The State of Web Accessibility

Introduction

The technological conditions for accessibility on the web can be considered a good example of working digital media accessibility. From a theoretical perspective the separation of content and form made possible by HTML and other web technologies is a prime example of the goals of accessibility.

According to literature and interviews I conducted for this project, the proper implementation of existing accessibility standards like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and use of existing technologies like HTML would be sufficient for satisfactory accessibility on the internet.

However, the practical implementation of this technological potential is lacking. Both inter-viewees expressed frustration in the degree of accessibility they encounter on the web. The interview participants are discouraged in their use of the internet by concrete technical accessibility problems they encounter regularly.

Empirical Studies

That accessibility on the internet is inadequate is a sentiment supported by numerous empirical studies. Two of which are described below.

Hanson and Richards (2013) studied the accessibility of popular and government websites over a four-teen-year period and measured at least minor improvements in all metrics. Still, they concluded that in 2012 only few sites conformed to the low accessibility requirements they measured against.

Interestingly, Hanson and Richards suspect that the employment of new technologies, improved coding practices, and increased search engine optimization are responsible for a considerable amount of the measured progress, not increased awareness for accessibility issues.

The initiative Web Accessibility in Mind (Web AIM) provides a yearly report on the accessibility of one million popular websites. The authors use the accessibility checking tool WAVE, to query the sample for accessibility issues that indicate a failure in WCAG conformance. In 2022 WebAIM detected such failures in 96.8% of all websites in the sample.

Reasons for the lack of accessibility

The reasons for this unsatisfactory degree of web accessibility are not as clear. Moser and Wieland conducted a survey of web developers that researched this topic. They found that 80 percent of developers did not pay attention to the accessibility of their projects, and over half of the queried developers could not specify who benefits from accessible websites.

Interestingly, most developers who did consider accessibility issues in their work did so out of an intrinsic motivation and not solely because of project demands (see Moser and Wieland 2011, pages 20 and 25). This indicates that an understanding of the necessity and of the implementation of accessibility measures is a deciding factor in improving the state of web accessibility.

Literature

Hanson, Vicki and Richards, John (2013). Progress on Website Accessibility? In ACM Transactions on the Web. Volume 7, Issue 1.

Moser, Christian and Wieland, Beat (2011). Die Barrieren der Barrierefreiheit im Internet. (German for: The Barriers of Accessibility on the Web). Master's Thesis. University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil, University of Basel.

Web AIM (2022). The Web AIM Million. The 2022 report on the accessibility of the top 1,000,000 home pages.