The Accessibility Divide: The Visually-Impaired and Access to Online News

Abstract

Equal access to resources is a central tenet of American democracy. As the United States moves toward an information-based economy, the concept of public resource has expanded to include information resources such as the Internet. Equality in Internet access is important because of the effects that Internet usage has on both the individual and societal level. Individuals with Internet access have advantages over those without access in several important areas: economic (e.g., the ability to purchase goods for better prices in a wide range of categories; the ability to electronically manage and enact financial transactions); health (e.g., the ability to instantly obtain detailed information on a wide range of health-related topics; the ability to research and better understand illness conditions); and lifestyle (e.g., the ability to participate in online support and discussion groups). On a societal level, Internet use has been linked to increases in civic engagement, interpersonal trust, and life contentment (Shah, Kwak, & Holbert, 2001). The effects of the Internet in these areas are even greater for some individuals than the influences of traditional media (Shah, McLeod, & Yoon, 2001). Beyond the advantages presented by Internet access in general, equality in online news access is of specific importance. One of the most important uses of the Internet is obtaining current events and news information; nearly half of online users say that visiting newspaper Web sites is their top online activity (CyberAtlas, 2003). It is estimated that 61% of Internet users go online for news at least once a week and 27% obtain online news everyday (Pastore, 2000). Individuals' preferences for online news reflects perceptions that these news sources provide benefits unobtainable through traditional news outlets. Among such benefits: information unavailable elsewhere, the ability to find topics of interest through search features, greater convenience, and information that is more up-to-date and in-depth (Pew Research Center, 2000). Early analyses of equality in Internet access focused on demographic variables. However, as Internet access has become more universal (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2002), discussions of equality in access have moved beyond demographics to address the disabled population (Bush, 2001), with particular emphasis on the visually impaired (Schloss, 2001; Ranen, 2002). Since near-universal Internet connectivity suggests that most visually-impaired individuals can electronically connect to online news sites, the question remains as to the extent to which this connection results in meaningful, and thus equal, access. The visually impaired have meaningful access only if Internet-based information is presented in a way that lets web page content be clearly decoded, processed, and read aloud by assistive technologies such as automated screen readers, the most common way by which the visually impaired access Internet-based information (Held, 2000). Screen readers have the potential to speak all text and to orally describe all of the graphics on a particular Web page--that is, to put into words what is written in text and/or shown in a particular picture or diagram. However, only when designers provide descriptive labels for graphics and clear descriptions of link options do screen readers work well to communicate page content (Lescher, 2000). This study evaluates the extent to which online news is accessible to the visually impaired. Method The accessibility of online news content was evaluated through the use of an artificial intelligence expert system and a content analysis. The expert system determined whether the underlying code used on an online news Web page was sufficient for an automated screen reader to make sense of the content. The result of this evaluation was pass or fail. A content analysis of failing sites determined the extent of problems. …