Accessibility at Swedish public libraries websites a quantitative accessibility study

Information technology has become an integral part of our everyday lives. The Web is an important part of this development, however, web pages can be inaccessible to many groups of users. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the accessibility of Swedish public library websites. Besides examining the general accessibility, this study also covers whether any specific aspect of accessibility is particularly poor and if so which groups may be affected. In addition, this study also examines whether a correlation can be found between the degree of accessibility and the size of the website. The website size definition comprises three measurements; the size in kilobytes of the entry page of the website; the character amount of the entry page of the website and the amount of inhabitants in the website's districts. The method used for examining this hypothetical correlation is the Pearson Correlation. The findings are that the accessibility of Swedish public library websites in general is low, and that this affects all groups of users but some in particular. The affected users are blind users or users with low vision, deaf users, those with attention deficit disorder or those with impairments of memory or intelligence. No connection could however be established between the accessibility of the web sites and the three definitions of their size.Uppsatsnivå: