Homepage not enough when evaluating web site accessibility

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to determine if the homepage of a web site is representative of the whole site with respect to accessibility.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper presents an intraclass correlation (ICC) between homepage web accessibility barrier (WAB) scores and the WAB scores of web site levels 1 through 3 for 33 popular web sites.

Findings

The paper finds that the homepage is not sufficient to detect the accessibility of the web site. ICC of the homepage and average of levels 1‐3 is 0.250 (p=0.062) and ICC of levels 1, 2, and 3 is 0.784 (p<0.0001). Evaluating the homepage and first‐level pages gives more accurate results of entire site accessibility.

Originality/value

This is first study correlating homepage accessibility with web site accessibility.

Citation

Hackett, S. and Parmanto, B. (2009), "Homepage not enough when evaluating web site accessibility", Internet Research, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 78-87. https://doi.org/10.1108/10662240910927830