, Cynthia Says, EIII Checker, MAUVE, SortSite, TAW, Tenon and WAVE with regard to the WCAG 2.0 conformance. As a result, significant differences were observed in terms of tool’s coverage (a maximum of 32.4%), completeness (ranges between 10% and 59%), correctness (an average of 70.7%), specificity (reaches 32%), inter-reliability (lies between 1.56% and 18.32%) and intra-reliability (the acceptable score), validity, efficiency and capacity. These eight criteria can help to determine a new role played by modern AWAETs as dependent methods in Web accessibility evaluation. Moreover, consequences of relying on AWAETs alone are quantified and concluded that applying such approaches is a great mistake since subjective and less frequent objective success criteria (SC) failed to be automated. However, using a good combination of AWAETs is highly recommended as overall results in all the mentioned quality criteria are maximized and tools could definitely validate and complete each other. Ultimately, integrating automated methods with the others is ideal and preferably at an early stage of the website development life cycle. The study also provides potential accessibility barriers that make websites inaccessible, challenges AWAETs are currently facing, nineteen pros and fourteen cons and fifteen improvement recommendations for the existing and next generation of AWAETs. Fundamentally, achieving the objectives of this study was possible due to the elaboration and implementation of a new five-phased methodology named as ―5PhM-for-AWAEMs‖ for successful selection, evaluation and/or comparison of AWAEMs. In addition to providing detailed descriptions of the estimation process, this methodology represents eleven key criteria for effective selection of suitable AWAEMs and necessary numbers of web pages and expert evaluators for acceptable, normal or ideal assessment.

A System to Generate SignWriting for Video Tracks Enhancing Accessibility of Deaf People

Abstract: Video content has increased much on the Internet during last years. In spite of the efforts of different organizations and governments to increase the accessibility of websites, most multimedia content on the Internet is not accessible. This paper describes a system that contributes to make multimedia content more accessible on the Web, by automatically translating subtitles in oral language to SignWriting, a way of writing Sign Language. This system extends the functionality of a general web platform that can provide accessible web content for different needs. This platform has a core component that automatically converts any web page to a web page compliant with level AA of WAI guidelines. Around this core component, different adapters complete the conversion according to the needs of specific users. One adapter is the Deaf People Accessibility Adapter, which provides accessible web content for the Deaf, based on SignWritting. Functionality of this adapter has been extended with the video subtitle translator system. A first prototype of this system has been tested through different methods including usability and accessibility tests and results show that this tool can enhance the accessibility of video content available on the Web for Deaf people.

Análisis de la accesibilidad de los sitios web de las universidades ecuatorianas de excelencia

Abstract: Since the publication of the Ecuadorian Technical Standard NTE INEN ISO / IEC 40500 in 2014 and the Ecuadorian Technical Regulation RTE INEN 288 "The web contents accessibility" in 2016, web accessibility in Ecuador has taken great importance. In the educational field, the websites of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) have become a communication channel, where universities publish the information and services they offer. In addition, HEI must satisfy the rights of all citizens to have access to education, which includes persons with disabilities. In order to ensure access to the websites of HEI to all people it is important that HEI incorporate web accessibility as an essential requirement in their websites. The objective of this research is to perform the accessibility analysis of the websites of the Ecuadorian universities of excellence belonging to categories A, B and C; identify websites accessibility errors and to present some recommendations for a better fulfillment of the WCAG 2.0 accessibility guidelines by website designers and developers.

New challenges in web accessibility

Abstract: The Web is a foundational infrastructure for our society. Web access is now an imperative part of our education, work and everyday life. That is why we cannot stop ensuring and improving access to services on the Web for every member of our society. Web for All (W4A) is an annual international conference to share and discuss the latest technologies and practices for improving Web accessibility for persons with disabilities. This conference is decidedly cross-disciplinary in nature and brings together users, accessibility experts, graphic designers, and technologists from academia and industry to discuss how accessibility can be supported. W4A 2012 was held at Lyon, France receiving 26 papers and 71 participants. Every year the conference poses a main theme to capture the latest trends and challenges in the area, this year’s theme being ‘‘the Web of Data’’. Quote, ‘‘Laying beneath the surface of the Web there are a number of phenomena such as trends and patterns in information structure and in user behavior that do shape the way we communicate, consume and browse. As far as accessibility is concerned, Web content plays a central role in an ecosystem where user agents, authoring tools, crowdsourcing frameworks and testing tools determine how accessible is the Web’’. Among the presented papers, two papers were selected and thoroughly reviewed and revised for journal format, to be published in the UAIS journal. The first paper ‘‘Acceptance Tests for validating ARIA requirements in Widgets’’ approaches the data from a programmatic perspective by investigating data-oriented Web programming methodologies such as dynamically changing pages based on dynamic data transactions. Along with the evolution of high-performance script runtimes inside browsers and with the evolution of data exchange methods (e.g., JSON), dynamic Web applications are becoming the dominant Web user interface. The W3C WAI-ARIA is the metadata standard to make dynamic applications accessible by overlaying accessibility of the graphical user interface (GUI) as a layer for browsers to treat dynamic Web applications as GUI applications. However, testing can still be a challenge which ‘‘Acceptance Tests for validating ARIA requirements in Widgets’’ tries to address. The paper proposes a behavior-driven testing approach for checking accessibility issues of dynamic Web content, applies it to web pages containing dynamic content and compares the results with those produced by static accessibility checking tools and Tab Panel widget libraries, to check the conformance required by ARIA by comparing the results with manual evaluation. The second paper ‘‘How to Present more Readable Text for People with Dyslexia’’ investigates the effects of visual text presentation on the ease-of-reading for people with dyslexia. The paper introduces results from a set of experimental tests looking at various types of improvement methods for presenting text to people with dyslexia by using eye-tracking systems. Larger text and character spacing, it seems, improves reading speed for all. This is critically important knowledge when investigating large data sets or analyzing results on which critical decisions will be made. The importance of data is increasingly becoming more prevalent. Focus has grown since 2012 and by 2015 big & Hironobu Takagi takagih@jp.ibm.com

Teaching Accessibility to the Masses

Abstract: Web developers are a key element in creating an accessible web, but few have received formal training on inclusive web design. In this paper, we discuss the challenges of teaching web accessibility online, and the process of creating a public Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) aimed at teaching web accessibility auditing practices to web developers. The outcomes from the Professional Web Accessibility Auditing Made Easy [10] course delivered to two cohorts is presented. The lessons learned from the experience are added to the discussion around the pedagogical culture and the need to better integrate accessibility education into computer science curriculum.

An evaluation of the accessibility of top-ranking university websites: Accessibility rates from 2005 to 2015

Abstract: Accessibility evaluation is an important equity step in assessing effectiveness and usefulness of online learning materials for disabled students. With popular uptake of blended and online learning it is timely to evaluate the accessibility attained by universities in their websites and Learning Management Systems (LMS) .The present study considers this question for the period 2005 through 2015. Previous studies in this area have indicated that university websites have become gradually inaccessible, as the complexity of their content increases, and that the amount of attention being paid to this problem by the universities is low. This study employed a comparative quantitative method, and a random sample of universities’ websites was evaluated using the accessibility evaluation tool designed by AChecker. The inclusion of the specific universities chosen for this study was based on their ranking in the world, and/or in the Oceania and Arab regions. Moreover, the evaluation is organised by page type: homepage, administration page or course description/syllabus page. Thus, through a statistical and empirical study, we demonstrated that there was no significant improvement in the accessibility of universities’ web sites between 2005 and 2015. Furthermore, access to media and document files had the most influential accessibility errors. In addition, there were 27,308 (33%) total home page errors among the 180 evaluated pages from 60 of the top world, Oceania and Arab universities’ sites. There are no significant differences in accessibility level between top-ranking universities in developed or developing countries. Therefore, with participation rate at universities expanding world-wide and equity being a common corporate theme there is a growing need for universities to commit to and responsibly address accessibility to online learning materials for disabled students.

Non-visual Web Browsing: Beyond Web Accessibility

Abstract: People with vision impairments typically use screen readers to browse the Web To facilitate non-visual browsing, web sites must be made accessible to screen readers, ie, all the visible elements in the web site must be readable by the screen reader But even if web sites are accessible, screen-reader users may not find them easy to use and/or easy to navigate For example, they may not be able to locate the desired information without having to listen to a lot of irrelevant contents These issues go beyond web accessibility and directly impact web usability Several techniques have been reported in the accessibility literature for making the Web usable for screen reading This paper is a review of these techniques Interestingly, the review reveals that understanding the semantics of the web content is the overarching theme that drives these techniques for improving web usability

Evaluating Responsive Web Design's Impact on Blind Users

Abstract: Recent studies show that websites complying with accessibility guidelines can still be ineffective, inefficient, and unpleasant. Compliance with accessibility guidelines does not guarantee blind users' satisfaction when accessing websites. Meanwhile, in recent years, websites have undergone radical changes regarding design, development, and construction. Responsive design is a new trend that has a strong impact on web design. To determine blind users' experience with responsive design, the authors performed empirical tests to investigate the impact of responsive design on the emotions of blind users during web interactions. They measured user emotions by applying the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) instrument. Results show that although the responsive websites investigated had acceptable levels of accessibility, they posed numerous usability barriers and triggered intense, negative user emotions. Furthermore, the average number of negative emotional reactions for blind users was higher in the case of responsive web design than in the case of nonresponsive web design.

Web accessibility and technology protection measures: Harmonizing the rights of persons with cognitive disabilities and copyright protections on the web

Abstract: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) obligates State Parties to ensure full and equal access to the web for persons with disabilities However, copyright law and policy sometimes poses challenges to realizing full and equal access to the web for persons with varying physical, mental, and cognitive disabilities Recent developments in international law and policy that promote the use of technological protection measures (TPM) as a means for protecting copyrighted digital content on the web create barriers to accessibility for certain individuals with disabilities This article uses theories of multilevel governance and social regulation to explore the relationship among laws and policies that aim to ensure web accessibility, and laws and policies to preserve and promote the use of TPM It employs a case study of US law and policy to examine how different levels of governance have ensured and supported the rights of persons with cognitive disabilities and web content publishers This article argues that the Marrakesh Treaty acts as a bridge between the copyright and human rights regimes, can promote the meaningful participation of persons with an array of cognitive and other disabilities in the design and implementation of national and international copyright laws and policies, and thus fosters harmonization of TPM with the principles of web accessibility