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The purpose of this paper is to investigate and identify the status of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) conformance levels (A, AA, AAA) and accessibility status in terms of Severity (Error, Warning and Review) and Responsibility (Editor, Webmaster and Developer) of Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) Library websites based on Siteimprove Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform.

The library websites of IITs were tested using Siteimprove web-tool to gather details pertaining to W3C's WCAG 2.1 standards. The data thus obtained were then visualized using spreadsheet software for greater insight. A partial correlation test was also done to assess the relationship between the three conformance levels.

The study could identify significant accessibility-related limitations of the IIT library websites concerning the three WCAG 2.1 conformance levels A (max IIT Bombay), AA (max IIT Dhanbad (ISM)) and AAA (max IIT Gandhinagar and IIT Varanasi (BHU)), Severity and Responsibility. A positive linear relationship exists amongst these conformance levels. The mean value of conformance levels were found to be 18.3 (A), 2.2 (AA) and 3.1 (AAA); Severity scores were found to be 14.4 (Error), 3.9 (Warning) and 5.2 (Review); and Responsibility scores were found to be 6 (Editor), 9.3 (Webmaster) and 8.3 (Developer), respectively.

The study highlights the comparative picture of accessibility issues and conformance levels of the IITs' library website homepage with the help of results derived/based on Siteimprove Accessibility Checker. The findings of the study reveal that though the library website of IITs' in India possess a well-designed and easily navigable website homepage as far as their accessibility for VIPs is concerned, there are several issues that are still to be resolved.

World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) Marrakesh VIP Treaty (MVT) and the W3C's WCAG cater to the requirements and rights of the persons with vision-related disability of accessing information and knowledge building a steeper and deeper knowledge divide. Identifying and rectifying the shortcomings in the library websites will bridge the accessibility-divide and make the society more inclusive.

No previous study could be identified evaluating the accessibility issues of the library website of Indian IITs focussed on vision-disabled persons using Siteimprove. The methodology and approach of this paper have value in terms of reusability and reproducibility facilitating future studies.

This paper compares the web accessibility of Indian museum websites assessing the level of compliance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1). The study aims to assess the accessibility of Indian museum websites in terms of their severity.

The accessibility evaluation of 11 Indian museum websites was conducted using Siteimprove Accessibility Checker (SAC), an automated website testing tool.

The study results indicate that the mean conformance score for the Indian museum websites for level A was 19.27, while for level AA and AAA, it came out to be 2.63 and 4.09, respectively, with the highest severity scores for error (16.3) followed by review (5.81) criteria and warning (3.81). The major findings indicate that the websites of Indian museums poorly conform to web accessibility guidelines.

The study's findings will assist the museum's website creators, managers and administrators in determining the level of conformity as per standard accessibility guidelines helping them make strategic decisions to improve the accessibility.

Most of the studies available in the field of website accessibility range from the web accessibility of educational institutions, tourism websites, municipal websites and ministerial websites, but there are very few studies investigating the accessibility of museum websites. A quantitative evaluation of different aspects of accessibility was conducted in the study, which can pave the way for the better design of web sites by addressing deficiencies.

Academic library web sites contain a vast amount of content, often contributed by a large number of content creators with varying levels of technical expertise. The Penn State University Libraries site contains almost 10,000 pages contributed by over 200 content creators from all areas of the Libraries.

In October 2011, in response to a complaint filed against Penn State by the National Federation of the Blind, the University Libraries agreed to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 AA within a year to ensure that the web site would be accessible to all Libraries’ users.

This chapter describes how the Libraries developed a remediation plan; engaged content authors in the Libraries’ accessibility effort; implemented new content roles and workflow to ensure web accessibility and how they continue to actively measure and maintain the accessibility of web site content.

This chapter will be useful to Libraries committed to making their web content accessible to all users.

This paper aims to present a framework to analyse whether information published on social media is accessible for people with disabilities (PwD), namely, visual and hearing disabilities, with an application to a music festival.

The methodology used in this exploratory study consists of establishing a recommended framework to assess social media accessibility for PwD, especially for people with visual and hearing disabilities (PwVHD), and analyse, through an observation grid, if the information published on the official pages of the “Rock in Rio Lisboa” music festival on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube is accessible for this target audience.

The results indicate that, although the Rock in Rio Lisboa music festival is promoted as a festival for all, posts on social media are not accessible for people with visual and/or hearing disabilities and do not meet most of the defined parameters established in the proposed assessment framework.

Social media accessibility has not been analysed in previous research in the tourism context. This paper aims to fill in the void by establishing criteria and parameters that can serve as a basis for a framework for accessibility assessment in social media for PwVHD.

This study presents an innovative approach to analyzing user behavior when performing digital tasks by integrating eye-tracking technology. Through the measurement of user scan patterns, gaze and attention during task completion, the authors gain valuable insights into users' approaches and execution of these tasks.

In this research, the authors conducted an observational study that centered on assessing the digital skills of individuals with limited proficiency who enrolled in a computer introductory course. A group of 19 participants were tasked with completing various online assignments both before and after completing the course.

The study findings indicate a significant improvement in participants' skills, particularly in basic and straightforward applications. However, advancements in more sophisticated utilization, such as mastering efficient search techniques or harnessing the Internet for enhanced situational awareness, demonstrate only marginal enhancement.

In recent decades, extensive research has been conducted on the issue of digital inequality, given its significant societal implications. This paper introduces a novel tool designed to analyze digital inequalities and subsequently employs it to evaluate the effectiveness of “LEHAVA,” the largest government-sponsored program aimed at mitigating these disparities in Israel.

The effort in addition to relevance is a major factor for satisfaction and utility of the document to the actual user. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method in generating relevance judgments that incorporate effort without human judges’ involvement. Then the study determines the variation in system rankings due to low effort relevance judgment in evaluating retrieval systems at different depth of evaluation.

Effort-based relevance judgments are generated using a proposed boxplot approach for simple document features, HTML features and readability features. The boxplot approach is a simple yet repeatable approach in classifying documents’ effort while ensuring outlier scores do not skew the grading of the entire set of documents.

The retrieval systems evaluation using low effort relevance judgments has a stronger influence on shallow depth of evaluation compared to deeper depth. It is proved that difference in the system rankings is due to low effort documents and not the number of relevant documents.

Hence, it is crucial to evaluate retrieval systems at shallow depth using low effort relevance judgments.

This study aims to examine the long-term effects of an Israeli digital literacy government program for disadvantaged populations, as they are perceived by participants of the program one year after completing the course.

Participants in the program were interviewed about the effects of participating in the program, their experiences and satisfaction, in retrospect, a year after they completed the program.

The main reasons for joining the program included cognitive motivations, mainly interest to become familiar with internet applications, followed by employment aspiration. Positive benefits from participation included accumulated knowledge, confidence in using technology, empowerment and enhanced sense of self-efficacy. Interviewees also reported that as they could not practice or communicate with instructors once they completed the program, a significant portion of the accumulated gains faded.

Social and practical implications: Digital technologies constitute key infrastructure to facilitate public participation, as well as for gaining social, political and economic capital. Therefore, there is a significant social value in reducing digital inequality by increasing digital literacy of disadvantaged populations, i.e. citizens with low socioeconomic status and low digital literacy. This study sheds light on the benefits gained from such programs, as perceived by past participants.

While previous studies evaluating digital literacy programs focus on specific technical improvements and short-term gains, this study investigates the long-term effects and shortcomings of the program as perceived by participants.