Abstract
All citizens have the right to access information from their government. At both the federal and state levels in the United States, citizens with impairments expect the same access to government information as anyone else. When government information is available on a web site, that information must be accessible for people with impairments. People with perceptual, motor, and/or cognitive impairments may access web sites using different assistive technologies, such as screen readers or alternative keyboards, or may need content in alternative formats (e.g. a transcript needs to exist for any audio). In cooperation with the Maryland Technology Assistance Program, a research group from Towson University evaluated Maryland state government web sites for accessibility. The goal of this paper is to report on how well Maryland state government web sites are currently meeting the needs of these diverse user populations. This is a major issue: recent population estimates indicate that approximately 112 000 individuals in Maryland between the ages of 16 and 74 have a sensory impairment, and 281 000 individuals in Maryland between the ages of 16 and 74 have a physical impairment (see www.ilr.cornell.edu/edi/DisabilityStatistics/acs.cfm for more population statistics).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bailey J, Burd (2005) Web accessibility evolution in the United Kingdom. In: Proceedings of the 7th IEEE International Symposium on Web Site Evolution (WSE 2005), Budapest, Hungary
Bertot J, Jaeger P (2006) User-centered e-government: challenges and benefits for government websites. Government Information Quarterly, 23(2): 163–168
Chen Y, Chen Y, Shao M (2005) Accessibility diagnosis on the government web sites in Taiwan, R.O.C. In: Proceedings of the International Cross-disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A 2006), Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Fagen J, Fagen B (2004) An accessibility study of state legislative web sites. Government Information Quarterly, 21(1): 65–85
Freire A, Bittar T, Fortes R (2008) An approach based on metrics for monitoring web accessibility in Brazilian municipalities web sites. In: Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, Ceará, Brazil
Goette T, Collier C, Whilte J (2006) An exploratory study of the accessibility of state government web sites. Universal Access in the Information Society, 5(1): 41–50
Hackett S, Parmento B, Zeng X (2004) Accessibility of internet websites through time. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2004), Atlanta, GA, US
Jaeger P (2006) Assessing section 508 compliance on federal e-government websites: a multi-method, user-centered evaluation of accessibility for persons with disabilities. Government Information Quarterly, 23(2): 169–190
Kane S, Shulman J, Shockley T, Ladner R (2007) A web accessibility report card for top international university web sites. In: Proceedings of the International Cross-disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2007), Banff, Alberta, Canada
Lazar J, Beere P, Greenidge K, Nagappa Y (2003) Web accessibility in the Mid-Atlantic United States: a study of 50 web sites. Universal Access in the Information Society, 2(4): 331–341
Lazar J, Dudley-Sponaugle A, Greenidge K (2004) Improving web accessibility: a study of webmaster perceptions. Computers in Human Behavior, 20(2): 269–288
Lazar J, Greenidge K (2006) One year older, but not necessarily wiser: an evaluation of homepage accessibility problems over time. Universal Access in the Information Society, 4(4): 285–291
Loiacono E, McCoy S (2004) Web site accessibility: an online sector analysis. Information Technology and People, 17(1): 87–101
Mankoff J, Fait H, Tran T (2005) Is your web page accessible? A comparative study of methods for assessing web page accessibility for the blind. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2005), Portland, OR, US
Paris M (2006) Website accessibility: a survey of local e-government web sites and legislation in Northern Ireland. Universal Access in the Information Society, 4(4): 292– 299
Shah B, Shakya S (2007) Evaluating the web accessibility of websites of the central government of Nepal. In: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Theory and Practice of eElectronic Governance (ICEGOV 2007), Macao, China
Sullivan T, Matson R (2000) Barriers to use: usability and content accessibility on the web’s most popular sites. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Universal Usability, Arlington, VA, US
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag London Limited
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lazar, J. et al. (2010). Investigating the Accessibility of State Government Web Sites in Maryland. In: Langdon, P., Clarkson, P., Robinson, P. (eds) Designing Inclusive Interactions. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-166-0_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-166-0_7
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-84996-165-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-84996-166-0
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)