An Empirical Study to Evaluate the Accessibility of Arabic Websites by Low Vision Users

Empirical study to identify the web accessibility issues in the Arabic version of websites can play a vital role to improve the quality of the website. World Health Organization (WHO) reported that more than one billion people having a different kind of disability. United Nation (U.N.) assembly prepared and passed a treaty in 2006 to protect and provide the rights of people with disability. The article 9 of treaty enforce all countries to identify and overcome the difficulties which hurdle the disabled people from accessing their environment, transportation, public facilities, services and information and communication technologies (ICT). Web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) exists since the last two decades but still disable users are not able to benefit from the services provided by the website adequately. The research team found some web accessibility evaluation studies which are conducted mostly in western countries by involving the disable users for task-based evaluation for the English version of websites. However, our knowledge is quite low about the problems faced by disabled users of Arabic websites. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research study which applied on the Arabic version of web sites to get the empirical evidence by involving the disable users in accessibility audit process. In this study, five Saudi Ministry web sites selected for accessibility evaluation based on their frequency of usage. Twenty-five low-vision participants participated in this study. Each participant was given a set of task to perform on each chosen website. Participants in this study were asked to complete the task and rate the overall level of difficulty to accomplish the task on five-level scales. Problems faced by participants recorded, and the difficulty level to overcome each problem rated on five-level scales. After completing the task, each participant rated the level of compliance of the website using five-level scales with the web content accessibility guidelines 2.0. The study concluded that selected Arabic websites are not designed fully by applying the existing WCAG 2.0. However, many accessibility problems faced by disable user are complex, which cannot be addressed only by the current checklist. The conclusion enforces the involvement of disable user is significant in design and evaluation to improve the accessibility. Moreover, the research team believes that empirical evidence generated by this research study is an addition to the current body of accessibility evidence.