If you build the door too small no one can get through : A qualitative study of the accessibility of public library web sites

The Internet has played an important role for libraries giving them a means of fulfilling their democratic mission of giving equal access to everyone, including people with disabilities. In order to achieve this it is of the utmost importance that they ensure that their web sites are accessible. In this masters thesis we have examined to what extent the web sites are accessible. The thesis is based on theories of human-computer interaction, information architecture, pedagogy and a checklist. The checklist is derived from established international guidelines from W3C, which has been adapted to, and is used by Swedish public authorities to achieve the mission of a “24-hour authority”. To carry out the examination a tool was created enabling the measurement of web site accessibility. This tool consists of the checklist and interviews via e-mail. Although the library web sites showed basic accessibility features and the library staff showed a commitment to accessibility issues this study concludes that the library web sites are, in fact, not accessible. However, the study predicts that with the legislation requiring a “library plan” by the year 2007 and the mission of the “24-hour authority”, the library web sites will be accessible in the foreseeable future.Uppsatsnivå: