Accessibility metrics of web pages for blind end-users

Abstract

The Internet offers new possibilities to the access of information, but sometimes the design of web pages obstructs the contents making them inaccessible to everybody, especially for those people with visual disabilities. Accessibility of web pages is an area that is gaining more and more interest. Not only do we have technique recommendations from the World Wide Web Consortium but also legal policies following these recommendations in several countries. In order to measure the fulfilment of these guidelines, different tools have been designed. These tools are useful mainly from the point of view of designers. However, they do not offer a global indicator of accessibility to end-users at the moment of surfing the net. For visually handicapped people, especially blind people, not only is a way necessary to know the degree of accessibility of web pages when being visited (not only the page as a whole, but also the different parts of the page). In the context of the project KAI (Kit for the Accessibility to the Internet), an accessibility measurement module has been developed, able to give a global indicator of accessibility at the moment of surfing the net. Moreover, the degree to which accessibility can be obtained in an independent way for each element belonging to the web page. This paper presents the main ideas behind this module. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.