McEwan, Tom and Weerts, Ben (2007) ALT text and basic accessibility. In: Proceedings of the 21st BCS HCI Group Conference. BCS, Lancaster. ISBN 1-902505-95-6

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Abstract/Description

Recent surveys have shown that the majority of websites are not accessible. Despite legal obligations and the importance of the internet for disabled people, most websites fail to reach a basic level of accessibility, yet web developers are not short of accessibility guidelines and recommendations. This preliminary study consists of a meta-review of web accessibility studies in order to identify a set of common barriers faced by the impaired. Automated testing, of websites created by recent multimedia graduates in their final semester, confirms these problems. In particular non-use, and incorrect use, of ALT (alternative) text emerges as the most frequent, basic error. We conclude that ALT is a litmus test of developers' attitudes towards accessibility and propose future work to identify how to understand and improve these attitudes

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