Authors:
Gisela Kollotzek
1
;
Gottfried Zimmermann
1
;
Tobias Ableitner
1
and
Anne-Marie Nebe
2
Affiliations:
1
Competence Center for Digital Accessibility, Stuttgart Media University, Nobelstr. 10, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany
;
2
T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH, Competence Center for Digital Accessibility & Software Ergonomics, Riesaer Str. 5, 01129 Dresden, Germany
Keyword(s):
Comparative Study, Conformance, Disability, Empirical Evaluation, Expert Evaluation, Guidelines, Web Accessibility, Accessibility Evaluation Method, WCAG.
Abstract:
The relevance of information technology has increased significantly over the last couple of years and therefore it is important to provide for universal access to it. Accessibility of public sector websites has become legally binding through Directive (EU) 2016/2102 for EU member states. Automatic accessibility evaluation methods can only provide a superficial impression of the accessibility status. Only manual evaluation methods can facilitate a comprehensive accessibility check. So far, there is no systematic comparison of existing manual evaluation methods available that is based on real data. In this paper, we define a generic catalog of 22 criteria for assessing the quality of accessibility evaluation methods and specify individual weights for the criteria. We then compare two representatives of manual evaluation methods: BIK BITV-Test, as a representative of conformance-based methods; and BITV-Audit, as a representative of empiric-based methods. We analyze similarities and diff
erences between these two methods, and identify weaknesses and strengths. Our results show an advantage of BITV-Audit over BIK BITV-Test, but other weightings could yield different results.
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