Abstract
India has 27 million citizens disabled in some form, which include visual, cognitive, and motor impairment among others. This paper evaluates accessibility of three important Indian websites using multiple tools. Conformance to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) was evaluated with a set of Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)-listed online tools. The Cambridge Simulator was used to evaluate accessibility with respect to visual and motor impairment. The websites of the following organizations were evaluated: Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). The ticket booking sequence for the IRCTC website, real-time data access section for the CPCB website, and the student admission sequence in the IISc website were selected for assessment. Our evaluation found that the availability of insufficient color contrast was a common error in the IRCTC and CPCB websites, with several instances where the contrast ratio was below the stipulated value of 4.5. Additionally, all functionality of the content was not operable through a keyboard interface. The IRCTC website used too small font size as hyperlinks, which would be difficult to select for users with a spasm or tremor, caused by minor motor impairment. All websites have missing alternative text, required by screen readers to describe image and audio elements to visually impaired users. It was also noted that on many occasions designers used too small font size and interelement spacing for hyperlinks, despite having screen space for a larger font size and interelement spacing. The WCAG and Royal National Institute of Blind (RNIB) specify standards of a minimum font size for websites and we recommend designers follow similar guidelines for interelement spacing as well. In conclusion, the merits and limitation of the tools used for evaluation have been discussed.
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Mounika, P., Karia, D., Sharma, K., Biswas, P. (2019). Accessibility Evaluation of Three Important Indian Websites. In: Chakrabarti, A. (eds) Research into Design for a Connected World. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 134. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5974-3_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5974-3_21
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