User cum expert judgement model for accessibility using fuzzy approach.

Area of Science:

• Digital Inclusion
• Web Accessibility
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Website accessibility is crucial for technological innovation, user interaction, and digital inclusivity.
• Existing research relies on user or expert evaluations, each with limitations.
• Evaluating accessibility ensures diverse user needs are met and legal standards are followed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel fuzzy-based modeling approach for website accessibility evaluation.
• To integrate user and expert insights for a more robust evaluation.
• To compare the accessibility of healthcare and incubation websites against WCAG 2.1 standards.

Main Methods:

• A fuzzy-based model was developed to aggregate data from low-vision impaired users and accessibility experts.
• Twenty websites from healthcare and incubation domains were evaluated against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1).
• A comparative analysis of accessibility indexes between the two domains was performed, with validation through a case study.

Main Results:

• Healthcare websites demonstrated a very good level of accessibility, outperforming incubation websites.
• Incubation websites require significant improvements to achieve excellent accessibility.
• Statistical analysis confirmed insignificant differences in accessibility indexes between samples, validating the model's reliability.

Conclusions:

• The proposed fuzzy-based approach (FUEJMA) effectively aggregates diverse user and expert feedback for accurate accessibility evaluation.
• Healthcare websites are more accessible than incubation websites, indicating a need for focused improvements in the latter.
• The model contributes to more inclusive digital environments by providing context-sensitive accessibility assessments.