Skip to main content
Article
E-Government Web Accessibility: WCAG 1.0 versus WCAG 2.0 Compliance
International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications
  • Faouzi Kamoun
  • Emad Bataineh
  • Basel M. Al Mourad
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2013
Abstract

Most e-governments have traditionally used version 1.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as a basis to ensure that their websites are accessible by people with disabilities. This was reflected in their design guidelines, accessibility evaluations, policy-making and legislations. Recently, WCAG 2.0 emerged as an ISO/IEC International accessibility standard that has been recommended for adoption by the W3C WAI. This paper seeks to examine if there is a need for e-governments to reassess their web accessibility conformance, in light of the latest WCAG 2.0 standard. A case study related to the 21 Dubai e-government websites is presented whereby accessibility is evaluated based on the WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 guidelines and using automated accessibility testing tools. We found that WCAG 2.0 conformance testing identified some notable accessibility issues that were not revealed by WCAG 1.0 conformance testing. Hence we recommend that egovernments should develop and update their web content and accessibility policies to conform to the latest WCAG 2.0 guidelines and success criteria. Additional implications for practice and academic research are also provided.

Disciplines
Indexed in Scopus
No
Open Access
No
http://sdiwc.net/digital-library/egovernment-web-accessibility-wcag-10-versus-wcag-20-compliance.html
Citation Information
Faouzi Kamoun, Emad Bataineh and Basel M. Al Mourad. "E-Government Web Accessibility: WCAG 1.0 versus WCAG 2.0 Compliance" International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications Vol. 3 (2013) p. 390 - 399
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/emad-bataineh/19/