The perception of accessibility in Web development by academy, industry and government: a survey of the Brazilian scenario

Submitted by mlb78 on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 17:24
TitleThe perception of accessibility in Web development by academy, industry and government: a survey of the Brazilian scenario
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2008
AuthorsFreire, A. P., Russo, C.M., and Fortes, R. P. M.
JournalNew Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia
Volume14
Issue2
Pagination149-175
Date PublishedDecember 2008
Keywordslaw
AbstractAccessibility has become a serious issue to be considered by various sectors of the society. However, what are the differences between the perception of accessibility by academy, government and industry? In this paper, we present an analysis of this issue based on a large survey carried out with 613 participants involved with Web development, from all of the 27 Brazilian states. The paper presents results from the data analysis for each sector, along with statistical tests regarding the main different issues related to each of the sectors, such as: government and law, industry and techniques, academy and education. The concern about accessibility law is poor even amongst people from government sector. The analyses have also pointed out that the academy has not been addressing accessibility training accordingly. The knowledge about proper techniques to produce accessible contents is better than other sectors', but still limited in industry. Stronger investments in training and in the promotion of consciousness about the law may be pointed as the most important tools to help a more effective policy on Web accessibility in Brazil.
NotesThis paper compared different perceptions of the accessibility issue by people in academy, industry and government. This study recruited 613 participants from the 27 Brazilian states to survey this issue. Results showed that people from industries are more likely to declare themselves as experts, compared with people from the other two fields. Moreover, few people from all fields declared that they had ever built a webpage accessible for the blind. Astonishingly, large portions of participants declared that they had barely known of the Brazilian accessibility law, even by those governmental staffs.
DOI10.1080/13614560802624241