Investigating the Potential of a Dashboard for Monitoring U.S. Federal Website Accessibility

Abstract

The U.S. federal government continues to struggle with improving web accessibility for people with disabilities, despite the fact that Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act has required accessible websites for the federal government since 2001. Researchers have struggled to understand Section 508 due to the lack of transparency in implementation of the law. This article provides two contributions: 1) interviews with five individuals who are Section 508 coordinators in the federal government offer understanding of the potential barriers to dashboard adoption, and 2) data collected on 629 federal websites involving more than 28,000 web pages demonstrate the type of data that potentially could be collected and analyzed in a dashboard. Consistent use of automated tools to create a dashboard of federal web accessibility potentially could bring more attention to the topic and improve accessibility compliance.