72 CHAPTER 5 E-GOVERNANCE WEBSITE ACCESSIBILITY EVALUATION BY AUTOMATIC TOOL’S PERSPECTIVE 5.1 Introduction The literature review chapter provided general and useful information about the usual status of E-Governance development, E-Governance websites accessibility in India, website users and about web accessibility concepts. However, in order to expand on the existing studies and before starting into the indepth investigation of the managers, content developers and end-user’s views, this chapter was started by the views of E-Governance websites accessibility evaluation by tool’s perspective in India. This method achieves the primary goal of the study which is to investigate the level of accessibility of existing E-Governance websites in India from the automatic evaluation tool’s perspective. The level of accessibility of the existing E-Governance websites in India was investigated by automatic web accessibility evaluation tools so as to verify the W3C guidelines on E-Governance websites, i.e. the WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 for developing accessible websites for disabled people. The tool study was addressed in order to gain an understanding of the existing accessibility guidelines and to check if they are properly implemented on E-Governance websites in India. This chapter is organized as follows; this chapter started with the introduction, then the goals for the automated tool testing method, followed by the methodology adopted in this study and further details the study outcomes. Furthermore it extends to give brief discussion about the study outcomes and ends with the summary and conclusion.
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72
CHAPTER 5
E-GOVERNANCE WEBSITE ACCESSIBILITY EVALUATION BY
AUTOMATIC TOOL’S PERSPECTIVE
5.1 Introduction
The literature review chapter provided general and useful information about the
usual status of E-Governance development, E-Governance websites accessibility in India,
website users and about web accessibility concepts.
However, in order to expand on the existing studies and before starting into the
indepth investigation of the managers, content developers and end-user’s views, this
chapter was started by the views of E-Governance websites accessibility evaluation by
tool’s perspective in India. This method achieves the primary goal of the study which is to
investigate the level of accessibility of existing E-Governance websites in India from the
automatic evaluation tool’s perspective.
The level of accessibility of the existing E-Governance websites in India was
investigated by automatic web accessibility evaluation tools so as to verify the W3C
guidelines on E-Governance websites, i.e. the WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 for developing
accessible websites for disabled people. The tool study was addressed in order to gain an
understanding of the existing accessibility guidelines and to check if they are properly
implemented on E-Governance websites in India.
This chapter is organized as follows; this chapter started with the introduction, then
the goals for the automated tool testing method, followed by the methodology adopted in
this study and further details the study outcomes. Furthermore it extends to give brief
discussion about the study outcomes and ends with the summary and conclusion.
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5.2 Goals of Automated Testing
Automated testing of the accessibility of websites through the use of special
software can have several benefits. Perhaps most importantly, automated testing can target
the coding of a site, providing insight into how extensively the accessibility issues were
considered in the design of the particular site.
The free testing tools offer a quick and inexpensive means to begin accessibility
testing, particularly since some automated products can be set to evaluate sites in terms of
a specific set of guidelines, such as WCAG 1.0, WCAG 2.0, Stanca act, Section 508, CSS.
Further, if the comprehensive versions that are available for automated testing programs
are purchased and installed, the software can help to guide developers in making a site
accessible as they are creating or modifying it.
Studies involving free automated testing tools are also generally the only test for
homepages of sites. There are two reasons for this tendency.
First, it makes some sense that a homepage would be one of the more accessible, if
not the most accessible, parts of a site. A homepage serves as the gateway though which an
entire site is accessed; without an accessible homepage, most users with disabilities would
be unable to reach other parts of the website. Homepages tend to be the best designed and
maintained pages on a site, and are generally managed by the primary office of an agency,
whereas sub-pages may be overseen by different departments within an organization
(Lazar et al. 2003; Sharma et al. 2008). Many previous studies that have employed
automated software tools have found that the results produced from testing the homepage
with automated software is generally representative of the results produced by testing
other pages on a site (Ellison 2004; Federici et al. 2005).
There is, however, a second reason that previous studies have focused on
homepages to websites when using automated testing tools. The free automated testing
tools primarily are designed to test one page at a time. Researchers likely have found it
easier to test the homepages as representative rather than testing each individual page of a
website.
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5.3 Methodology
We have considered four different categories of E-Governance websites for
evaluating their accessibility level for the easy use and access of disabled people. Under
each category we have selected eight to eleven websites which are frequently used by the
public, thus a total of 40 websites are used in our study. Next, the facilities provided by
each of the websites are minutely checked in terms of the accessibility guidelines WCAG
1.0 and WCAG 2.0. The accessibility parameters (WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0) are checked
using automatic evaluation tools. Figure 5.1 shows the methodology flow for automatic
tool evaluation on E-Governance websites.
Figure 5.1 Methodology Flow for Tool Evaluation
5.3.1 Tool selection
The first phase of the study was to choose an appropriate software tool to analyze
the site based on WCAG accessibility guidelines. In chapter 3, section 3.3.4.3 we have
discussed about the automatic tools to check the accessibility level of websites. Further
discussed the best tool to check accessibility level based on the report of Mifsud (2011).
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According to Justin Mifsud (2011), the AChecker is the best tool to analyze about
the accessibility of websites. ATRC University of Toronto, has developed a software
product, A-Checker, to analyze accessibility problems with Web pages. A-Checker is
based on WCAG 2.0,WCAG 1.0, Section 508, Stanca Act, BITV guidelines and can test
checkpoint levels A, AA and AAA (Fundacion CTIC 2009). For each of these checkpoints
A-Checker provides a detailed report of both automatic and human review problems.
Automatic issues are those errors that the software has checked based on the WCAG 2.0 &
WCAG 1.0 guidelines. Problems that are tagged as requiring human review are warnings
that are not always accurately measured by an automated tool and should be manually
checked by the Web designer. When errors or warnings are tagged, the researcher can click
on the specific error tag and a detailed explanation based on the WCAG guidelines will be
explained.
There is one limitation in the software tool is that it can only analyze one page at a
time, and cannot review the whole site. According to Ellison (2004), Lazar et al. (2003),
Federici et al. (2005); the consistent method of testing a website is its home page.
However, for the research of this study, we have checked with Home pages of each E-
Governance websites. Figure 5.2 shows the home screen of the AChecker tool.
Figure 5.2 Home Screen of AChecker tool (achecker.ca 2012)
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5.3.2 Description of Sample Web Sites Used For Analysis
According to Chander & Kush (2011) most of the Indian government departments
have individual websites that offer information and services directly to citizens, including
information for research, government forms and services, public policy information,
employment and business opportunities, voting information, tax filing, license registration
or renewal, payment of fines, and submission of comments to government officials.
Hence, we have selected four major categories (University’s websites, state
information websites, business and regulatory reform websites and recruitment board
websites) of 40 E-Governance websites by google search engine for this part of study.
Table 5.1 shows that the category wise E-Governance websites. The data taken for our
analysis is gathered during the period of 7th
September 2012 to 23rd
October 2012.
Table 5.1 Category wise E-Governance websites
s.no Universities State Information Business Enterprise