E-Government Web Accessibility: WCAG 1.0 versus WCAG 2.0 Compliance

Faouzi Kamoun
Emad BatainehFollow
Basel M. Al Mourad

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications

Publication Date

1-1-2013

Abstract

Most e-governments have traditionally used version 1.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as a basis to ensure that their websites are accessible by people with disabilities. This was reflected in their design guidelines, accessibility evaluations, policy-making and legislations. Recently, WCAG 2.0 emerged as an ISO/IEC International accessibility standard that has been recommended for adoption by the W3C WAI. This paper seeks to examine if there is a need for e-governments to reassess their web accessibility conformance, in light of the latest WCAG 2.0 standard. A case study related to the 21 Dubai e-government websites is presented whereby accessibility is evaluated based on the WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 guidelines and using automated accessibility testing tools. We found that WCAG 2.0 conformance testing identified some notable accessibility issues that were not revealed by WCAG 1.0 conformance testing. Hence we recommend that egovernments should develop and update their web content and accessibility policies to conform to the latest WCAG 2.0 guidelines and success criteria. Additional implications for practice and academic research are also provided.

Volume

3

First Page

390

Last Page

399

Disciplines

Computer Sciences

Indexed in Scopus

no

Open Access

no

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