Widen your vision: from technical accessibility to semantic intelligibility of information

Abstract

Access to information and digital services is a fundamental right. To this end, websites and digital services must be designed in accordance with international technical standards, in particular the guidelines for the accessibility of Internet pages issued by the World Wide Web Consortium and, in addition, with national technical standards. However, people with disabilities are still at great risk of digital exclusion. Thus, our research is interested in examining (1) to what extent do technical standards support people with visual impairments (PVI) to overcome the digital divide, and (2) to what extent the digital information of an electronic state voting system is understood by PVI. To answer these research questions, we combined an interpretive literature review with a bibliometric analysis and conducted a three cycles action research in the context of an electronic state voting system in Switzerland. Inspired by the communication theory of Shannon and Weaver, our results show that to bridge the digital divide for PVI, it is necessary to improve (1) the technical accessibility of information and (2) the semantic intelligibility of information. Considering the comments of PVI on semantic intelligibility of information helps to improve information systems (IS) and to overcome the digital divide. IS designers and coders must rely on ex ante standards during development.