Analysis of web accessibility in social networking services through blind users’ perspective and an accessible prototype

Abstract

It is not just in architectural contexts that accessibility concern is present: accessibility in web portals is also a right guaranteed by law to people with any kind of disability in many countries, and Brazil takes part in this group. Although extensive researches focused on web accessibility were developed recently, not all areas were contemplated with these efforts. Social networking services are a great example of sites that ask for more attention in this field. They are important tools for integration of disabled people, but still lack web accessibility features. This paper presents an evaluation of the web accessibility of three major social networking services – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – by the perspective of blind users, applying the WCAG 2.0 success criteria. Analysis demonstrated that there are many issues to be addressed in order to improve web accessibility for visually impaired in this domain. Besides that, a prototype of an accessible social networking service was proposed based on an instance of Elgg framework, where the experiences about web accessibility gathered with this study were applied.