Web accessibility: a longitudinal study of college and university home pages in the northwestern United States.
Purpose. This article reports on a follow-up assessment to Thompson et al. (Proceedings of The First International Conference on Technology-based Learning with Disability, July 19-20, Dayton, Ohio, USA; 2007. pp 127-136), in which higher education home pages were evaluated over a 5-year period on th...
| Publicado en: | Disability & Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology Vol. 5; no. 2; pp. 108 - 115 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Publicado: |
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Mar2010
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=105125652&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 105125652 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 17483107 1X04 jtl: Disability & Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology issn: 17483107 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Mar2010 vid: 5 iid: 2 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania artinfo: ui: 105125652 2010572550 10.3109/17483100903387424 NLM20184527 105125652 ppf: 108 ppct: 7 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P tig: atl: Web accessibility: a longitudinal study of college and university home pages in the northwestern United States. aug: au: Thompson T Burgstahler S Moore EJ affil: AccessSTEM, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA sug: subj: Colleges and Universities School Accommodation World Wide Web United States Assistive Technology Devices Persons with Disabilities Funding Source Human Internet Keyboards United States ab: Purpose. This article reports on a follow-up assessment to Thompson et al. (Proceedings of The First International Conference on Technology-based Learning with Disability, July 19-20, Dayton, Ohio, USA; 2007. pp 127-136), in which higher education home pages were evaluated over a 5-year period on their accessibility to individuals with disabilities. The purpose of this article is to identify trends in web accessibility and long-term impact of outreach and education. Method. Home pages from 127 higher education institutions in the Northwest were evaluated for accessibility three times over a 6-month period in 2004-2005 (Phase I), and again in 2009 (Phase II). Schools in the study were offered varying degrees of training and/or support on web accessibility during Phase I. Pages were evaluated for accessibility using a set of manual checkpoints developed by the researchers. Results. Over the 5-year period reported in this article, significant positive gains in accessibility were revealed on some measures, but accessibility declined on other measures. The areas of improvement are arguably the more basic, easy-to-implement accessibility features, while the area of decline is keyboard accessibility, which is likely associated with the emergence of dynamic new technologies on web pages. Even on those measures where accessibility is improving, it is still strikingly low. In Phase I of the study, institutions that received extensive training and support were more likely than other institutions to show improved accessibility on the measures where institutions improved overall, but were equally or more likely than others to show a decline on measures where institutions showed an overall decline. In Phase II, there was no significant difference between institutions who had received support earlier in the study, and those who had not. Conclusions. Results suggest that growing numbers of higher education institutions in the Northwest are motivated to add basic accessibility features to their home pages, and that outreach and education may have a positive effect on these measures. However, the results also reveal negative trends in accessibility, and outreach and education may not be strong enough to counter the factors that motivate institutions to deploy inaccessible emerging technologies. Further research is warranted toward identifying the motivational factors that are associated with increased and decreased web accessibility, and much additional work is needed to ensure that higher education web pages are accessible to individuals with disabilities. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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