Design and evaluation of an accessible website developed using SharePoint 2010

Abstract

The internet and web applications are growing rapidly. People are, more than ever before, dependent on the web applications and this dependency will continue to increase. A large number of web users have various accessibility needs and hence it is very important to ensure that the web applications are made accessible. This research deals with maximizing the accessibility of web sites. As a part of this research, accessibility was studied in detail. The research aimed at developing an accessible web site using SharePoint 2010. This was the object of a usability study. In this study, the usability of this web site was compared with that of inaccessible web sites. Participants for the usability tests were selected from Alabama Institute of Deaf and Blind. Results confirm that the degree of accomplishment of tasks, confidence level, learnability, and overall reaction of participants were higher while using accessible web sites built using SharePoint 2010 than while using inaccessible web sites.