Website accessibility: A cross-sector comparison

Submitted by mlb78 on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 17:24
TitleWebsite accessibility: A cross-sector comparison
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2006
AuthorsLoiacono, Eleanor T., and McCoy, Scott
JournalUniversal Access in the Information Society
Volume4
Issue4
Pagination393-399
ISSN Number16155289
AbstractThe Web has transformed the way organizations interact with clients, customers, and constituents. A large portion of these groups is often neglected, namely people with disabilities. This study compares federal government, non-profit organization (NPO), and corporate homepages accessibility to determine how accessible these websites are to people with disabilities and how they compare to each other. The results indicate that federal homepages (23%), which are mandated to be accessible, are significantly more accessible than NPO (11%) and corporate homepages (6%). [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
NotesThe study compared the degree to which web pages were accessible for disabled people among three types of homepage categories, namely the federal government homepages, the nonprofit homepages and the corporate homepages. Specifically, 21 executive branch departments, 100 randomly selected federal judicial pages, all 100 senator homepages, 100 randomly chosen representatives and the top 100 federal contractors were chosen to represent government homepages. The NPO 100 and the Fortune 100 were used to stand for the nonprofit and corporate homepages respectively. All the web pages were evaluated against both the Section 508 and the WAI standards. The results showed that government homepages (23%) had a higher accessibility than nonprofit (11%) and the corporate (6%) under Section 508. Similarly, government homapages showed a higher level of accessibility (28%) compared to the non-profit (11%) and the corporate (18%).
DOI10.1007/s10209-005-0003-y