Open AccessAssessing the accessibility of Web 2.0 websites
Author(s) -
McMillan Tyson,
Lin Lin
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
proceedings of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1550-8390
pISSN - 0044-7870
DOI - 10.1002/meet.2009.145046023
Subject(s) - web accessibility , world wide web , web standards , web accessibility initiative , web design , computer science , web development , web analytics , web page , web navigation , web application security
This study examines the accessibility of Web 2.0 websites to the visually impaired. Web accessibility standards are established to maximize the ability of those with impairments to navigate the web. Various computer tools exist to evaluate web HTML content against existing accessibility standards. Using a weighted metric‐based formula called the Web Accessibility Barrier (WAB) score, this study adopted an experimental design and compared 88 randomly selected Web 2.0 websites against 88 randomly selected Web 1.0 websites. The study found that Web 2.0 websites are significantly less accessible than Web 1.0 websites. Details of the analysis, evaluation, discussion, and recommendations are included in the paper.