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The purpose of this paper is to explore both accessibility and usability and examine the inhibitors and methods to evaluate site accessibility. Design techniques which improve end‐user access and site interactivity, demonstrated by practical examples, are also studied.

Assesses various web sites for accessibility and usability.

Criteria are determined by which to assess accessibility and usability of web sites.

Disability is an important consideration in the development of contemporary web sites. By understanding the needs of all users, not only those with disabilities, organisations may begin the process of advancing both accessibility and usability and integrating these elements into their web development strategies.

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.

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.

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.

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

Several factors must align if web accessibility can be achieved and maintained. It is critical that web developers, designers, and content creators each know what to do. Moreover, it is vital that administrators create systems to support enterprise-wide web accessibility. The chapter will cover key issues found in education, predominantly higher education, and share resources to accomplish this complex endeavor.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the aspects to be considered when evaluating web search engines' accessibility for people with disabilities. The authors provide an overview of related work and outline a theoretical framework for a comprehensive accessibility study of web search engines, regarding the principles of disability studies and the idea of inclusion.

The paper is based on a literature review, and an aggregation of recommended actions in practice, mainly the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative's (WAI) evaluation model.

A good way to conduct an accessibility study in a comprehensive manner is the WAI methodology consisting of three‐steps: preliminary review to quickly identify potential accessibility problems; conformance evaluation to determine whether a website meets established accessibility standards; and user testing to include real people with disabilities in a practical use. For the use case “web search engines” some special issues have to be taken into consideration.

The paper can be seen as a brainstorming and describes a theoretical concept of how to do. Conclusions about actual barriers of web search engines and criteria of satisfaction for people with disabilities do not exist as of yet; the model is not tested so far.

This paper provides practical implications for researchers who want to conduct an accessibility study, especially of web search engines. Findings of such studies can have practical implications for web search engine developers to improve accessibility of their product. The accessibility of web search engines does not only have implications for people with special needs, but also for the elderly or temporarily handicapped people.

This paper combines findings from web search engine research with aspects of disability studies. Therefore, it provides insights for researches, search engine developers and educators in practice on how important accessibility of web search engines for people with disabilities is, how it can be measured and what aspects need to be considered.

Only properly designed web sites are accessible to people with print disabilities. The purpose of this paper is to follow up on earlier investigations of this kind by looking at the web sites of all 56 ALA‐accredited library schools, and of the libraries on these campuses.

Bobby 3.1.1 was used to evaluate compliance with major accessible web design guidelines. In addition, key web pages were checked manually for the presence of skip‐navigation components, and the sites' re‐design status was ascertained. The results were presented in the form of basic descriptive statistics, including percentages of Bobby‐approved pages and the average number of barriers per page. Correlations of the current accessibility data with older data sets and with library school ratings were also calculated.

The results indicate that despite an increase in accessibility, only 50 to 60 per cent of the web sites were free of Bobby‐detectable errors. Canadian sites were more accessible than US sites. Contrary to previous findings, recently redesigned sites tended to be more accessible. Highly ranked sites also tended to have higher accessibility scores. US sites showed a random‐like up‐and‐down movement in accessibility status between 2002 and 2006.

The collected data reflect compliance with only a subset of accessible design principles.

More education and continued advocacy is needed to increase web accessibility at libraries and library schools and to help establish library schools as models of program accessibility.

This is the only study that provides trend information about the accessibility of a broader set of library and library school web sites.

This paper aims to identify the factors influencing the implementation of web accessibility.

Following the theoretical framework three hypotheses were developed. The database consisted of 108 non‐financial firms listed in the Dow Jones Industrial, CAC‐40, DAX and IBEX35 indexes. A multivariate regression equation was used to test the hypotheses.

Reasons for the implementation of web accessibility are technical rather than social or financial. The implementation of web accessibility is aimed at increasing the efficiency of the operations of the firm. Furthermore, web accessibility policies are more important in countries where the incorporation of the firms into the net has taken place at a date some time after the beginning of the scheme.

An implication of the results is the advisability of orienting governmental policies to raise awareness that web accessibility should be part of corporate social responsibility activities.

This is a pioneering empirical study of the factors influencing web accessibility. The results of the present research are of interest to other countries.

The purpose of this research is to facilitate the full potential of the web for the people with disabilities. People with disabilities may fail to make full use of the potentials offered by the web even if they have the right hardware (computer and assistive technologies) as well as access to the internet because of the lack of accessibility.

This research outlines the guidelines that provide the foundation for building an accessibility-aware framework approach, where people with disabilities can access most of the electronic contents based on their disability levels.

The framework helps web engineers in developing accessible web pages for all types of users. Disability profile examples (blindness, low vision, deafness and hard of hearing) were taken to determine the performance of the framework approach.

The validation and testing was carried out on the Sultan Qaboos University website. The framework approach could be further validated by performing the tests on various other public and private websites.

The guidelines can be used as a road map to overcome accessibility challenges during any web application development life cycle. A proper testing and evaluation is carried out on the framework to test its usability.

Although people with disabilities are perhaps the segment of society which are expected to gain the most from these technologies, they are facing barriers to access the contents of the web because of the way it is presented. This proposed framework could assist all the people with the disability of blindness and hearing impairment to have a better experience with the internet, making the technology more beneficial and usable to them. In the future, this approach can be extended for the people with other disabilities.

This research provides a pioneering concept for accessibility-aware framework approach. This approach could be utilized for developing accessible web applications and electronic services for people with disabilities. The proposed framework can be used as a road map to overcome accessibility challenges during any web application development life cycle.

Web accessibility is the practice of making web sites accessible to people, such as the disabled, who are using more than just traditional web browsers to access the internet. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to overview web accessibility and to highlight the ethics of web accessibility from a managerial perspective.

To that end, this paper reviews related literature, highlights relevant public policy, discusses web accessibility from a systems development perspective, and concludes with a discussion of web accessibility with respect to different ethical theories.

The findings take the form of a tutorial that highlights how to address web accessibility projects. The findings also examine web accessibility projects as they relate to well‐known ethical theories. Additionally, the findings also incorporate ethical opinions from web designers who have completed web accessibility projects in the past.

The paper makes several contributions to the existing literatures on web accessibility and ethics. An important contribution is that the paper is the first tutorial on web accessibility that also examines the topic through the lens of ethical theories. In addition to the tutorial, the paper reports on the opinions of web designers who have worked on web accessibility projects in the past.

Information exchange is important in any transaction but is perhaps particularly important for transactions in the travel and tourism industry where information gratification plays such a crucial role. Internet‐based technologies allow organisations to exchange information with an often geographically dispersed and wider marketplace without a loss of quality. However, merely being online, publishing a Web site is not enough. Organisations need to ensure their Web sites obtain “traffic” or “hits” and, importantly, that the content of their sites is accessible. Accessible Web sites mean access for all, accommodating different user capabilities and needs. This research examines the emerging competitive and legal imperatives to consider the issue of Web content accessibility as well as what makes for an accessible Web site. In spite of the strong competitive and legal imperatives for accessibility, a survey of 100 UK and German‐based travel and tourism Web sites conducted here revealed disappointingly low levels of accessibility. As the Internet and Web come to play a more important part in individual lives, this finding suggests that many organisations need to work harder to ensure that their often considerable investments achieve what they set out to do – communicate effectively with what they hope is a larger marketplace.

This study aims to assess the accessibility of library Web sites of top ten universities of Pakistan. The study also explores commonly identifies accessibility barriers in the subject Web sites. Accessibility analysis of library Web sites has been conducted using Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAET) to examine compliance of the library Web site with Web Content Accessibility Guideline 2.0. The study also attempts to rank each Web site according to number of quality issues identified. Based on literature review, the study also proposes a framework to conduct Web accessibility evaluation of library Web sites. Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the Web, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive and aging (old-age).

This study examines accessibility of subject Web sites using automated accessibility evaluation tool based on Library Web site Accessibility Evaluation Framework (LWAEF). Commercial WAET SortSite® was used to assess accessibility issues in library Web sites. The tool was also tested to validate components of the LWAEF.

Result shows that 70 per cent of library Web sites do comply with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. It means that compliance to essential guidelines of priority A level of WCAG 2.0 are finely met by 70 per cent library Web sites of Pakistan. However, important accessibility issues still exist in the subject Web sites. Moreover, in terms of accessibility issues, overall quality of university library Web sites in Pakistan is in better condition.

Equal access to information by all citizens is an important UN charter supported by all developing countries. Assessing the needs of all citizens has been of great importance and value to developing countries like Pakistan, with 19.2 per cent population consisting of disabled people. The paper presents the overall status of accessibility to information and is conducted to focus the library Web sites of Pakistan for the first time. Focusing the library Web sites for accessibility evaluation, this research study will help improve accessibility elements of library Web sites in other developing countries also.