Worcester Polytechnic Institute Study Finds Most Federal Web Sites Are Not Fully Accessible to the Disabled

WORCESTER, Mass., June 11, 2003 -- Most federal Web sites do not meet the government's own accessibility standards for disabled citizens, according to a new study by a team of researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). The study's results indicate that 67 percent of the 417 federal sites studied do not provide fully accessible sites based on its own Section 508 criteria. Section 508 calls for all electronic and information technology purchased by the federal government to be usable by people with disabilities.

The WPI research team of WPI assistant professors of management Eleanor T. Loiacono and Scott McCoy, and computer science undergraduate William Chin spent seven weeks examining the Web sites of 317 agencies and offices from all three federal branches, as well as those of the 100 largest federal contractors. They analyzed these sites to see how they complied with federal guidelines for accessibility in their report, entitled "Freedom of Access: A Study of Federal Website Accessibility."

The federal government is bound by two federal civil-rights statutes that address the availability of information technology to the nation's approximately 54 million disabled citizens: the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) of 1990, and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1973. The ADA requires that all workers with disabilities be able to access and use the technology needed to conduct their jobs.

"By failing to address accessibility issues, the government is neglecting not only federal law, but also a large number of its citizens and constituents with disabilities," said Loiacono. "By comparison, the federal accessibility numbers were much better than those for the private sector, but below the levels of institutions of higher education."

Additionally, the federal Web sites were reviewed by the research team using industry standards from the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), which was founded in 1996 by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is funded by a number of government agencies. The WAI guidelines have three priority levels based upon the site's accessibility -- 1 signifying the most serious accessibility obstacles, to 3 signifying the least. Using these standards, the study found that only 28 percent met the minimum Priority 1 level checklist. No site was completely free of Priority 2 and 3 access barriers. The most common error to Priority 1 access was the failure to provide alternative text for all images (63 percent of the sites).

Disabilities present many obstacles to those seeking full access to the Internet and the information and applications it holds. Those requiring Web design modifications include blindness, deafness and various levels of paralysis. Assistive technological devices such as Braille readers for the blind and voice-to-text translators for the deaf have improved life for many disabled people. However, most Web content was designed to only be seen on a monitor, heard via a speaker (audio files like the familiar "You've got mail"), and hand-navigated by the click of a computer mouse. People who do not have the ability to do even one of these tasks are missing a significant portion of the Web's content.

The concept of graceful degradation is a key component to a well-designed, accessible site. It allows devices like screen readers and other adaptive technologies supporting the disabled to convey the core content and meaning even if the original site has additional design components. It also provides for multiple options of navigation between and around Web pages. For example, this could be alternate computer code providing verbal descriptions for a blind person accessing Web images of paintings in the National Gallery of Art, or an embedded text transcription contained in a multimedia Internet file of a Presidential speech that a deaf person could access.

Fortunately, according to McCoy, it would only take a small investment for the government to make its Web sites more accessible, and this investment would have the added benefit of saving money in the long run. "Federal agencies and offices could achieve cost savings similar to those realized by banks in offering online banking. Rather than requiring face-to-face meetings during regular business hours, citizens could simply visit a Web site to access information or submit forms electronically. These e-government functions would be more efficient, and allow citizens who would have a difficult time visiting a local office to obtain needed information and conduct needed transactions."

About Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Founded in 1865, WPI is a pioneer in technological higher education. WPI was the first university to understand that students learn best when they have the opportunity to apply the knowledge they gain in the classroom to the solution of important problems. Today, its first-rate research laboratories support master's and Ph.D. programs in more than 30 disciplines in engineering, science and the management of technology.

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