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Evaluation of web accessibility in China: changes from 2009 to 2013

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Abstract

The objective of this study was to provide an overview of the status of web accessibility in China and to reveal any improvements during the period 2009 to 2013. Two evaluation studies were carried out in 2009 and 2013, respectively. Thirty-eight popular Chinese websites were evaluated in 2009 and fifty in 2013 with reference to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG). The studies applied the conformance evaluation method with the help of the automatic evaluation tool Hera. The evaluation results indicated that none of the surveyed websites passed all the checkpoints of Priority 1 in both studies, which means no website met the minimum requirement for web accessibility. The average level of web accessibility worsened between 2009 and 2013 due to the increase of website complexity and the amount of content. However, e-government websites had made some significant improvement during these 4 years, which indicated that the government had realized the web accessibility issues and made some effort to address them. The evaluation also revealed five major accessibility barriers existing in both studies, and these barriers also served as technical suggestions for web content providers. The web accessibility of Chinese websites is far from satisfactory, and it is getting worse from 2009 to 2013. However, e-government websites had improved significantly in regards to accessibility due to the release of accessibility regulations. Thus, the reason that explains low web accessibility in China is the lack of awareness rather than lack of technical skills.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (#71188001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Human Factors and Ergonomics, Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Pei-Luen Patrick Rau, Lianhui Zhou, Na Sun & Runting Zhong

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  1. Pei-Luen Patrick Rau
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  2. Lianhui Zhou
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Correspondence to Pei-Luen Patrick Rau.

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Rau, PL.P., Zhou, L., Sun, N. et al. Evaluation of web accessibility in China: changes from 2009 to 2013. Univ Access Inf Soc 15, 297–303 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-014-0385-9

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