Abstract
The technologies have received predominant interest in the tourism industry. The increase of technology and wireless connection reduces time and distance limitation which leads to a positive communication and relationship between suppliers and consumers. However, are the web tools properly designed and coded, to be used by people with disabilities? This paper was aimed to present the results of the web accessibility of tourism websites. Each homepage was analyzed in terms of the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) web accessibility. The majority of tourism websites homepages were found to fail one or more of the W3C web accessibility measures which means disabled users may have substantial problems when accessing websites. Several suggestions on how to improve the accessibility of the websites are then offered. This study contributed to the discussion about the use of tourism technologies by people with disabilities.
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
World Travel & Tourism Council Site Website, https://www.wttc.org/, last accessed 2019/06/21.
Buhalis, D. & Law, R. Progress in Information Technology and Tourism Management: 20 Years On and 10 Years After the Internet—The State of eTourism Research. Tourism Management 29: pp. 609-623 (2008).
W3C Website, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), https://www.w3.org/WAI/, last accessed 2019/08/5.
Devile, E. “Desenvolvimento do Turismo Acessível: dos argumentos sociais aos argumentos de mercado”, Revista Turismo & Desenvolvimento, nº11, pp. 39-46 (2009).
W3C Website, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/, last accessed 2019/05/5
NGA Plan Website, Accessibility, http://www.nga.gov.gr/index.php/accessibility/?lang=en, last accessed 2019/06/5.
International Organisation for Standardisation ISO 16071:2003 Ergonomics of human-system interaction—guidance on software accessibility, Switzerland (2003).
Hornbaek, K. 2006. Current practice in measuring usability: challenges to usability studies and research, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 64(2), pp. 79-102 (2006).
International Organization for Standardization, Ergonomics of human-system interaction - Part 171: Guidance on software accessibility, ISO 9241-171:2008, http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=39080, last accessed 2019/04/5.
Reid, L.G., Vanderheiden, G., Cooper, M., and Caldwell, B. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. W3C (2008).
Koo, C., Gretzel, U., Hunter, W. C., & Chung, N. The role of IT in tourism. Asia Pacific Journal of Information Systems, 25(1), pp. 99-104 (2015).
Abowd, G. D., Atkeson, C. G., Hong, J., Long, S., Kooper, R., & Pinkerton, M. (1997). Cyberguide: A mobile context-aware tour guide. Wireless networks, 3(5), pp. 421-433 (1997).
Dickinson, J. E., Ghali, K., Cherrett, T., Speed, C., Davies, N., & Norgate, S. Tourism and the smartphone app: Capabilities, emerging practice and scope in the travel domain. Current Issues in Tourism, 17(1), pp. 84-10 (2014).
Smita Jhajharia et al, / (IJCSIT) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technologies, Vol. 5 (4), pp. 5700-5704 (2014)
Achecker Website, http://achecker.ca/checker/index.php, https://www.wttc.org/, last accessed 2019/07/11.
Gambino, O., Pirrone, R. and Giorgio. Gambino, O., Pirrone, R. & Giorgio, F.D. Univ Access Inf Soc (2016) pp. 15: 305 (2016).
Marques, L. F. C., Guilhermino, D. F., de Araújo Cardoso, M. E., da Silva Neitzel, R. A. L., Lopes, L. A., Merlin, J. R., and dos Santos Striquer, G. Accessibility in Virtual Communities of Practice Under the Optics of Inclusion of Visually Impaired. In International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction, pp. 14-26. Springer International Publishing (2016).
Wave website, Web accessibility in mind, https://wave.webaim.org/webaim.org/, last accessed 2019/06/11.
SimilarWeb website, Market Intelligence Solutions, https://www.similarweb.com/, last accessed 2019/06/11.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this paper
Cite this paper
Gonçalves, M.J.A., Camarinha, A.P., Abreu, A.J., Teixeira, S., da Silva, A.F. (2020). Web Accessibility in the Tourism Sector: An Analysis of the Most Used Websites in Portugal. In: Rocha, Á., Abreu, A., de Carvalho, J., Liberato, D., González, E., Liberato, P. (eds) Advances in Tourism, Technology and Smart Systems. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 171. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2024-2_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2024-2_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-2023-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-2024-2
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)