Easy to Read (E2R) and Access for All (A4A): A Step to Determine the Understandability and Accessibility of Websites

Abstract

Online travel agency (OTA) plays a crucial role in travel and tourism business for the dissemination of information from business to customer (B2C) to plan, contrast, decide, and book their travel-related product and service online. However, it could be only possible when their websites are easily accessible, understandable, and readable for all the users especially persons with disabilities (PwDs). This study addresses the importance and issues of web accessibility and readability of OTA websites, their relevance, and rankings with corporations to find their overall performance regarding accessible tourism perspective. Using multiple online automatic evaluation tools based on WCAG 2.0 guidelines to analyze 35 OTA websites belongs to three US international corporations. Based on the result obtained, the ranking comparison of websites conducted and suggestions are provided to enhance their rankings in terms of attributes used. Finally, some implications regarding the identified issues are discussed and further enhancement of the work is proposed.