Ergonomics of usability / accessibility-ready websites : Tools and guidelines

The 'user-friendliness' of a website indicates to what extent it is easy for all intended users to interact with website to perform their required task(s). Given the explosive growth in the use of computerized systems as well as the World Wide Web for delivering information and services, usability/accessibility becomes an important issue. The purpose of this research is to study the available literature on usability/accessibility ready websites and their tools and guidelines. The research findings will help web engineers to build websites and web services accessible for all the target audience, including people with special needs. People with special needs meet barriers of all types, but computing technology is helping them to overcome these barriers. Accordingly, a great amount of development work has been carried out in the area of designing websites for disabled people, and it is increasingly becoming an important focus for a variety of reasons, legal (due to recent legislation in many countries promoting the rights of disabled people), economic, or ethical. Web engineers are increasingly aware that they need to ensure the usability of mainstream systems for disabled people by developing systems explicitly to meet the needs of disabled users (often referred to as assistive technologies), which also require evaluation to ensure their usability for the target audience. A descriptive/interpretive research method was used for the study of usability, accessibility, globalization, readability and culture differences based on related literatures and on previous studies by academics and industrial institutions.