Accessibility of Brazilian state government websites: a quantitative analysis between 1996 and 2007

A utilização da web para a disponibilização de informações e serviços de órgãos governamentais para os cidadãos tem se tornado cada vez mais expressiva. Assim, a garantia de que esses conteúdos e serviços possam ser acessíveis a qualquer cidadão é imprescindível, independentemente de necessidades especiais ou de quaisquer outras barreiras. No Brasil, o Decreto-Lei nº5.296/2004 determinou que todos os órgãos governamentais deveriam adaptar seus sítios na web de acordo com critérios de acessibilidade até dezembro de 2005. Com o objetivo de verificar a evolução da acessibilidade ao longo dos anos e como foi o impacto dessa legislação, este artigo analisa a acessibilidade dos sítios dos governos estaduais brasileiros por meio de amostras coletadas entre 1996 e 2007. Foram efetuadas análises por meio de métricas, obtidas por avaliações com ferramentas automáticas. Os resultados indicam que a legislação teve pouco impacto para a melhoria real da acessibilidade dos sítios no período indicado, com uma melhora somente em 2007. Verifica-se que se faz necessário adotar políticas públicas mais efetivas para que as pessoas com necessidades especiais tenham os seus direitos para acesso a informações e aos serviços públicos na web assegurados mais amplamente.The use of the web to provide government information and services to citizens has become more and more significant. Ensuring that any citizen can access these contents and services is essential, regardless of disabilities or other barriers they may have. In Brazil, Executive Act no. 5.296/2004 ruled that all government agencies should adapt their websites according to accessibility guidelines until December 2005. In order to check the trend of accessibility over the years and the impact of such legislation, this article analyzes the accessibility of the Brazilian state government websites from 1996 to 2007. Analyses were carried out by means of metrics, obtained by evaluations with automatic tools. The results indicate that the legislation has had little impact on the accessibility of the sites, with an improvement in 2007. Thus, it indicates that it is necessary to adopt more effective public policies to guarantee that people with disabilities have insured their rights to access information and public services on the web.CNP

A support for developers implement the accessibility guidelines regarding to web menus

Web pages are composed of elements, such as menus that are responsible for assisting navigation on the website. However, many of the menus are not developed properly, which creates accessibility barriers and hinders access to the contents. This paper aims to present a method for creating accessible menus. Initially, we studied the different types of menus and the accessibility guidelines involving the creation of accessible menus. From the studies, we developed a meta-model that gave rise to AMenu language, where we included all the technical details regarding to accessibility. Then, we developed the AMeG tool to facilitate the use of language. Finally, we conducted a case study with developers, in order to verify the feasibility of the approach, arguing its efficiency and limitations. The results indicate a reduction in efforts to develop accessible web menus, since developers do not have to deal with technical details of accessibility.FAPESP (2013/23966-8

Um Mapeamento Sistemático sobre Acessibilidade e Usabilidade no Desenvolvimento de Jogos Digitais para Idosos

Este mapeamento buscou conhecer como, quando e onde aspectos de acessibilidade e usabilidade são abordados durante o desenvolvimento de jogos digitais para usuários idosos. Abordamos 20.270 resultados iniciais, amostramos 1.755 e identificamos 46 publicações após o processo do mapeamento. Os resultados deste mapeamento mostraram uma preferência em pesquisas que abordem avaliação de acessibilidade e de usabilidade neste domínio. Este mapeamento também evidenciou que, neste domínio e na amostragem considerada, pesquisas apenas abordaram acessibilidade quando usabilidade também foi abordada por alguma razão. Ainda, as análises de resultados indicaram a predominância significativa ($\chi^2 = 45.9103$, p-valor < .01) de abordagens que consideram usabilidade (43) sobre abordagens que consideram acessibilidade (11). Neste contexto, sugerimos questões de pesquisa para revisões sistemáticas futuras na área

SEDA: Sistema para Exploração de Diretrizes de Acessibilidade

Atualmente milhões de indivíduos em todo o mundo enfrentam diariamente dificuldades devido à falta de recursos acessíveis para obterem informações. Tendo em mente esse problema foram criados diversos conjuntos de diretrizes de acessibilidade com o intuito de orientar, por meio de recomendações, a criação de programas e conteúdos web mais acessíveis. Entretanto, tais conjuntos de diretrizes geralmente estão relacionadas com definições genéricas de deficiências e muitas vezes é difícil identificar quais diretrizes são mais adequadas para certos tipos de deficiências. Este trabalho propõe o uso do sistema denominado SEDA (Sistema para Exploração de Diretrizes de Acessibilidade) para auxiliar tanto na identificação de deficiências, para as quais não foram criadas diretrizes de acessibilidade específicas, quanto na identificação dos limites existentes ao se associar diretrizes de acessibilidade a deficiências. Nós também apresentaremos resultados de um estudo de caso baseado em um protótipo, demonstrando que o sistema pode auxilia pesquisadores na exploração de diretrizes de acessibilidade e apontando algum problemas na ontologia de deficiências da Organização Mundial de Saúde

Florch: challenges on developing a new social network accessible for senescent users

Brazilian senescent population can grow three times the actual number in the next 20 years [18], being over 88 million people in 2035. This senescent growing number brings new challenges on quality of life for Brazilian society. How to promote digital inclusion to this profile of user is still a challenge in the literature. We believe that a social network focused on senescent users can enhance the digital inclusion for them. However, it's essential that the social network be designed for senescent users. This study aims to create a project with this characteristics. We analyzed a successful social network (WhatsApp) in order to propose a new one (Florch) for senescent users. We developed a high fidelity prototype of Florch and tested it. Our findings show usability and accessibility problems faced on the project's development. In addition, a Hierarchical Task Analysis of our social network showed that it has less and simpler tasks than the successful social network (WhatsApp).Siena IdeaCAPESFAPES

An accessible video player for older people: issues from a user test

There is a huge availability of videos that have been produced in a very fast and wide way, along with the popularity of Internet. This scenario should be carefully considered by the video authors since many users have different needs. It is important to keep in mind the accessibility requirements so that any user can overcome the barriers to access content regardless of their limitations imposed by either impairment or some temporary restriction. The current video players present barriers for many people, especially to the elderly, and one of the main barriers is the restriction to reproduce videos accessible on the Web. This paper describes a research, and the design and evaluation of an accessible video player (called Facilitas), in which a user test with older people is conducted. As a result, we discuss the issues reported by older people and the controls that were developed to assist them.CAPES (PEC-PG)5th International Conference on Software Development and Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion (DSAI 2013).\ud Vigo, Spain. 13-15 november 2013

Web Videos: concerns about accessibility based on User Centered Design

Recently, the production and availability of multimedia Web content, as videos, have increased. In this scenario it is important to consider accessibility requirements so that any user can whelm the barriers to access content regardless of the limitations imposed by either deficiency or some temporary restriction. One of the main barriers found in the current players is the restriction to make videos accessible on the Web and little research on how to overcome those limitations has been conducted. This paper describes the three phases of User Centered Design, in which an evaluation with real users of an accessible video player is conducted. A video player, called Facilitas, is proposed in order to provide the rationale of how some of those barriers or limitations could be overcome. Its controls are new and different from the ones in other players. We have observed that by reducing accessibility barriers, the design process leads to an improved product in terms of usability. A user testing is described to explain which controls users frequently use to complete a task.CAPES (PEC-PG)5th International Conference on Software Development and Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion (DSAI 2013). \ud Vigo, Spain. 13-15 november 2013

A METHOD FOR CLASSIFYING USABILITY FINDINGS TO ENHANCE VALIDATION OF NEW HEURISTICS

Different usability heuristics have been proposed as new application domains arise. Such proposals usually depend on the validation of the new heuristics. However, current validation methods are still biased by subjective comparisons of usability findings. In this paper, we aimed to enhance the process of matching usability finding descriptions and mitigate the bias of such process. To reach our goal, we adopted ontology techniques to extend the User Action Framework for the context of validating new usability heuristics. We tested three hypotheses about the feasibility of our new framework based on a case study with 173 usability findings. These usability findings were retrieved from an online project of a private mobile browser. Our data analysis of supported merging three classification schemes for our framework: User Action Framework, Typical Usability Defects (from ISO) and the heuristics of Nielsen. Finally, we describe a logical process for our method, because some of the contents from the classification schemes are not disjoint