HCI public policy activities in 2012 (original) (raw)
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HCI public policy activities in 2012: A 10-country discussion
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E-GOVERNMENT WEB ACCESSIBILITY: WCAG 1.0 VERSUS WCAG 2.0 COMPLIANCE
Most e-governments have traditionally used version 1.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as a basis to ensure that their websites are accessible by people with disabilities. This was reflected in their design guidelines, accessibility evaluations, policy-making and legislations. Recently, WCAG 2.0 emerged as an ISO/IEC International accessibility standard that has been recommended for adoption by the W3C WAI. This paper seeks to examine if there is a need for e-governments to reassess their web accessibility conformance, in light of the latest WCAG 2.0 standard. A case study related to the 21 Dubai e-government websites is presented whereby accessibility is evaluated based on the WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 guidelines and using automated accessibility testing tools. We found that WCAG 2.0 conformance testing identified some notable accessibility issues that were not revealed by WCAG 1.0 conformance testing. Hence we recommend that egovernments should develop and update their web content and accessibility policies to conform to the latest WCAG 2.0 guidelines and success criteria. Additional implications for practice and academic research are also provided.
WCAG 1.0 versus WCAG 2.0 Web Accessibility Compliance A Case Study
Most e-governments have been using the WCAG 1.0 guidelines as reference to probe their compliance to web accessibility principles. This was reflected in their local accessibility policies, website design, maintenance, and accessibility testing activities. Recently, WCAG 2.0 emerged as an ISO/IEC 40500:2012 International accessibility standard that has been recommended for adoption by the W3C WAI. This paper seeks to examine if there is a need for egovernments to reassess their web accessibility conformance, in light of the latest WCAG 2.0 standard. A case study related to the 21 Dubai e-government websites is presented whereby accessibility is evaluated based on the WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 guidelines and using automated accessibility testing tools. We found that WCAG 2.0 conformance testing identified some notable accessibility issues that were not revealed by WCAG 1.0 conformance testing. Hence we recommend that e-governments should develop and update their web content and accessibility policies to conform to the latest WCAG 2.0 guidelines and success criteria. Additional implications for practice and for academic research are also provided.
Web accessibility: principles, international context and Italian regulations
Proceedings of CMG Italia, …, 2004
Among the initial motivations that lead to the birth of the web, we must recall the Universal Access, that is to make the Web accessible to all by promoting technologies that take into account the vast differences in culture, languages, education, ability, material resources, and ...
Web Content Accessibility of Municipal Web Sites in Turkey
Journal of Advances in Information Technology, 2016
government recourses. The Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the web, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive and neurological disabilities. WCAG 2.0 identifies the techniques to create and manage web content (i.e. dynamic and static textual, visual, or audio electronic information) in ways that are more accessible to the people with disabilities-for instance, through assistive technologies like the screen readers. The Websites that are more accessible are also generally more user-friendly to everyone. Currently, there are a number of guidelines and tools that the web designers and webmasters can use to make their websites accessible to the people with disabilities. Such guidelines include the Web Content Accessibility guidelines (WCAG) developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the US government's Section 508 Initiative, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Australians with Disabilities Act and the National Institute on Ageing Guidelines (NIA). The Similar guidelines exist in Canada, UK and Portugal. The most common standards Based website Design and the development are W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 or 2.0 (WCAG 1.0 or WCAG 2.0). WCAG 2.0 was approved as an ISO/IEC 40500 International accessibility standard in October 2012 [1]. In other words, more countries can formally adopt WCAG 2.0 and many countries are updating their laws to the new version. An international organization World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) launched the web accessibility initiative (WAI) inorder to improve the web accessibility for the people withdisabilities [2]. For the consortium, web accessibility was defined as "access to the web by everyone, regardless of disability" accessibility means that the people withdisabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interactwith the web. In 1999, W3C published the first version ofthe accessibility guidelines (WCAG 1.0) [4]. The secondversion was published in 2008 (WCAG 2.0), and this is thereference recommended for use in the accessibility policies [5]. There are four key principles that underlie WCAG2.0: perceivable, operable,
2012
The accessibility of public administration web sites is a key quality attribute for the successful implementation of the Information Society. The purpose of this paper is to present a second review of municipal web sites in Romania that is based on automated accessibility checking. A number of 60 web sites were evaluated against WCAG 2.0 recommendations. The analysis of results reveals a relatively low web accessibility of municipal web sites and highlights several aspects. Firstly, a slight progress in web accessibility was noticed as regarded the sample evaluated in 2010. Secondly, the number of specific accessibility errors is varying across the web sites and the accessibility is not preserved in time. Thirdly, these variations suggest that an accessibility check before launching a new release for a web page is not a common practice.
Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity, 2015
Background: The circulation of information through the Internet allows us to promptly and conveniently deliver information. However, it is also causing a simultaneous occurrence of digital information gap and cultural lag phenomena. The gap in the ability to freely access and use Web site contents using the Internet is affecting not only the digital information gap, it also affects the competitiveness of individuals. In Korea, pursuant to Article 21 of the "Act on the Prohibition of the Discrimination against the Disabled and the Relief of their Rights" and Article 14 of its enforcement ordinances enforced from 2008, Web-accessibility compliance for each agency has been gradually made mandatory. Even if a Web-accessibility certification mark has been obtained, some Web sites are involved in legal disputes because of their violation of the Anti-Discrimination Act for the Disabled, which has been recently enforced. Methods: This study examines the actual situation of the compliance by conducting web accessibility assessment. 25 websites among the Korean public institutions in the science and technology field were selected and were assessed manually according to KWCAG 2.0. Results: According to experts assessments using web accessibility requirement of KWCAG 2.0, 'Perceivable' shows the highest compliance rate (68 %). 'Operable,' 'understandable,' or 'Robust' shows the compliance rates of 64.5 %, 59.2 %, and 28.0 % respectively. Conclusions: Based on the findings of this study, some suggestions are presented to improve web accessibility compliance of the sites that received a web-accessibility certification mark from the National Information Society Agency in Korea.
Egovernment and web accessibility in South America
2014 First International Conference on eDemocracy & eGovernment (ICEDEG), 2014
The number of e-government websites has increased greatly in recent years. Many countries have laws to ensure that e-government sites satisfy web accessibility requirements. The objective of web accessibility is to ensure that people with disabilities can access websites just like everyone else. However, laws that enforce web accessibility do not automatically guarantee compliance: e-government websites are not always prepared to provide a correct service to persons with disabilities. This paper analyses the accessibility of a group of e-government websites of all South American countries and Spain. Three official websites from each country has been analysed: the government, the Parliament and the Senate websites. Different automatic evaluation tools have been used to perform the analysis. The preliminary results of our research show that the majority of e-government websites do not provide adequate levels of web accessibility.
Assessing the Progress of Implementing Web Accessibility - An Irish Case Study
In this paper we attempt to gauge the implementation of web accessibility guidelines in a range of Irish websites by undertaking a follow-up study in 2005 to one conducted by McMullin three years earlier . Automatic testing against version 1.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0) using WebXact online revealed that accessibility levels had increased among the 152 sites sampled over the three-year period. Compliancy levels of A, AA and AAA had risen from the 2002 levels of 6.3%, 0% and 0% respectively to 36.2%, 8.6% and 3.3% in 2005. However, manual checks on the same sites indicated that the actual compliance levels for 2005 were 1.3%, 0% and 0% for A, AA and AAA. Of the sites claiming accessibility, either by displaying a W3C or 'Bobby' compliance logo, or in text on their accessibility statement page, 60% claimed a higher level than the automatic testing results indicated. When these sites were further manually checked it was found that all of them claimed a higher level of accessibility compliance than was actually the case. As most sites in the sample were not compliant with the WCAG 1.0 for the entire set of disabilities, the concept of 'partial accessibility' was examined by identifying those websites that complied with subsets of the guidelines particular to different disabilities. Some disability types fared worse than others. In particular blindness, mobility impairment and cognitive impairment each had full support from at most 1% of the websites in the study. Other disabilities were better supported, including partially-sighted, deaf and hearing impaired, and colour blind, where compliance was found in 11%, 23% and 32% of the websites, respectively.