Improving Web-based civic information access: a case study of the 50 US states

Abstract

An analysis of the home pages of all fifty U. S. states reveals great variety in key design features that influence efficacy. Some states had excessively large byte counts that would slow users connected by commonly-used 56K modems. Many web sites had low numbers of or poorly organized links that would make it hard for citizens to find what they were interested in. Features such as search boxes, privacy policies, online help, or contact information need to be added by several states. Our analysis concludes with ten recommendations and finds many further opportunities for individual states to improve their websites. However still greater benefits will come through collaboration among the states that would lead to consistency, appropriate tagging, and common tools.

Evaluation of web accessibility in China: changes from 2009 to 2013

“…Researchers have investigated the accessibility of websites in the USA [1][2][3][4], UK [5], Australia [6], and Korea [7]. Some other researchers have evaluated web accessibility worldwide [8,9] or compared the accessibility of different kinds of websites [10].…”

“…Given the fact that many websites fail to achieve web accessibility, a phenomenon that has been widely revealed by many researchers [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], there is likelihood that Chinese websites may have major accessibility problems; however, there is a lack of research into the accessibility of Chinese websites. This paper thus aims to provide an overview of the status of web accessibility in China according to two evaluations, one in 2009 and the other in 2013.…”

Web accessibility in the Mid-Atlantic United States: a study of 50 homepages

“…The state government sites were examined to determine if they had a statement addressing the accessibility of their Web sites [5]. Only 19 out of 50 states included a statement about the accessibility of their Web sites [5].…”

“…The state government sites were examined to determine if they had a statement addressing the accessibility of their Web sites [5]. Only 19 out of 50 states included a statement about the accessibility of their Web sites [5]. While the sites in that study were not examined for accessibility problems, it is quite likely that many of the other sites had not even considered accessibility as an issue.…”

One year older, but not necessarily wiser: an evaluation of homepage accessibility problems over time

“…Recent research has found that large percentages (70-98%, depending on the category of site) of web sites are not accessible. For instance, in recent studies, private and non-profit web sites [5], forprofit commerce web sites [12], U.S. state web sites [1], and even U.S. Federal web sites [11] were found to have major accessibility problems.…”