The relationship between accessibility and usability of websites

Accessibility and usability are well established concepts for user interfaces and websites. Usability is precisely defined, but there are different approaches to accessibility. In addition, different possible relationships could exist between problems encountered by disabled and nondisabled users, yet little empirical data have been gathered on this question. Guidelines for accessibility and usability of websites provide ratings of the importance of problems for users, yet little empirical data have been gathered to validate these ratings. A study investigated the accessibility of two websites with 6 disabled (blind) and 6 non-disabled (sighted) people. Problems encountered by the two groups comprised two intersecting sets, with approximately 15% overlap. For one of the two websites, blind people rated problems significantly more severely than sighted people. There was high agreement between participants as to the severity of problems, and agreement between participants and researcher...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Helen Petrie, Omar Kheir
• Keywords: Author Keywords Accessibility, CHI 2007, Human Computer Interaction, Little Empirical Data, Websites Provide Ratings