Is an Accessible Website a More Usable One?

Abstract

The effect of the World Wide Web is noticeable in organizations, businesses, societies, and individuals. When websites are evaluated, two important website qualities are examined, accessibility and usability. E‐accessibility is “a measure of the extent to which a product or service can be used by a person with a disability as effectively as it can be used by a person without that disability for purposes of accessing or using ICT related products or services” (Qatar’s e‐Accessibility Policy, 2011). Several studies have explored the accessibility status of websites and studied the effect of accessible websites on users, especially users with special needs. Many tools have been developed to automatically assess accessibility. It remains difficult to convince organizations to make their websites accessible. The author was motivated to explore if accessibility makes websites more usable. If such claim turns out to be true, it will become economically persuasive to convince website owners to invest in accessibility. I present a framework to study the impact of website accessibility on its usability through a five‐stage methodology. A total of seven tools were selected to be used to assess both accessibility and usability. Then, a framework was produced to act as a single tool for website usability measurement

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