Description
Various disabilities, as well as motor and cognitive limitations, cause challenges for the use of online services. More than a billion people worldwide have disability, and more than a million people in Finland alone have challenges in using online services. There is therefore a huge need for accessible online services. However, at the same time, even 97.4% of websites worldwide do not meet the WCAG 2 accessibility criteria. Lack of education and motivation seems to be a major cause of poor accessibility. Producing accessible web services is also seen as challenging task and seen limiting visual creativity. The general myth seems to be that accessible web design cannot be visually pleasing, and it is inevitably simplistic and boring.
The purpose of this study was to determine whether it is possible to make an accessible website visually pleasing or whether compliance with accessibility guidelines impairs the visual appearance of the web service.
Research stimuli’s were created based on websites which were problematic according to WCAG cri-teria. Visually accessible modified control versions were also created for each home page. Visually accessible control versions were corrected to meet WCAG 2.1AA requirements. A total of 12 static image stimuli were used in the study (N = 122). Study was conducted with a between-subject design; therefore one subject saw only a visually inaccessible or accessible image version of the home page and evaluated the visual appeal of the page they saw using a VisAWI meter.
It was examined whether visually accessible home page images modified in accordance with the WCAG 2.1 accessibility guidelines would perform worse in terms of their visual aesthetic than their control versions, which did not have similar criteria and limitations behind their appearance.
Hypotheses were tested in a multilevel model and by comparison of stimulus pairs. The study found that visually accessible homepages were found to be as visually pleasing as the orig-inal non-accessible versions.
Disclaimer:
Accessible EU is not responsible for the accessibility of content provided by third parties.
If the acquisition or download of the referenced publications involves any cost, Accessible EU is not responsible for it and does not obtain any type of benefit from the associated sale.