The perception of the users organisations about the actual level of eAccessibility

At the end of 2010 and during the first quarter of 2011, an invitation to take part in the survey was sent to a large number of selected national organisations covering the 17 countries analysed by the study.

The survey was closed in mid May 2011 with an acceptable response rate (76 returned questionnaires from countries covered by the study) but the number of responses per country was not evenly distributed.

In fact, Norway, Hungary and The Netherlands are only represented by one national organisation despite the efforts spent contacting organisations from those countries and in trying to encourage their participation.

Nonetheless, the aim of this survey was not to get statistically significant results but to gather some information on the general perception of the end-users organisations about eAccessibility.

In this light, even considering the opinion of a limited number of organisations can provide a general trend of such dynamics. Thus, when reading the results of the survey, it is important to bear in mind that the results come only from a limited number organisations from each country (from 1 to 9) and, by no means, do they represent the opinion of all the organisations in each country.

In this chapter we give a brief overview of the results from the survey and compare them to the picture on the status of eAccessibility obtained by analysing the contributions of the national experts and correspondents.

Table 53 provides an overview of the scores given to the status of eAccessibility by the national experts and the corresponding perception of the national organisations.

However, if we analyse the average results at country level, the differences between the two scores may vary significantly.

The country in which the difference is the least is France, where there is only one point of difference (experts: 35; users organisations: 34) while the country with the highest difference is Canada, where the users organisations assign 30 points less than the experts to the overall status of eAccessibility (experts: 61; users organisations: 31).

The countries in which the difference between the two scores is lower than 10 points are all in the EU zone: in France, Germany (experts: 42; users organisations: 35) and Greece (experts: 30; users organisations: 26) the user organisations have assigned a lower score to the overall eAccessibility level perceived.

On the other hand, in the Czech Republic (experts: 37; users organisations: 44), Denmark (experts: 37; users organisations: 42), Hungary (experts: 23; users organisations: 31) and Portugal (experts: 36; users organisations: 44), the results from the survey were slightly better than the experts’ analysis.

In all the other countries the difference between the two scores is higher than 10 points, reaching 30 points in Canada.

The user organisations participating to the survey had a more positive perception of the level of eAccessibility in Sweden (+14), Australia (+12) and in the United States (+17), while in other nations the organisations were less impressed by the advancements in the field of eAccessibility in their country (United Kingdom: -13; Ireland and Norway: -15; Italy: -17; the Netherlands: -19; Spain: -21).

Figure . Correspondence between eAccessibility status and perception of the level of eAccessibility by organisations, per country

Source: Own elaboration, 2011. Unit: Units (max value: 100)

Figure . Correspondence between eAccessibility status and perception of the level of eAccessibility by organisations in the EU countries, per technology

Source: Own elaboration, 2011. Unit: Units (max value: 100)

Analysing the scores obtained in the EU countries from the perspective of the specific technologies, as shown in Figure 184, we can observe that the averages of the two plotted lines are similar.

Nonetheless, there are some differences in certain technological areas, both in positive and in negative: while Telephony (experts: 44; users organisations: 41), Television (experts: 33; users organisations: 35), Urban Environment (experts: 38; users organisations: 33) and Educational Environment (experts: 36; users organisations: 40) have similar scores from both points of view, the same cannot be said for other categories, especially the one regarding Assistive Technologies.

In both cases, the AT category is the one with the highest scores (experts: 74; users organisations: 50) but the users organisations have assigned this category 24 points less than the national experts.

To explain this anomaly we must first of all recognise that the positive outcome in this area is mainly due to the wide availability of AT solutions that can help people with disabilities overcome many digital barriers. Besides, their distribution is often helped by the presence of financial support schemes and by the existence of many AT support centres.

Even so, user organisations expressed many remarks on the significant variations in the quality and presence of support services that sometimes occur on a geographical basis (big cities against smaller towns), on the slow update frequency of the approved lists of ATs and on the lack of consistent financial schemes to support the acquisition of assistive solutions (often the ATs provided by the health system are not the best for the users organisations but simply the cheapest).

Internet, which due to the widespread use of websites and online services, has always been the most visible face of eAccessibility, is another field in which the opinions of experts and users organisations are slightly different.

Reading the figures, in both cases, we notice that, despite the presence of international accessibility guidelines and many national regulations, progress in this field is still slow.

Yet, this time, the users organisations have a more positive perception of the overall status of accessibility of the Internet in the EU (38 against 29 assigned by the national experts).

A plausible explanation for this difference can be found in how the two groups of observers have faced the task of assigning a level of accessibility to the websites in their countries.

The national experts have analysed the websites matching them against the different levels of accessibility established by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. In most cases, the websites will fail a strict validation process, obtaining a Level A, or even less, as a final result.

On the other hand, some comments from user organisations who took part in the survey, clearly stated that, in general, thanks to increasingly powerful AT software, most websites are now accessible to at least some degree, and that often only some specific sections of a website may be totally inaccessible.

This also suggests that the perception of the accessibility of a website is more often linked to the presence of inaccessible sections or services rather than to the overall technical level of accessibility that can be measured following the guidelines coming from the Web Accessibility Initiative of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

In the area of public procurement (experts: 52; users organisations: 39), the lower score given by the European user organisations may be due to the fact that, unlike national eAccessibility experts, the users organisations may not always be aware of the existence of laws and toolkits concerning the procurement of accessible ICT. Regulations in this field are often bound to the public sector alone thus making it difficult for the general users organisations to evaluate the level of enforcement.

The technologies related to the home environment and to the idea of independent living are still very young in terms of maturity and this can be clearly seen in the general score table (experts: 24; users organisations: 35).

Yet it seems that user organisations are more aware of the existence of such devices and services, especially telecare systems, probably because they are more informed on this matter and they may make use of such services themselves.

In the field of computers, the survey focused mainly on describing the quality and the availability of built-in accessibility features for retail personal computers.

The overall user perception for this particular aspect of computers is rather low (users organisations: 32) while the experts assign a score of 40, although it must be said that in the questionnaire for national experts, other aspects of computers were considered as well (software and hardware accessibility).

Figure . Difference between the perception of the user organisations and the status of eAccessibility reported by the experts in the EU zone, per technology

Source: Own elaboration, 2011. Unit: Units (on a scale of 100)