Accessibility of Public Web Services: A Distant Dream?

Today, many public services are available online through Web sites. The accessibility of the sites, also to people with disabilities, is important because the accessibility concerns equality of citizens, a cornerstone of democracy. In the current study we carried out a meta-analysis of 17 studies concerning the accessibility of the Web sites of public administration. Furthermore, we assessed the accessibility of Web pages of 12 ministries of the Finnish government. The assessments were based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The results showed that in terms of the WCAG guidelines, the average accessibility of public Web sites is poor. Moreover, there was no improvement in the accessibility in the 2000’s and many of the accessibility failures were so simple that they could have been easily avoided. This may indicate that the building of information society is driven by technology, rather than principles of democracy and well-being.