Accessibility in mind? A nationwide study of K-12 Web sites in the United States

Web site accessibility is a serious civil rights concern that has historically been difficult to measure and to establish success criteria for. By conducting automated accessibility analyses via the WAVE tool, we calculated accessibility norms of a statistically appropriate, random sample of K–12 school Web sites across the U.S. (n = 6,226) and merged results with national datasets to determine how school demographics influence accessibility. Results indicated that schools across all demographic groups generally struggle to make their Web sites fully accessible to their universe of diverse users and revealed that the concrete, highest-impact steps that schools nationwide need to take to improve accessibility include improving poor contrast between text and backgrounds, providing alternative text to images and other visual elements, and labeling form controls

Website Accessibility Strategies

Most websites cannot be readily used by people with disabilities, despite the internet being an essential component for people to be part of a community. Applying web accessibility strategies means that people with disabilities can better interact with the web. Grounded in Davis’s technology acceptance model, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to examine strategies used by web designers to make websites accessible for people with disabilities. The participants were experienced web developers from organizations in Florida with websites that have a Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Level 2 of three levels, i.e., AA- rating. The data collection process included semistructured interviews with experienced web developers (N = 8) and examination of company documents (N = 9). Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Three major themes emerged: the importance of awareness and experience of accessibility strategies, the importance of testing websites for accessibility, and the importance of training developers in web accessibility. A recommendation is for leaders and developers to advocate the organization about the need for web accessibility. Once the organization is committed to accessibility, the leaders must agree on evaluating developed websites. Additionally, there should be a financial commitment to train developers and accessibility evaluators in web accessibility. The implications for positive social change include the potential to increase software accessibility for people with disabilities