Internet Accessibility for Blind and Visually-Impaired Users: An Evaluation of Official U.S. State and Territory COVID-19 Websites

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most health information was moved to an online format for easier dissemination. However, many of these health websites may not be accessible to users who are visually impaired, such as people who use screen readers and magnifiers. This study aimed to test the accessibility of 55 U.S. state and territory COVID-19 websites using 3 automated accessibility checker tools (MAUVE++, CynthiaSays, and AChecker). The homepage, testing, and vaccine pages for each state/territory were tested. Accessibility violations were categorized based on their relevance to visual impairment and compared between categories. Individuals who have vision loss but still access the websites visually are the most likely to be affected, with relevant accessibility violations detected in 81% of the checked cases. In addition, states/territories were ranked by their accessibility ratings. Our findings emphasize the need to improve the accessibility of public-facing health informational websites and provide suggestions for remedies.

Trends in the Proceedings of the International Annual Meeting of the Human Factors AND Ergonomics Society (2021)

“…Lectures incorporating this word include "User Experience and Evaluation." This word appeared frequently in conference proceedings titles such as "Tele-Technology Evaluation and User Testing with Persons Aging with Long-Term Mobility Disabilities" (Wu et al, 2021), "Internet Accessibility for Blind and Visually-Impaired Users: An Evaluation of Official U.S. State and Territory COVID-19 Websites" (Hewitt & He, 2021), and "User Needs of Smart Home Services" (FakhrHosseini et al, 2021).…”

Cognitive Load and Website Usability: Effects of Contrast and Task Difficulty

“…According to WCAG criteria 1.4.3, text is required to have a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 and interactive components and large text are required to have a contrast ratio of 3:1 (Accessibility Guidelines Working Group, 2022). While this criterion is expected to be met by all web developers, our recent study found that 87% of official U.S. state and territory COVID-19 websites violated this guideline and contained content with insufficient text contrast (Hewitt & He, 2021). In the current study, we further investigated the effect of insufficient contrast on cognitive load and website usability if these errors remain uncorrected.…”

“…The stimulus websites were built using Wix's free website builder (https://wix.com). The websites were all based on COVID-19 informational sites, with their layouts and designs based on the best-performing sites from Hewitt & He (2021). Sites were hidden from search engine results to limit the potential of dated information spreading beyond experimental procedures.…”

An Assessment of Accessibility and Usability of Saudi Online FinTech Services for People with Disabilities

“…Three online web accessibility evaluation tools were employed: MAUVE++ [32], Siteimprove [33], and WAVE [34]. These tools have seen wide use in the literature [35][36][37][38][39][40] and all of them are listed by the W3C as appropriate for evaluation against the WCAG 2.1 guidelines [15]. More than one tool was utilized so that the assessment would benefit from more features and functionality and the limitations of each tool might be offset [41].…”