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Web Accessibility in Portuguese Museums: Potential Constraints on Interaction for People with Disabilities

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HCI International 2020 – Late Breaking Papers: Universal Access and Inclusive Design (HCII 2020)

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Abstract

Museums play a major role as tourism attractions worldwide. Nevertheless, and despite the increasing awareness of the need to improve accessibility for people with disabilities in tourism, museum websites are still identified by this group as a major constraint for visiting and having pleasurable experiences in museums. Despite the existence of constraints in this scope, empirical research that examines the accessibility of museums websites is very scarce with only one study being known in this field. Even this study only considers a small set of museums in one region of the United States and adopts a non-automatic, and thus subjective procedure, not enabling great conclusions about the accessibility of these museum web platforms. The present paper aims to fill some of the previous gaps by assessing the accessibility of websites of museums located in Portugal. To achieve this aim, a total of 575 websites of museums located across different regions were assessed using two automated tools based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: AccessMonitor and Test de Accesibilidad Web. Results reveal that although websites of museums present higher levels of accessibility than those of other tourism supply agents, they still have several accessibility problems that must be solved. Findings also show that there is a higher prevalence of failures related to the ‘perceivable’ and ‘robust’ principles, and that the accessibility level differs among the NUTS II regions where museums are located. The paper ends by identifying the main conclusions and the major implications for designers or managers of these websites.

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Acknowledgements

This work was developed in the scope of the research project ACTION - POCI-01-0145-FEDER-030376, funded by FEDER through COMPETE2020 – Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI), and by national funds (OE), through FCT/MCTES.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Management, Industrial Engineering and Tourism, University of Aveiro, 3010-193, Aveiro, Portugal

    Pedro Teixeira & Diana Lemos

  2. Governance, Competitiveness and Public Policies, Department of Economics, Management, Industrial Engineering and Tourism, University of Aveiro, 3010-193, Aveiro, Portugal

    Maria João Carneiro & Celeste Eusébio

  3. Institute of Electronics and Informatics Engineering of Aveiro, Department of Economics, Management, Industrial Engineering and Tourism, University of Aveiro, 3010-193, Aveiro, Portugal

    Leonor Teixeira

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  1. Pedro Teixeira
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Correspondence to Leonor Teixeira .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Crete and Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion, Greece

    Constantine Stephanidis

  2. Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion, Greece

    Margherita Antona

  3. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Qin Gao

  4. Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Jia Zhou

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Teixeira, P., Lemos, D., Carneiro, M.J., Eusébio, C., Teixeira, L. (2020). Web Accessibility in Portuguese Museums: Potential Constraints on Interaction for People with Disabilities. In: Stephanidis, C., Antona, M., Gao, Q., Zhou, J. (eds) HCI International 2020 – Late Breaking Papers: Universal Access and Inclusive Design. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12426. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60149-2_29

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60149-2_29

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