C ompute rs in HumanBehavi or 20 (200 4) 269–288 www.elsevi er.com/loca te /c om p h um be h Im pr ov ing we b access ibility: a study ofwebmaster perceptions onathan Laza r*, A l fredaDudle -S onau le, Abstract Largepercentages ofwebsitescontinueto be inaccessible to peo plew ith disab ilities. Since too ls an d g uidelinesare available to he lp de sig nersand webmasters in makingtheir w eb sit es accessible, it is u nclear wh y so m any sites con tinueto be inacc essible. In this pape r,w e present the ‘‘Web AccessibilityIntegrationModel,’’ which highlightsthe multiple points within web dev elop ment wh ere acce ssib ility can be inco rporate d or forgotten. It is uncertainwh y web- masters do not use the various tools and guid elines tha t current ly are availablefor making web sitesaccessible. A surveywascreated, and data was collectedfrom 175webmasters, indicati ngthei r knowle dg eon the top ic ofw e b access ibility an d the reasons for their actions rela tedto we b acces sibility. Findingsand futuredirections for researchare discussed. # 2003Elsevier Ltd. All rightsreserved. 1. Int rod uc tion T he w orldwideweb p ro vi des a w ealth ofinf orma tion , an d th e use rpop ulat io n ofth e w eb is dive rse, includ i ng users of all ages,e duc at io nal le ve ls, and le v e ls ofcomput ing experi ence(S h neid er m a n, 2 0 00 ). Many usersofth e we b have va rio us types ofdisab ilities. These disab ilities include sens or y (e .g.he aring and visio n), motor (e.g. li mited use ofhands)and cogni tive (e.g.learni ng d isab il it ies) im pa ir - ment s. Theseuserswith disabili ti es use variousforms ofas sis tiv ete ch no log y to all ow themto br owsew eb site s. As sis tivetec hn o log ies inc lud eha rd ware an d soft * Correspon ding authors. T e l. : +1-410-7 04-2255; fax:+1-410-7 04-3868. E-mailaddress: jl azar@ to w s on.edu (J. Lazar). 0747-563 2/$ - seefront matter # 2003Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
perceptionsonathan Lazar*, AlfredaDudle -S onau le,
Abstract
Large percentagesof websitescontinueto be inaccessibleto peoplew ith disab ilities.Since too ls and guidelinesare ava ilab leto he lpde signersand webmastersin makingtheirweb sites accessible,it is unclearwhy so many sites continueto be inaccessible.In thispape r,w e presentthe ‘‘Web AccessibilityIntegrationModel,’’ which highlightsthemultiple points within web develop mentwhere accessib ilitycan be incorporated orforgotten.It is unc erta inwhy web-mastersdo not use the var ious tools and guidelines
that current lyare availablefor making web sitesaccessible.A surveywas created,anddata was collectedfrom 175webmasters,indicatingtheir know ledgeon the top ic of webaccess ibilityand the reasonsfor their actions relatedto web accessibility.Findingsandfuturedirectionsfor res ea rchare discussed .# 2003ElsevierLtd. All rightsreserved.
1. Introduc tion
The worldwideweb provides awealthof information, and the userpopula tion of the web is dive rse,includ ing users of all ages,educational levels, and le vels
of computing experience (Shneiderman, 2000). Many usersof the web have varioustypesof disabilities . These disabilities inc lude sensory(e.g.hearing and vision),
motor (e.g.limited useof hands)and cognitive (e.g.learning disabilit ies) impair-
ments. Theseuserswith disabilities u se variousform s of assis tivetechnologytoallow themto browsewebsites.Assistivetechnologies includehardware and soft
J. Lazar et al. / Computersin Hu manBe havio r20 (2004)269 – 271
2. Web Accessibility Integration Model
Webaccessibi lity leve lsare low, ye t the tools and gu idelinesexistto he lp.Thus,
itremains unclearwhy this is the case. To help in understanding the problem, the
re searcherscreated a model,ca lled the Web Accessib ility IntegrationModel,whichhighlights the variousinfluenceson the accessibility,or inaccessibility ,of a web
site . The hopeis thatthis model will helpspurotherresearchersto investigateall of the
differentanglesof accessibilityand to learnhow to makesitesmore accessible.
2.1 .Societa l fou ndations
Society placesva lueon differentsk illsets. How muchis web accessibilityvalued?
Itvaries. Accessib ility , or designingcomputers for people with disabilities, is not
astandard part of any national curricu lum in Computer Science(CS), Information
Systems (IS), or Info rmation Technology(IT)(La zar, 2002). In addit ion, training inaccessibilityfor currentIT workers is rare outside of gove rnment.At the sam etime ,
policy and law in manycountriesencourageweb accessibility, and in fact,accessible or change the pa tternsof education. This is conflicting: in
272 J. Lazar et al. / Computersin Hu manBe havio r20 (2004)269 –
accessibility ,is in factmissing,but accessibilityis notedby gove rnment as a
societal
2.2. Stakeholderperceptions
Societalfoundationshelp to influencethe stakeholdersinvolved in a specific
website development project. The people who de cidewhether a site will be builtforaccessibilityor not are the w ebdevelopersand the c lients.It is likely that if neitherof thesegroups of peop leare aw areof or passionateaboutwebaccessibility, thena
2.3.Web development
The societalfoundationsand stakeholder perceptions influence the actual
webdevelopment. There is another impact on both initial site designandsubsequentre -design :guidel inesand tools. Thesegu idelinesand toolshelpnot only webdeve l-
opers and webmasterswith guidance,but also theseguidelinesand tools
helpprovidethe current‘‘working definition’’ for web accessib ility. Web deve lopersandwebmastersare likely to follow the toolsand guide linesthatare ava ilable tothem.
Good, well-written guidelines, and powerfu l softw are tools are likely to helpim prove levels of accessibility.Poorly-written, confusing guidelines, andhard touseor unclearsoftwaretoo lsare like ly to keepsitesfrom becomingaccessible.
3. Research methodology
A surv eywasdeveloped,withquestions askingwebm asters about theirknowledgeof web accessibility and the ir perceptions of whenand why web sites should
orshouldnot be accessible.The goal of thissurveywas to be exploratory in nature.
Web accessibility is not a topic that has been re searched in greatdepth.While
guidelines for web acce ssibility exist, researchsurrounding the effectivenessof
thoseguidelines , how IT workers interactwith thoseguidelines,and reasonsforimplementing accessibility, donot exist . The goalof th is research is to lea rnmoreabout why webmaste rsdo or do no
created an accessible website,47 respondents(26.9% )indicatedthat theyhad notcreated any acce ssible website,and one respon dent(0.5% )wasnot sure.Please
notethat12 respondentsdid no t respondto thisquestion.
For question 2, ‘‘Are you fam iliar with the Sec tion508 lawsby theUS Federal
governmentor similar lawsfromothergovernments around the wor ld(i.e.Portugal,Canada, England, and Australia)?’’, 129 respondents(73.7% )indicated thattheywerefam iliar with the law s,two respondents(1.1%)ind icated that theywere notfamiliar with the laws, an d13 responden ts(7.4% )werenot su re.Ple aseno tethat31
responden tsdid not respondto thisquestion.For question 3, ‘‘Is your website subjectto the USFederalGovernment’s ru leson
J. Lazar et al. / Computersin Hu manBe havio r20 (2004)269 – 277
Table 6
Respo nsesto qu estio ns1–
Answer Question
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Yes
No
Not sure
Left
115
47
1
12
129
2
13
31
43
101
30
1
98
38
38
1
138
29
5
3
121
50
1
3
38
132
4
1
68
105
1
1
103
37
30
5
Fig. 7. Statisticsof questions 1–
For question5, ’’Are yo u awarethatthereare so ftware tools thatcan check
your
website to s e e if it is accessible,and provideusefulfeedback?’’,138respondents
(78.9%)were familiar with the availability of softwaretools ,28 respond ents(16.0%)werenot familiar with softwaretools,and five respondents(2.9%) werenot sure.
Pleasenotetha tthreerespondentsdid not respondto thisquestion.For question 6, ‘‘Have you everuseda free web-basedaccessibility tool, e.g.
Bobby?’’, 121 resp onde nts (69.1% ) indicated that they had usedfree web-based
tools, 50 (28 .6% )resp ondents indicated that they had not, and one respondent(0.5%)was not sure.Pleasenote that threeresponde ntsdid not respond to thisquestion.
For question 7, ‘‘Have you everused a non-web-basedaccessibility tool, e.g.
278 J. Lazar et al. / Computersin Hu manBe havio r20 (2004)269 –
one responden t (0.5%) was not sure.Pleasenote that one respondent did
notrespondto thisquestion.
For question 9, ‘‘Does your organizationhaveany plans to makeyourwebsiteaccessible to users withvisualimpairments in the fu ture?’’, 103respondents(58.8%)
indicated thatth eirorganization is planning on acce ssibility, 37 respondents(21.1%)indicated that no accessibility improvements wereplanned, while30
respondents
(17.1% )were not sure.Pleasenote that five respondentsdid not respondtothisquestion.
There aresom eparadoxesfrom questions 1–9.For instance, 138respondentswere
familiar w ith the existenceof automated so ftw aretools to he lp withaccessibility,but only 98 responden tsindicatedthat their web siteswere accessible. Inanotherexample, 129 respondentsindica tedthat theywere familiar with governmentlawsrelating to accessibility, even though those laws only applied to 43of the
Table 7
Familiaritywith the var iousweb accessibility initiat ive
J. Lazar et al. / Computersin Hu manBe havio r20 (2004)269 – 279
guid eline s (known as WCAG), the main guidelinesfor webaccessibilityof pages.
Other guidelines from theWAI werebare ly known. Only one respondentreported
beingfamiliar with the authoring tool guidelines, and two people reported
beingfamiliar withthe useragent gu idelines.This is no t surprising,sincemostwebmasters
would only be designing web content, ratherthan authoring toolsor agents. Fortyresponden tsindica tedthat theywere not familiar with any of theWAI guidelines,
and 20 respondents did not answ erthe question.As a comparison, 129
respon en s
4.3. Open-endedquestions
Because closed-ended questions cann ot revealthe com plete story behind web -masterperceptions and actions,we decidedto includea number of open-ended
questions on the su rvey. Because these are essentia lly qualitative, and the responses
were
unpredictab le,eachquestion will includea sampling of user responses, as well as
someoveralltrendnumbersfor whenmanyresponseswere ind ica tingsimilar ideas.
Que stion 11 asked‘‘What do you think is th e biggest challenge of making awebsite accessib le for userswith visua limpairments?’’
Given that I an swered ‘no’ to all of the above que stions, I supposethateducation of webmastersm ustbecritical
Dea lingwithdesignrequirements thatcall for non-underlinedlinks.
Maintaining accessibility while also maintaining the designer’sintent
and
Tedium,cost, and compliance witha law tha tmaywell get over -turnedin th e
yearsto come.
Your clients(i.e.bosses,management)wan tglitzywebsitesthatare di cuffi lt tomakeaccessible.
‘Selling’ the importance of accessibility to variousstakeholders. . .[it’s ]
often
For those survey respo ndents that answeredthis question, 24 respondentsmentioned the challenge of balancing accessib ility and graphical design,
23
respo ndents m entionedthe challenge of convincing clients and management of the im portance of accessibility, 21 respondents mentioned technical challenges,
nine responden ts m entione d the lack of funding to address accessibility,
280 J. Lazar et al. / Computersin Hu manBe havio r20 (2004)269 –
Table 8
Responsibility for website
Responsible Number
Webmaster
Systemsanalyst/engineer
Programmer
Help deskmanager
Disabilitycompliance
143
83
96
28
87
mentioned the need for training,better software tools.
and six respondents mentioned the need for
Que stion 12 asked‘‘Who do you think should be responsible for making a
websiteacce ssiblefor userswithvisualimpairments?’’ The re sponse s to this question werevery interesting. Pleasenote that re spon-
dentswereallowedto selectmore than one choice. A large percentage of therespondents (143 )indicated that webmas tersare responsible. Programme rs were
notedas responsible by 96 respondents,the disability compliance o ceffi wascitedby87 respond ents,system sanalystswere cited by 83 respondents, and the help
desk
managerwascited by 28 respondents.These da taare prese nted in Table 8. Intheiropen-endedresponses,mostof the respondents indicatedthataccessib ility wasnot
It is everyone’s responsibility to ensure that we do all we can for th e
handicapped.
You do not ge t accessibility withouta jo inteffort from numerouspeople
with
It’s in everyone’s bestinterest but not everyonehas all the answ ers .All
can
The Internetmustbe availableto all and all IT professionals havea responsi-bility to ensureit’s achieved.
If the site is to be truly accessib le everyone should be involved/concerned/
responsible.
The deve loperis responsible
Noneof the above!Uppermanagement hasto mandate it and lead
J. Lazar et al. / Computersin Hu manBe havio r20 (2004)269 – 281
Question 13 asked‘‘What factors would influenceyou to makeyour current
sitegovernmen , corpora e, an or persona access e or users w v sua
Knowing that a significant portion of my user population has
visual
If the gove rnment to ld us thatw e had to [makeour siteaccessible].
If suchuserswould showinterest-contact us , we wouldrespond
If it’s the law
Tax breaksand otherfinancia l incentivesto make it feasible and attractive
to
Legislation would move it [accessibility]up my prio rity
Nothing less than [governm ent]man date. I am sympathetic with
visually
For tho sesurveyrespondents that answeredthis question, 20 respondentsindi-
catedtha tgo vernment req uirements wouldinfluence themthe most, 19 respondentssaidthat theirwebsite alreadyis accessible,16 respondentssa id thatknowingthatuserswith visual im pairment are using their site would influencethem,
eightrespondentssaidoutside fundingwould influen cethem ,sevenrespond entssa id
thatoutside pressure from management or clientswould influence them,four respon-
dentssaid thattraining would influencethem,and four respondentssaid tha t
Yes,but we are limited as to time and re sources.We do as much as wecan.
indicated that theydo not consideraccessibility; and 16 responde ntsind icatedthattheytry to consideraccessibility.
All fouropen-ende dquestions providedglim psesinto the world of thewebmaster.
Webmasters cited challengesto accessib ility such astechnical challenges,convincingmanagement and clientsof the need for accessibil ity,and try ingto strike abalancebetweengood graphical designand accessibility.Nearly all respondentsindicatedthataccessibility is a groupgoal,thatwebmasters alonecannot so lvetheproblem,and that accessibility must be incorporated throughout the deve lopmentandmaintenance lifecycle. More government regu lations, or knowing that userswith
4.4. Ethical d imen sionsof web
Question 15 of the survey asked:‘‘Do you considerethics in planning and/orupdating you rcurrentwebsites? Why?Or, Why not?’’ The question was addedto determ inehow computerprofessionals wou ldrespondto the issueof ethics and webdesign.The research teamdeliberatelydid notgive
anexp lanation of the definition of ethics or what we were imply ing regarding thisquestion. This wasdoneto help insurethe desiredoutcom efrom the respondents
withoutinjecting pe rsonalbiasesfrom the rese archers .Ethics, when applied to technolog y-related issues,is recognized as cyberethics.
Cyberethics is defined as ethical quandaries with a technological dimension(Spinello,
2003). There is a plethora of viewpoints regarding the subject of cyberethics (Scharff
&
Dusek, 2003). For instance, one major question that many professionals withinand
without the computer community consider is the following : Is cyberethics differentf rom
‘‘regular’’ ethics? Ethics can be defined as making a choice between right and wrongin a
situation that involves a dilemma (Pence, 2000). This definition can be applied
284 J. Lazar et al. / Computersin Hu manBe havio r20 (2004)269 –
Most respondents viewed web accessibilityas an eth ical issue. Other
respondentspointedto ethics as the responsibility of the client, or the concern of others. And
finally, a few respondents se emed honestly insu ltedby the question . Whileethicalanalyses of the issueof webaccessibility havegenerally pointedto web
accessibility
5. Conclusion
Given that tools and guidelines are ava ilable to help in building accessible
websites ,and giventhatpublicpo licy generallysupports we b accessibility,it issurpris -ing thatso many web sitesare inaccess ible. Th is studyis a firs tstepinunderstandingwhyso m anywebsitesrem aininaccessible. Most webmastersthatresponded to the
surveysupported the concep tof web accessibility,but citedroadblocks toaccessi-bilitysuchas lack of time, lackof training,lackof managerial support,lack of client
a. A textequivalent for eve rynon-tex t elemen tshal lbe provided (e .g .via
‘‘alt’’,
‘‘longdesc’’,or in elementcontent).Equiva lentalternativesfor any multimed iapresentationshallbesynchronized
with thepresentation.Web pages shallbe des igned so that all information conveyedwith colorisalso availablewithoutcolor, for example from contextor markup.Documents shall be organized so they are readable without requiringanasso ciatedstyle shee t.
Redundant text links shallbe providedfor eachactiveregionof a server-side
J. Lazar et al. / Computersin Hu manBe havio r20 (2004)269 – 285
i. Framesshall be titled with text that facilitatesframe identification
andnavigation.
Pages shallbe designedto avoid causingth e screento flickerwith afrequencygreater than2 Hz and lower than55Hz.A text-onlypage,with equivalent information or functionality, shall be
providedto makea web site comply with the provisions of this part,whencompliance cannotbe accom plished in any otherway. The contentof the
text-on lypageshallbe upda tedwhenever the primary pa gechanges.
When pages utilize scripting languages to display content, or tocreateinterface elements,the in formation providedby the script shallbeidentifiedwith functional textthatcan be readby assistivetechnology.When a webpage requiresthat an applet,plug-in or otherapplication bepresenton the client system to in te rp re tpage content,the pagemustprovide
a
j.
k.
l.
m.
n.
p.
q. When a timed responseis required, the use r shallsu cffi ient time to indicatemoretime is required.
be ale rted and given
(from http://www.section508. gov)
Appendix B
SurveyFor WebmastersSurveyQuestions for WebMasterscre ated by: J. Lazar,A. Dudley-Sponaugle, K. Greenidge
286 J. Lazar et al. / Computersin Hu manBe havio r20 (2004)269 –
Chooseyourorganizationalarea: Health Care Government
Corporate Education Othe r:
How would you classify your com puting experience?
ExpertIntermediate
Novice
Not SureHow manyhoursa weekdo you spendon the
web? 1
2–4
5–6
7–10
morethan10 hours
Questions1. Have you ever created a website that is accessible
impairments?
Yes
for userswith visual
No
Not Sure
2.Are you familiar with the Sect ion50 8lawsby theU. S. Federa lgovernmentorsimilar laws from othergovernmentsaroundthe world (i.e.,Portugal, Canada,England, Australia)?
Yes No
Not Sure3. Is your websitesubjectto the U.S. Federa lGovernment’s ruleson accessibility?
Yes
No Not Sure4. Is the website thatyou are currentlyoverseeing acce ssibleto userswith
visualimpairments? No
Not Sure5. Areyo uaw aretha tthe rearesoftw are toolsthatcancheckyou rw ebsite to seeif
it is accessible ,and provideusefu lfeedback? Yes
No Not Sure6. Haveyou everuseda freeweb-basedaccessibi litytool,e.g.,Bobby?
