A survey on the accessibility awareness of people involved in web development projects in Brazil

ABSTRACT

Accessibility has become a very important issue to promote inclusion in the Information Society, and people involved in Web development projects have a very important role to contribute with the development of a more inclusive Web. In this paper, we propose an investigation on the accessibility awareness of people involved in Web development in Brazil. We have conducted the research by means of an exploratory survey with a Web based questionnaire and a sample with subjects from academy, industry and government. The study had 613 valid answers and involved representatives from all of the 27 states of Brazil. The results show that accessibility is still far from being actually considered in Web development projects in Brazil, as only 19.9% of the participants have stated that accessibility is considered in their projects. The lack of education on accessibility, as well as the poor spread of the Brazilian accessibility law are important issues to be dealt with to boost a stronger accessibility awareness among people involved in Web development.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
developers, perception, survey, web accessibility