Government Information Quarterly 31 (2014) 476–487

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Government Information Quarterly

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Revisiting Alabama state website accessibility

Norman E. Youngblood 1

School of Communication & Journalism, 217 Tichenor, Auburn University, AL 36849, USA

E-mail address: ed.youngblood@gmail.com.1 Fax: +1 334 844 4573.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2014.02.0070740-624X/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

a b s t r a c t

a r t i c l e i n f o

Available online 30 July 2014

Keywords:AccessibilityE-governmentState websitesSection 508WCAG 2.0

Potter's (2002) accessibility review of over 60 Alabama state-level websites was designed to establish a baselinefor monitoring the state government's progress on online accessibility. The study found significant room forimprovement. Only 20% of the reviewed sites met Section 508 requirements, and only 19% of the sites metWAI Priority 1 accessibility standards, based on a combination of automated evaluation and manual inspectionof the code. In 2006, Alabama adopted ITS 1210-00S2: Universal Accessibility, which offered basic guidelines toassist developers in complying with Section 508 requirements. The current study revisits the state home pagesthat Potter evaluated to see how accessibility levels have changed over the years, particularly with the state'sadoption of ITS-530S2. Like Potter, the current analysis is based on a combination of automated testing and amanual review of each page's HTML. The study found that compliance has not improved substantially sincePotter's analysis and reinforces the idea that the presence of a standard does not correlate with compliance.

© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

As theWorldWideWeb rose in importance as an e-government toolin the 1990s, the federal government took steps to ensure that citizensand government employees had access to electronic-based governmentinformation, regardless of disabilities. Section 508 of the RehabilitationAct (29 U.S.C. § 794d) addresses a range of e-government accessibilityissues, including providing specific guidelines for online informationand applications (§ 1194.22). Although Section 508 guidelines were de-signed specifically for federal agencies, the guidelines have the potentialto be applied to some state and local governments, depending on theprovisions of federal funds that the entities might receive. With callsfor accessible e-government on the rise, state governments soonbegan crafting their own regulations, often directly incorporatingSection 508 guidelines (Jaeger, 2004). Not all states took this route,however. The State of Alabama's Information Technology Standard530S2-00: Universal Accessibility (ITS-530S2) is designed to “adviseagencies on the use of theminimum requirements for online accessibil-ity for all State of Alabama web sites that comply with Section 508.”Rather than listing the full Section 508 provisions, ITS 530S2 providessix basic requirements for helping developers ensure compliance,including how to appropriately craft quality hyperlinks and image alter-native attributes, and calling for developers to test sites on multiplebrowsers and to avoid using frames. The standardmandates compliancefor most “Executive Branch agencies, boards and commissions,” partic-ularly those using the alabama.gov and state.al.us domain names

(State of Alabama, 2011a,b). As this study found, however, adoption ofaccessibility guidelines does not necessarily equate to adherence.

Almost a decade has passed since Potter's (2002) 2003 accessibilityreview of over 60 Alabama state-level websites (the dates here areconfusing as the study was technically published in a 2002 issue, butdata collection was in 2003). Designed to establish a baseline for moni-toring the state government's progress on online accessibility, the studyfound that although accessibility seemed to have improved since West(2002), state-level websites had tremendous room for improvement.Only 20% of the reviewed sites met Section 508 guidelines, and only19% of the sites met WAI Priority 1 accessibility standards. Potter'sstudy appeared at a critical time in e-government. Federal web accessi-bility standards, defined by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation ActAmendments of 1973, had only been codified since 1998, and manystates, Alabama included, had no state-level accessibility mandate, rely-ing instead on individual departments to make policies (Potter, 2002).In 2006, Alabama adopted ITS 1210-00S2: Universal Accessibility,renamed ITS 530S2-00 in 2011. Two years after the standard was inplace, West (2008) found that accessibility problemswere still endemicin state agencywebsites. AlthoughWest rankedAlabama's state-level e-government services eighth nationally, only 10% of the Alabama state-level sites passed an automated accessibility test. The average amongthe states was 19%. The current study builds on West and Potter byrevisiting the state homepages that Potter evaluated in 2003 to seehow their accessibility levels have changed over the years, particularlywith the state's adoption of ITS-530S2. Like Potter, the current analysisis based on a combination of automated testing and a manual reviewof each page's HTML, including checking for the use of appropriateimage alternative attributes and the phrasing of linked text. Each

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homepage was evaluated to see if it complied with three, often overlap-ping, standards: the World Wide Web Consortium's WCAG 2.0, thefederal government's Section 508 guidelines, and Alabama's ITS-530S2.

2. Literature review

2.1. Web accessibility

For a website to be “accessible,” content needs to be available tousers regardless of disability. TheW3C calls for designers to take into ac-count a range of potential disabilities when designing a website. Thesedisabilities include visual and auditory impairment, mobility limita-tions, speech impairment, cognitive limitations, and learning disabilities(W3C, 2008). TheW3C also argues that accessibility is a critical elementof theWorldWideWeb and that theweb “is fundamentally designed towork for all people, whatever their hardware, software, language,culture, location, or physical or mental ability” (W3C, 2010). TimBerners-Lee, architect of the World Wide Web and current W3C direc-tor, underscores the importance of accessibility and the ability of theweb to empower disabled users, arguing, “the power of the Web is inits universality. Access by everyone is an essential aspect” (W3C,1997). The United Nations echoed this sentiment in The Conventionon the Rights of PersonsWith Disabilities. Adopted in 2006, the conven-tion specifically calls for signatory nations to “promote access forpersonswith disabilities to new information and communications tech-nologies and systems, including the Internet” (United Nations, 2006).The treaty received wide support internationally, not only being themost quickly negotiated human rights treaty to date, but also garneringthemost signatures on the first day that it was able to be signed (UnitedNations, 2007).

2.2. Accessibility guidelines and legislation

Vanderheiden (1995) argued that the rise of graphics-based webbrowsers, such asMosaic, raised issues for userswith disabilities, partic-ularly those with vision problems and, along with others, offered rec-ommendations to assist web developers in making content moreaccessible. Many of these early guidelines, however, focused on offeringgeneral advice, such as telling designers tomake sure that they “use suf-ficient contrast”without providing a definition for howmuch contrast isneeded to be used (Vanderheiden, 2009). Researchers at the Universityof Wisconsin's Trace Research and Development Center eventually in-corporated a number of these early guidelines into the Unified WebSite Accessibility Guidelines (Vanderheiden & Chisholm, 1998), whichwas in turn used as a starting point for theW3C'sWeb Content Accessi-bility Guidelines Working Group, responsible for developing the W3C'sWeb Content Accessibility Guidelines—WCAG 1.0 (W3C, 1999). TheW3C (1999) divided checkpoints into three priority levels:

• Priority 1: A web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint.Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access infor-mation in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic require-ment for some groups to be able to use web documents.

• Priority 2: A web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint.Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access informa-tion in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove signifi-cant barriers to accessing web documents.

• Priority 3: A web content developer may address this checkpoint.Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult toaccess information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint willimprove access to web documents.

Meeting all Priority 1 checkpoints yields Level A conformance, meet-ing Priorities 1 and 2 gives a site Level AA conformance, andmeeting allthree priorities gives a site Level AAA conformance (W3C, 1999).

WCAG 1.0 proved to have broad influence on e-government, with anumber of countries, including the United States, using it as a basis for

their own accessibility guidelines (Donker-Kuijer, de Jong, & Lentz,2010). The W3C introduced revised standards, WCAG 2.0, in 2008.While the new standards are largely backward compatible with theolder standard, the new standards attempt to move past specifying re-quirements for HTML, to addressing accessibility issues across a widerrange of web-related technologies. In creating the new standards, theW3C (2008) focused on website design meeting four basic accessibilityprinciples.

• Principle 1: Perceivable—Information and user interface componentsmust be presentable to users in ways that they can perceive.

• Principle 2: Operable—User interface components and navigationmust be operable.

• Principle 3: Understandable—Information and the operation of userinterface must be understandable.

• Principle 4: Robust—Content must be robust enough that it can beinterpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assis-tive technologies.

In the process, they moved towards creating more specific and test-able processes. As an example, WCAG 1.0, Guideline 1.1 specifies thatdesigners need to “provide a text equivalent for every non-text ele-ment” and offers examples of non-text items, including images, anima-tions, sounds, and videos. The WCAG 2.0 discussion covers threeguidelines and provides a description of what appropriate text alterna-tives might be for eachmedium (W3C, 2009). The new guidelines mea-sure conformance similarly to the originalWCAG guidelines, though theW3C has replaced “priorities”with “levels” in the actual descriptions ofthe guidelines, with Priority 1 being replaced by “Level A SuccessCriteria,” etc. Conformance has been slightly expanded and now in-cludes either the webpage satisfying Level A Success Criteria or provid-ing a “conforming alternate version” (W3C, 2008). Li, Yen, Lu, and Lin(2012) found that, assuming that a site alreadymeets WCAG 1.0 guide-lines, migrating existing e-government sites to conform to the newguidelines required only minor modifications to the design.

Section 508 § 1194.22 was signed into law in 1998 and the resultingregulations went into effect in 2001. The regulations are based in largepart on WCAG 1.0 standards (Olalere & Lazar, 2011). In theory, the Of-fice of the Attorney General is supposed to report on federal agencycompliance with the regulations on a biyearly basis, however the De-partment of Justice did not collect that data between 2004 and 2010,and of the 100 U.S. federal websites Olalere and Lazar (2011) visited,90% had Section 508 compliance issues. The most recent Departmentof Justice (2012) report on federal agency Section 508 compliance asof FY2010, reinforces those findings, reporting, among other things,that only 67% of the agencies surveyed had an established process to en-sure that those responsible for web content followed Section 508 guide-lines, and that only 57.5% conducted regular website accessibilityevaluation and remediation. While most agencies (82.4%) reportedpassing an audit of appropriate use of ALT attributes, video and multi-media seem to have received less attention, with 26.4% having a formalmultimedia/video accessibility policy and 24.2% having no plans to de-velop such a policy (Department of Justice, 2012).

The United States Access Board, a federal accessibility agency re-sponsible for coordinating federal accessibility policy and representingthe disabled public (U.S. Access Board, n.d.), is in the process of revisingSection 508 standards to match WCAG 2.0. A 2011 draft of the revisedstandards makes frequent reference to WCAG 2.0, including requiringmost federal agency web-based communication to “conform to LevelA and Level AA Success Criteria and Conformance Requirements speci-fied for web pages in WCAG 2.0” (U.S. Access Board, 2011). Based onthe planned changes, using the newer standards in evaluating existinggovernment websites should help set the stage for future studies. Oneof the possible reasons for non-compliance that Olalere and Lazar(2011) suggest is that neither the Department of Justice nor the AccessBoard had issued “clear guidelines … on what steps to take to make awebsite accessible.” Some state agencies, responsible for developing

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online accessibility policies, including Alabama's, have attempted to ad-dress this issue by providing concise guidelines formeeting at leastmin-imal accessibility standards, particularly as the federal government hasput increased pressure on state and local governments to make theirweb presence accessible.

Although the federal government bases its website accessibility onconformance to Section 508 guidelines, Jaeger (2004) points out that anumber of other laws and regulations address e-government websiteaccessibility. These include Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, theE-government Act, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and theAmericans with Disabilities Act (ADA). More recently, the federal gov-ernment has moved to promote the captioning of online video withthe 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CCVA).The 2010 revision of Title II of the ADA, which covers the accessibilityobligations of public entities including the state and the local govern-ment, explicitly incorporates internet-based products. Title II arguesthat, “Today, the Internet plays a critical role in daily life for personal,civic, commercial, and business purposes,” and that, “Although the lan-guage of the ADA does not explicitly mention the Internet, the Depart-ment has taken the position that Title II covers Internet Web siteaccess” (Americans with Disabilities Act, Title II, pt.35 § 35.190, 2010).Title II applies to the state and the local government, regardless of its re-ceipt of federal funds, and the DOJ is in the process of developing webaccessibility guidelines. Current ADA rules allow public entities, suchas state and local governments, to meet website accessibility require-ments through non-internet-based services, such as staffed phonelines, but require that these services be equal to those found on theweb, including the hours of operation (Americans with DisabilitiesAct, Title II, pt.35 § 35.190, 2010).

While all states have accessibility mandates (Georgia Tech ResearchInstitute, 2009), these mandates vary by state, and stronger policiestend to lead to better accessibility, though stronger policies are not aguarantee of accessibility (Rubaii-Barrett & Wise, 2008). Many statemandates, including Alabama's, reference Section 508 and/or WCAGstandards. Some states, such as Rhode Island (State of Rhode Island,2013), Vermont (State of Vermont, 2013), and Alabama, provide basicchecklists to help developers meet these guidelines. Alabama's accessi-bility standard, AITS-540S2, argues that it is important to “make govern-ment information accessible to all,” including those with “visual,physical, or developmental disabilities,” and that much like “environ-mental obstacles” in the physical world, the internet “can present obsta-cles” to access. In an effort to address this, AITS 540S2-00 provides a six-point guideline to help state agencies “on the use of the minimumrequirements for online accessibility for all State of Alabama web sitesthat comply with Section 508” (State of Alabama, 2011a,b). Theserequirements cover most executive branch agencies, however, theyexclude the judicial and legislative branches, as well asmost education-al institutions and the education television commission (State ofAlabama, n.d.a). AITS 540S2-00 requirements include the appropriateuse of ALT attributes for images, the use of descriptive text for hyper-links, offering alternatives to online forms, avoiding frames, and testingwebsites in multiple browsers. While by no means covering all ofSection 508, these guidelines address at least some of the major con-cerns in making sure that a website is accessible and point developersto both Section 508 andWCAG 2.0 resources, includingDOJ accessibilityenforcement information (State of Alabama, 2011a,b). Findings by Yuand Parmanto (2011), however, suggest that requiring strict adherenceto Section 508may be a more effective means of increasing compliancethan more limited state-specified guidelines.

2.3. E-government in Alabama

In 2001, the state of Alabama entered into a contract with AlabamaInteractive, a subsidiary of NIC, to develop a state web portal,Alabama.gov, and to assist with e-government services such as financialtransactions, systems integration, security, and web hosting (State of

Alabama, eGovernment Initiative). The following year, the state setdown a framework for approaching e-government, noting that it “seese-government as no longer just a good idea, but a necessity” (State ofAlabama, 2002a, p. 1). The framework called for the adoption of site de-velopment standards, particularly in the area of information architec-ture, that would facilitate the exchange of information between stateagencies and provide a “consistent approach” for users conducting busi-nesswith the state (State of Alabama, 2002a, p. 2). As part of this frame-work, the state also recognized that e-government services, donecorrectly, offer a number of advantages for the state including increasinggovernment efficiency, improving customer service, and improving thestate's overall image. Alabama Interactive's contract with the state in-cluded working in many of these areas. A review of company's NetworkManager Reports to the state from 2002 to 2013 match these goals,as the group's main focus outside of the Alabama.gov websitehas been helping state agencies with web-based applications, such ase-commerce and online applications for professional licensing, ratherthan developing agency websites (e.g., Alabama Interactive, 2002,2005, 2009, 2013).

Launched in 2002, Alabama.gov (Fig. 1) initially relied on mirroredtext-only versions of the site to ensure site accessibility. Early iterationsincluded a page listing the accessibility status of the text version of thesite on a section-by-section basis. The report (retrieved from theInternet Archive) from October 14, 2002 (see Fig. 2) indicated that thetext-only version of the site had passed automated Section 508 accessi-bility review using Bobby and that all but one section (whichwas underreview) met WCAG 1.0 standards (State of Alabama, 2002b).Alabama.gov continued to maintain a text-only version of the siteuntil mid-2011 (State of Alabama, 2011a, 2011b).

Alabama e-government in general received lowmarks throughmostof West's 2001–2008 studies on the quality of e-government in theUnited States at the state and federal levels, which included bothstate portal websites such as Alabama.gov and individual stateagency websites. As shown in Table 1, West's studies on federal andstate e-government (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007)repeatedly found Alabama to be almost at the bottom of state-level e-government rankings, including several years at next-to-last. In manycases, Alabama state websites did not follow best practices, such asoffering site translation services and privacy and security statements.Accessibility was particularly problematic for Alabama sites, with only6% passing an automated accessibility test in 2001 (West, 2001). Withone exception (2006), the number of Alabama sites passing the auto-mated accessibility test did not break 30% between 2001 and 2007(West, 2002; West, 2003a, 2003b; West, 2004; West, 2005; West,2006; West, 2007). Between 2007 and 2008, however, Alabama e-government in general improved tremendously. In 2008, the final yearof West's studies, Alabama ranked eighth nationally. At the same time,however, only 10% of the state's websites passed an automated accessi-bility test that year, compared to a national average of 19% for statewebsites. When taking a longitudinal view of West's accessibility fig-ures, it is important to note that in 2008, West switched accessibilitytools. Watchfire's Bobby, used in previous studies, was no longer avail-able and West replaced it with WebAIM's WAVE. A review of the 2007and 2008 data reveals that the percentage of state and federal websitespassing the automated test dropped by over 50% between 2007 and2008 (West, 2007; West, 2008), suggesting that differences betweenBobby and WAVE may account for the dropping pass rate, rather thana change in coding practices. The most recent national study (Yu &Parmanto, 2011) included an automated analysis of 721 pages fromthe alabama.gov domain, comprised of pages from the state web portal(www.alabama.gov) as well as state agencies using the alabama.govdomain such as ema.alabama.gov and medicaid.alabama.gov. Thestudy found a per-page average of 1.98 Priority 1 errors, 1.2 Priority 2errors, and 3.39 Priority 3 errors based onWCAG 1.0 standards, placingAlabama 45th nationally in terms of accessibility (Yu & Parmanto,2011).

Fig. 1. Alabama.gov, circa October 2002.

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2.4. Disabilities in the United States and Alabama

Accessibility is an issue for a relatively large portion of the popula-tion in both the United States as a whole and for Alabama specifically.Based on the 2008 American Community Survey data (U.S. CensusBureau, n.d.), at the national level, around 19% of noninstitutionalizedAmericans have some sort of disability. Americans over 65 are amongthe most likely to have a disability, with 38% of members of that agegroup reporting a disability. State level statistics in Alabama are relative-ly similar, around 16% overall, with 44% of the over 65 age groupreporting one or more disabilities. Vision problems affect over 3% ofthe Alabama population, and as one might expect, that number risesto 9% among those 65 and older, a group that is also more likely tohave cognitive disorders (13%) than the general population (6%). It isworth noting that in many cases, groups that fall into the have-notportion of the digital divide, such as the elderly and some minoritygroups, often have higher disability rates than the overall popula-tion, meaning that accessibility problems may compound existingdigital divide issues.

2.5. E-government accessibility research

While establishing accessibility regulations and guidelines providesmetrics for helping assess accessibility, these actions by nomeans guar-antee that government websites will be accessible. As noted above,Olalere and Lazar (2011) found that 90% of the United States federalagencywebsites that they examined failed tomeet Section 508 require-ments and that “laws that require accessibility and regulations that ex-plain what interface features must be present” have not resulted inincreased compliance. These findings echo earlier studies of federalwebsites by West (2002, 2006, 2008) and others (e.g., Jaeger, 2006;Loiacono, McCoy, & Chin, 2005). Researchers have also found extensiveaccessibility issues in state-level websites in both comparative studies(e.g., Fagan & Fagan, 2004; Goette, Collier, & White, 2006; West, 2002,2006, 2008; Yu & Parmanto, 2011) and in studies of individual states(e.g., Lazar et al., 2010), including Potter's (2002) study of Alabamastate-level websites. State-level website accessibility has fared betterthan did federal level sites in some cases (Yu&Parmanto, 2011). Findingways to improve state-level accessibility has been complicated. Draw-ing on West (2004), Rubaii-Barrett and Wise (2008) found few easily

discernable factors that correlated to accessibility, dismissing severallikely elements including population size, per-capita income, and per-centage of the population with a disability. The only factor that seemedtomake a differencewas the presence of a stronglyworded accessibilitymandatewith clear guidelines. Even this, they point out, did not guaran-tee accessibility, in part because the mandates usually lacked anenforcement element. Lazar et al. (2013) point out that there is a tre-mendous need for longitudinal studies of state-level website accessibil-ity. In their longitudinal study of Maryland state-level sites, they foundthat agencies that adopted a state template that had been vetted for ac-cessibility typically saw an improvement in accessibility, and often a tre-mendous one. As discussed above, while Alabama e-government ingeneral has improved dramatically since 2007 (West, 2008), accessibil-ity remains an issue, suggesting that Alabamawebsite accessibility maynot have improved significantly since Potter's (2002) findings despitethe publishing of state-level guidelines to promotewebsite accessibility.While there are clearly shortcomings in e-government website accessi-bility, several researchers (e.g., Hackett, Parmanto, & Zeng, 2004;Hanson & Richards, 2013) have found that e-government sites performbetter than many commercial sites and that, in general, e-governmentaccessibility has improved, despite the growing complexity of the sites.

2.6. Accessibility methodology

Researchers have typically approached evaluating website accessi-bility by using one or more of the following strategies: automated test-ing, heuristic evaluation, expert evaluation, user testing, policy analysis,orweb-manager questionnaires. Eachmethod offers insights into differ-ent aspects of website accessibility, ranging from testing the level of ac-cessibility, to legal implications, to studies such as those by Lazar,Dudely-Sponaugle, and Greenidge (2004) and Farrelly (2011), whichexamine why designers choose to include or exclude accessibilityfrom their designs. Jaeger (2006), in particular, argues strongly for eval-uation usingmultiple approaches. Many early e-government accessibil-ity studies relied strictly on automated testing, which involvessubmitting the website to an online or locally-based testing tool thatthen applies accessibility heuristics, such as WCAG 1.0 and 2.0 andSection 508, to the HTML code to test for common accessibility prob-lems. These problems can include missing ALT attributes, poor colorcombinations, poorly or unlabeled form elements, and incorrect taborder. Automated testing is also common in e-government studies in

Fig. 2. Alabama.gov accessibility information, circa October 2002.

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which accessibility is only a portion of what is being studied, such asstudies examining levels of e-government, website features, and overallwebsite usability (West, 2002, 2006, 2008; Youngblood & Mackiewicz,2012). Many early studies used Watchfire's Bobby (e.g., Fagan &Fagan, 2004; Potter, 2002; West, 2002, 2003a,b, 2006); once it becameunavailable, researchers turned to other options, particularlyWebAIM's

Table 1Rankings of Alabama e-government and accessibility scores fromWest (2001–2008).

Year e-gov score (1–100) e-government rank % A

2001 33 48 (tied) 62002 35.8 48 52003 31.9 46 162004 29.9 44 252005 31.9 48 292006 28.4 49 352007 37.2 45 212008 66.4 8 35a

a Accessibility tool changes from Bobby to WAVE in 2008.

WAVE (West, 2008; Youngblood & Mackiewicz, 2012). While Bobbyand WAVE are based largely on WCAG 1.0 standards, Bobby wasparticularly useful as it generated reports outlining WCAG 1.0 andSection 508-related issues, something that WAVE does not do.

There are a number of alternatives to WAVE, but few offer evalua-tions based on WCAG 2.0 standards. AChecker (ATRC, 2009) is one of

L sites passing Bobby/WAVE % of sites passing Bobby/WAVE for top state

609286919797

10064a

Table 2Website accessibility 2003 v. 2012.

Sites conforming to standard in 2012a (2003)b

Level A AA AAA 508 AITSc

Number 5 (12) 16 (1) 36 (0) 13 (10) 4 (na)Percent 8 (19) 27 (2) 60 (0) 22 (16) 7 (na)

a 2012WCAG 2.0 and 508 data based on AChecker (n = 60). Percentages are rounded.b 2003 WCAG 1.0 and 508 data based on Bobby (n = 64) (Potter, 2002). Percentages

are rounded.c AITS data based on a manual evaluation of the code.

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the exceptions. An open source tool funded in part by the Governmentof Ontario, AChecker can validate code against a number of standards,includingWCAG 1.0 and 2.0 and Section 508, and points the user to par-ticular sections of code that need to be manually evaluated. In addition,AChecker offers the option of validating HTML and CSS (ATRC, n.d.; Gay& Li, 2010). While a relative newcomer to accessibility evaluation,AChecker has seen use by both e-government (Fuglerud & Røssvoll,2012) and e-commerce (Gilbertson & Machin, 2012) researchers. Asseveral researchers (e.g., Jaeger, 2006; Olalere & Lazar, 2011; Harper &Chen, 2012) point out, though, automated testing comes with somedecided limitations. As an example, automated testing can tell that a de-signer has included the ALT attribute within an image element; howev-er, it cannot tell whether the ALT attribute information is actually useful,and it will treat “image 29” as a valid ALT attribute. Automated softwarealso cannot advise on compliance for some standards, such as flickerrate and the use of captions in audio and video. More troubling, asHarper and Chen (2012) point out, two automated tools may not returnthe same number of errors for an individual page. To address theseproblems, several researchers (e.g., Potter, 2002; Olalere & Lazar,2011; Fuglerud & Røssvoll, 2012) argue for including expert evaluationas part of the process, and combine automated testing with expert eval-uation in which a knowledgeable coder examines the HTML code forproblems, particularly the appropriate use of ALT attributes. Jaeger(2006) argues for including disabled users in the testing process, asthey are more likely to be able to find problems, similar to standarduser-based usability testing. While this technique offers advantages,locating appropriate users can be complicated, and the technique istime-consuming, particularly for large samples.

3. Methodology

3.1. Website sample

Because the goal of this study was to determine how well Alabamastate-level websites had responded to the state's accessibility mandate,the website selection was based upon the sites that Potter (2002) eval-uated nine years earlier—his data was collected in 2003. Using the list inPotter, Appendix A, the researcher verified the website addresses andupdated them as needed, using a combination of the state web portaland Google. Usable addresses were available for all but three sitesfrom Potter's study. The exceptions were the Garrett Coliseum, the Ala-bama State Capital Police, and Alabama's Aerospace Attractions. Thefirst two of these appear to have been rolled into other websites. Datacollection occurred over a four-day period in May 2012.

3.2. Evaluation methodology

One of the challenges in this study is that Potter (2002) and manyother early scholars looking at website accessibility relied on thewebsite analysis tool Bobby, which is no longer readily available for re-searchers. That said, the core data in Potter (2002) consisted of testingforWCAG 1.0 and Section 508 compliance, a task that can be completedusing other tools such as AChecker. For this study, the researcher usedAChecker to evaluate the sites based on themost recentW3C guidelines,WCAG 2.0, and on Section 508 § 1194.22 guidelines. AChecker returnsthree levels of problems in its results: known problem, likely problems,and potential problems. For this study, the researcher only recorded is-sues listed as known problems, which AChecker describes as “problemsthat have been identified with certainty as accessibility barriers.”For WCAG 2.0, the researcher recorded the number of known problemsidentified for A, AA, and AAA level guidelines. In the case of Section 508,the researcher recorded the number of known problems identified forstandards A–K from § 1194.22.

As noted in the literature review, automated tools, such AChecker,are a good starting point for evaluation but are far from foolproof. There-fore, the researcher also conducted a visual inspection of each page. Like

Potter (2002), the researcher examined the HTML for each page to see ifincluded useable ALT attributes or if a page provided nebulous ALT text.For example, did the header image for the Alabama Department ofVeterans Affairs' website use ALT text that made sense for its headerimage, such as “Department of Veterans Affairs,” or something that pro-vides nouseful information such as “image98.jpg” or “header image.”Asin Potter (2002), the code for each page was also examined to see if im-ages and image maps included usable ALT attributes all of the time,some of the time, or none of the time. The researcher also relied on visu-al inspection to check to see if the homepagemet the following require-ments quoted below from Alabama Standard 530S2-00:

• Every graphic image shall have an “alt” tag and a short description thatis intuitive to the user. If a graphic image is used as a navigation ele-ment, it shall contain a text description and direction that is intuitiveto the user. Decorative graphics, such as bullets, shall be set with an“alt” tag of bemptyN as to not impede screen readers.

• For every graphic element that uses an image map, alternative text ofthe hyperlink shall be provided.

• The site shall have descriptive, intuitive text links and avoid the use ofvague references such as “click,” “here,” “link,” or “this.”

• The use of frames shall be avoided since they cannot be read intelli-gently by screen readers, create navigation problems, and are not sup-ported by all browsers.

• An alternative form of access shall bemade available for online forms,such as an e-mail address or phone number.

In each case, the page was coded as having passed or failed therequirement.

One Alabama Standard 5302-00 requirement was not tested in thisstudy as it was outside of the study's focus on accessibility:

• Multiple browser testing shall be conducted on current versions ofFirefox, Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Safari and Lynx.

The researcher conducted the visual inspection by viewing eachpage in Firefox 12.0 on an Apple computer runningOS 10.74 and visual-ly inspected the resulting HTML code using Firefox's “View Source” op-tion. Each state agency home page was evaluated to see if the page metAlabama ITS-530S2. This included checking for the use of frames, usableimage ALT attributes, usable ALT attributes for image map information,and usable linked text. The researcher also examined each page to see ifthere was a form on the page as well as to see whether there was con-tact information or a link to contact information on the main page. Asthe focus of this study was on accessibility, the researcher did not testeach page in multiple browsers. The researcher coded the data fromthe WCAG 2.0, Section 508, and ITS-530S2 evaluations into Excel foranalysis and comparison with Potter's results. Intercoder reliability,based on a 10% sample, yielded a Cohen's Kappa of .96.

4. Results

Appendix A outlines the changes in website accessibility betweenPotter's (2002) findings and the current study's findings in 2012 on asite-by-site basis. Table 2 provides a comparison of overall site confor-mance changes between 2003 and 2012. These results come with two

482 N.E. Youngblood / Government Information Quarterly 31 (2014) 476–487

important caveats. First, as Bobby is no longer readily available,AChecker was used in this study, and prior studies suggest that accessi-bility results often vary between tools (Harper & Chen, 2012) and thechanges in the accessibility pass rates between West (2007) and West(2008) suggest that newer tools may be more sensitive to accessibilityissues. Second, part of Potter's evaluation relied onWCAG 1.0 standards,while the current study relies on the newer WCAG 2.0 standard.Section 508 guidelines, however, remain unchanged. Overall, adherenceto Section 508 standards has improved slightly, with ACheckerreturning 13 sites with no Section 508 standard violations, versusBobby's nine sites in 2003. In the case of a comparison of 2012 siteswith no WCAG 2.0 A-level violations versus 2003 sites with no WCAG1.0 Priority 1, current homepages performedworse using the new stan-dards, with only five sites having no WCAG 2.0 A-level violations in2012 and versus 11 sites with no WCAG Priority 1 level violations in2003. Table 3 compares the most common WCAG 1.0 violations from2003 with the most common WCAG 2.0 violations from 2012. Moretroubling, only four sites, the Office of the Attorney General, theAlabama Crime Victims Compensation Commission, the Governor'sOffice on National and Community Service, and the Alabama ElectricalContractors Board, passed a manual evaluation of the first four require-ments of Alabama ITS-530S2; and only one site, the Office of the Attor-ney General, passed both the automated evaluation of WCAG 2.0 andSection 508, and the manual evaluation of AITS 530S2 standards. Eventhe state's primary website, Alabama.gov, had some instances of miss-ing ALT attributes. Some sites had numerous issues, despite having a vi-sual appealing site. As an example, AChecker reported the AlabamaForestry Commission website as violating three Section 508 standardsandhaving seven Priority AWCAG2.0 standards, includinghavingmiss-ingALT attributes for some 40 images.While someof these imagesweretransparent spacer images, some of the images served as hyperlinks.Fig. 3 illustrates some these problems and shows the Alabama ForestryCommissionwebsite with a sample of the results returned by AChecker.

4.1. Section 508 standards

The most commonly violated Section 508 standard, based on thenumber of sites with one or more violations, was Standard A, whichmandates a text equivalent for each non-text element. In all, ACheckeridentified 41 sites with alternative text problems, totaling 372 in-stances, with an average of 9.07 violations per identified page. ACheckeridentified violations of Standard L—“When pages utilize scripting lan-guages to display content, or to create interface elements, the informa-tion provided by the script shall be identified with functional text thatcan be read by assistive technology”—as occurring in 32 sites, with anaverage of 3.49 violations per identified site (111 violations in all). Thethird most common identified error was for Standard N—“When

Table 3Total sites for Level A errors by type 2003 v. 2012.

2003 Level A errors (WCAG 1.0)a Sites 2012 Level A errors (

Provide alternative text for all images 55 3.1.1 Language of paGive each frame a title 4 1.1.1 Non-text conteProvide alternative text for each applet 6 1.3.1 Info and relatioProvide alternative text for all image map hot-spots 9 3.3.2 Labels or instruProvide alternative text for all image-type buttons in forms 1 4.1.1 Parsing: Proper

2.1.1 Keyboard: Site1.4.1 Use of color: Co2.4.2 Page titled: We2.4.4 Link purpose (i2.2.1 Timing adjustab2.2.2 Pause, stop, hid2.4.1 Bypass blocks:primary page conten

a 2012 WCAG 2.0 and 508 data based on AChecker (n = 60).b 2003 WCAG 1.0 and 508 data based on Bobby (n = 64) (Potter, 2002).c This was a Level AAA error under WCAG 1.0.

electronic forms are designed to be completed on-line, the form shallallow people using assistive technology to access the information, fieldelements, and functionality required for completion and submission ofthe form, including all directions and cues”—occurring in 45 sites, withan error average of 2.2 per site.

4.2. WCAG 2.0 Guidelines

The most common WCAG 2.0 Level A Conformance error thatAChecker identified was of Guideline 3.1.1: “The default human lan-guage of each Web page can be programmatically determined.” Thisguideline mandates that the language (English, Spanish, Chinese, etc.)be identified in the HTML, usually in the HTML element, such asbhtml lang=“en”N, identifying that the page is in English. Of the 60sites examined, 85% violated this guideline. The second most commonerror was a violation of Guideline 1.1.1: “All non-text content that ispresented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalentpurpose, except for the situations listed below.” The numbers herematch the corresponding Section 508, Standard A: 41 sites, or 63.33%.The third and fourth most common errors were violations of Guideline1.3.1, “Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through pre-sentation can be programmatically determined or are available intext” (26.67% of sites) and of Guideline 3.3.2, “Labels or instructionsare provided when content requires user input” (25%).

AChecker-identified Level AA Conformance errors primarily wereproblems with resizable text, though a few sites had problems withheadings and labels, as well as text color to background color contrastratios. 81.67% of sites violated Guideline 1.4.4: “Except for captionsand images of text, text can be resized without assistive technology upto 200% without loss of content or functionality.” The next two mostcommonWCAG 2.0 AA issues were Guideline 2.4.6— “Headings and la-bels describe topic or purpose”—(10%of sites) andGuideline 1.4.3—“Thevisual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of atleast 4.5:1, except for the following”—(5% of sites). AChecker identifiedonly two AAA conformance issues: Guideline 1.4.6—“The visual presen-tation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 7:1, ex-cept for the following”—(38.33%) and Guideline 1.2.9—“An alternativefor time-based media that presents equivalent information for liveaudio-only content is provided”—which AChecker only identified onesite as violating (1.67%).

4.3. AITS 5302-00 standards

Given the high percentage of sites that AChecker identified as havingALT attribute issues, it is not surprising that the vast majority of sitesfailed to meet the AITS 5302-00 standard mandating the appropriateuse of image ALT attributes. Only six sites passed a manual inspection

WCAG 2.0)b Sites

gec 51nt (alt text) 40nships (sequencing) 16ctions: Labels or instructions are provided when content requires user input. 15nesting of HTML elements and use of unique CSS IDs. 12operation does not require a mouse. 11lor is not the only means of conveying information 10b page has a descriptive title. 6n context): The purpose of links can be determined by the link text. 6le: No timed functions or opportunity to adjust timing. 1e: Gives the user the ability to control automated content 1The ability to bypass blocks of content repeated on multiple pages to get to thet.

1

Fig. 3. Sample of AChecker results based on the Alabama Forestry Commission website.

483N.E. Youngblood / Government Information Quarterly 31 (2014) 476–487

of image ALT attributes, and 90% of the sites had one or more problemswith image ALT attributes. Using descriptive text in text links also poseda problem for a number of sites, with 23.33% of sites using unclearphrasing such as “click here” as linked text. The use of ALT attributesfor image maps faired substantially better, however, with only onesite, the Alabama Law Institute, missing ALT attributes for an imagemap. All but one site, the Alabama Legislative Information System,followed the mandate to avoid frames. State sites also performed wellon the standard of providing alternate contact information whenforms are present. Forty sites had a form of some sort on the mainpage, typically a search box or a sign up form for email lists. Half (20)of these pages had an email address or phone number on the mainpage, while the other half (20) had a link to contact information (suchas “contact us” or “directory”) on the main page. Of the 60 sites exam-ined, 58 had contact information available, with 27 sites having contactinformation on themain page and 31with a link to contact information.Only two sites did not have contact information or a link to contact in-formation directly on the main page.

5. Discussion

Despite the enactment of AITS 5302-00 since Potter's (2002) study,accessibility of Alabama state-level websites has seen only limited im-provement, particularly in terms of the number of sites passingSection 508 compliance. Of the websites that Potter (2002) analyzedthat were revisited for this study, Bobby identified 80% as not passingSection 508 standards. Almost ten-years later, using AChecker, 78.33%of Alabama state-level sites still failed to pass an automated review of

Section 508 standards. These sites also appear even less ready to meetthe likely change in these standards as 92% failed to pass an automatedreview of WCAG 2.0 guidelines, compared to an 81% failure rate of theWCAG 1.0 Priority 1 guidelines found by Potter (2002). Particularlyproblematic sites in terms of the number of standard/guidelines violat-ed include The Department of Environmental Management, whichAChecker identified as violating four WCAG 2.0 A-level guidelines andfour Section 508 standards; the Alabama Guard (five A-level guidelinesand three Section 508 standards) and the Forestry Commission (sevenA-level guidelines and three Section 508 standards). Perhaps moretroubling, however,were someof themore egregious failures to addressthemost basic standards, such as the use of ALT attributes. As examples,Alabama's Department of Homeland Security had over 80 imagesmissing ALT attributes, the Forestry Board was missing ALT attri-butes for 40 images, and the Onsite Wastewater Board for almost30 images. A manual review of the code revealed that in 13homepages, the designers either omitted ALT attributes entirely orused them incorrectly, in some cases using ALT=“” for linked im-ages or using filenames for ALT information. These sites includedthe Peace Officer Annuity Fund, the Department of Veterans Affairs,the Board of Examiners in Marriage and Family Therapy, theChildren's Trust Fund of Alabama, The Alabama Law Institute, andOffice of the State Auditor.

While in some cases, the missing ALT attributes may not keep thesite from being usable, such as the missing ALT attribute for a spacerimage, in other instances, the missing information was for images thatcontained text and linked images. In the example of theAlabama Forest-ry Commission shown in Fig. 3, the graphic links for obtaining a burn

484 N.E. Youngblood / Government Information Quarterly 31 (2014) 476–487

permit, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Facebook,YouTube, and the link to ask questions, are all missing ALT attributes.The links are not readily available elsewhere on the page, thoughthere are text-based links at the top of the page to FAQs and contactingthe agency. There are a number of other accessibility problems thatmaynot be readily apparent on the page. The picture on the grass under-neath “Welcome” is part of a Flash-based navigation system, and Flashcan be problematic for blind users. In addition, the page is based inpart on nested tables, a design technique known to cause significantproblems for text-readers. The end result is that, while a blind usermight eventually find the information he or she is looking for, the pro-cess may not be that simple.

Many of the accessibility problems identified in this study can befixed relatively easily and do not require redesigns of the site, for exam-ple adding appropriate ALT attributes for images and adding a languageattribute to the HTML element in a document. It would, of course, havebeen easier for designers to include this information during the initialdesign process rather than having to address it after the fact. Many ofthe standard web development tools, including Adobe's DreamweaverandMicrosoft's ExpressionWeb, ask developers to include ALT informa-tion during the development process, specifically to help designersmake sure that they provide this information, though the tools are lesslikely to prompt designers to include language information. Sometools also have built accessibility analysis tools. Even without access tothose tools, designers have free access to a wide range of automatedanalysis tools such as AChecker and WebAIM's WAVE, all of which willat least catch some of themore egregious errors, such asmissing ALT el-ements. Neither the availability of these tools, nor the presence of thedistilled guidelines provided by AITS-5302, seems to have mitigatedAlabama'swebsite accessibility issues. Nor, it is worth adding, does pub-lished research documenting the issue seemed to have helped—Potter's(2002) and West's yearly studies from 2001 to 2008 are all readilyavailable.

The question, then, is how to encourage the designers of Alabamastate-level websites to address these issues. Lazar et al. (2004) found

Organization/site name(website address 2012)

Accessibility errors 2003 (P

A AA A

Alabama Board of Architects(http://www.alarchbd.state.al.us)

1 3

Board of Nursing(http://www.abn.state.al.us)

1 2

Crime Victims Compensation Commission(http://www.acvcc.state.al.us)

1 3

Department of Agriculture and Industry(http://www.agi.state.al.us)

2 4

Department of Corrections(http://doc.state.al.us)

1 2

Department of Forensic Sciences(http://www.adfs.alabama.gov)

1 4

Department of Human Resources(http://www.dhr.state.al.us)

0 2

Department of Industrial Relations(http://dir.state.al.us)

0 2

Department of Public Health(http://www.adph.org)

1 2

Department of Public Safety(http://dps.alabama.gov)

1 2

Department of Revenue(http://www.ador.state.al.us)

3 3

Department of Senior Services(http://www.alabamaageline.gov)

1 3

Department of Veterans Affairs(http://www.va.state.al.us)

1 2

Appendix A

that while many of the web professionals in their study were bothaware of regulations regarding accessibility and aware of the avail-ability of accessibility-related tools, many reported that the sitesthat they managed were either not accessible or were unsure oftheir site's accessibility status. The survey pointed to a number of po-tential “stumbling blocks” to improving accessibility, including timeconstraints, the need for additional training, and lack of managerialsupport. Farrelly (2011) found similar issues in an interview-basedstudy of web managers. Given the problems with state-level accessi-bility in Alabama, these approaches may be a fruitful path in findingssolutions to the problem. Another approach would be to increasemonitoring and enforcement, though as Olalere and Lazar (2011)suggest, monitoring and enforcement, even at the federal level,have proved problematic.

While there are clearly problems with many of Alabama's state-levelwebsites, it is important to stress that Alabama is not alone in havingthese problems. Prior studies, such as West's longitudinal studies from2001 to 2008 and Yu and Parmanto's national study (2011), havefound accessibility to be a problem with many state websites. Asdiscussed above, Yu and Parmanto (2011) also note that website acces-sibility is a problem in the corporate world, and that state and federalgovernment sites often outperform commercial sites when it comes toaccessibility. These snapshot studies, much like Potter (2002) and thisarticle, offer the opportunity for tracking the progress of e-governmentaccessibility. Tracking this development provides several benefits, sug-gesting that the study might be replicated for other state governmentwebsites. First, the results of these studies have the potential to providestate governments with a better sense of how accessible their websitesare. When problems are identified, hopefully governments will takethe opportunity to remedy them. Second, these studies can provide afoundation for researchers to take amore in-depth look into how the de-sign decision-making process works and identify ways to improve theimplementation of accessibility, both in instances in which accessibilityhas been found to problematic and in cases in which accessibility hasimproved.

otter, 2002) Accessibility errors 2013

AA 508 A AA AAA 508 AITS

2 1 2 1 0 2 1

2 1 0 0 0 0 1

3 1 2 2 0 0 0

2 2 4 1 1 2 1

3 1 2 0 1 1 1

3 1 2 1 1 0 2

1 0 3 1 0 2 1

4 1 0 0 0 0 1

2 1 5 1 1 3 1

3 2 3 2 1 2 2

4 3 4 1 0 2 1

3 1 3 1 1 1 1

2 1 4 1 0 1 2

(continued)

Organization/site name(website address 2012)

Accessibility errors 2003 (Potter, 2002) Accessibility errors 2013

A AA AAA 508 A AA AAA 508 AITS

Electrical Contractors Board(http://www.aecb.state.al.us)

1 1 2 1 1 1 0 0 0

Emergency Management Agency(http://ema.alabama.gov)

1 3 3 1 3 1 0 1 1

Home Builders Licensure Board(http://hblb.state.al.us)

1 1 2 1 1 0 0 1 2

Alabama Homeland Security(http://homelandsecurity.alabama.gov)

1 3 3 2 4 1 1 2 1

Judicial System Online(http://www.judicial.state.al.us)

1 3 4 2 2 1 1 2 1

Law Institute(http://ali.state.al.us)

1 1 1 1 5 1 1 3 2

Legislative Fiscal Office(http://www.lfo.state.al.us)

1 3 2 1 3 1 1 1 2

(ACAS) Legislative Information System(http://alisondb.legislature.state.al.us/acas)

1 1 1 1 4 1 1 2 2

Legislature(http://www.legislature.state.al.us)

1 3 2 1 5 1 1 3 1

Medicaid(http://medicaid.alabama.gov)

1 3 2 1 5 1 0 3 1

National Guard(http://alguard.state.al.us)

2 2 2 2 6 0 1 3 1

Onsite Wastewater Board(http://aowb.state.al.us)

1 3 3 1 3 1 1 1 1

Plumbers & Gas Fitters Examining Board(http://pgfb.state.al.us)

1 2 2 1 2 0 1 1 1

Public Library Service(http://www.apls.state.al.us)

0 1 3 0 2 1 0 1 1

Public Service Commission(http://www.psc.state.al.us)

X X X X 5 0 0 3 1

Real Estate Commission(http://www.arec.state.al.us)

1 3 3 2 2 2 1 2 1

Shakespeare Festival(http://www.asf.net)

3 3 5 2 2 1 0 2 1

State Auditor's Office(http://www.auditor.state.al.us)

1 3 3 1 3 1 1 1 1

State Board of Auctioneers(http://www.auctioneer.state.al.us)

1 2 3 1 2 1 0 1 1

State Board of Public Accountancy(http://asbpa.state.al.us)

1 2 2 1 1 1 0 0 1

State Board of Social Work Examiners(http://abswe.state.al.us)

1 2 2 1 2 1 0 1 1

State Council on the Arts(http://www.arts.state.al.us)

1 3 2 1 3 1 1 2 2

Alabama.gov(http://www.alabama.gov)

0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1

Attorney General(http://www.ago.state.al.us)

1 3 4 2 0 0 0 0 0

Board of Heating & Air Conditioning Contractors(http://www.hvacboard.state.al.us)

1 1 2 1 1 0 0 0 2

Children's Trust Fund of Alabama(http://ctf.state.al.us)

1 4 3 1 1 1 0 1 2

Department of Archives & History(http://www.archives.state.al.us)

1 2 4 2 5 1 0 3 1

Department of Children's Affairs(http://dca.state.al.us)

2 3 4 2 4 2 0 3 1

Department of Conservation and Natural Resources(http://www.dcnr.state.al.us)

3 3 3 3 5 0 1 2 1

Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation(http://www.mh.state.al.us)

1 2 3 1 2 1 0 1 1

Department of Transportation(http://www.dot.state.al.us)

0 2 2 0 4 0 1 3 1

(ADECA) Economic and Community Affairs(http://www.adeca.state.al.us)

1 1 3 1 5 0 0 3 1

Environmental Management(http://www.adem.state.al.us)

1 4 3 1 4 1 1 4 1

Forestry Commission(http://www.forestry.state.al.us)

3 3 4 4 7 1 0 3 2

Geological Survey of Alabama(http://www.gsa.state.al.us)

1 2 1 1 2 0 1 2 1

Governor's Office on Disability(http://www.good.state.al.us)

0 3 2 1 3 1 0 1 1

Governor's Office On National and Community Service(http://www.servealabama.gov)/2010/default.aspx)

2 2 3 2 1 1 1 0 0

Appendix A (continued)

(continued on next page)

485N.E. Youngblood / Government Information Quarterly 31 (2014) 476–487

(continued)

Organization/site name(website address 2012)

Accessibility errors 2003 (Potter, 2002) Accessibility errors 2013

A AA AAA 508 A AA AAA 508 AITS

Indian Affairs Commission(http://aiac.state.al.us)

1 3 3 1 3 1 0 2 1

Lieutenant Governor(http://www.ltgov.state.al.us)

2 2 3 2 5 1 0 3 1

(ABEMFT) Marriage and Family Therapy(http://www.mft.state.al.us)

1 2 2 1 3 1 0 1 2

Office of the Governor(http://www.governor.state.al.us)

0 1 1 0 2 1 0 2 1

Office of the Secretary of State(http://www.sos.state.al.us)

0 2 3 0 4 1 1 3 2

Peace Officers Annuity Fund(http://www.apoabf.state.al.us)

0 2 2 0 1 1 0 0 2

Peace Officers Standards and Training Commission(http://apostc.state.al.us)

0 2 2 0 3 1 0 2 1

State Licensing Board for General Contractors(http://www.genconbd.state.al.us)

1 2 2 1 2 0 0 0 1

State Board of Physical Therapy(http://www.pt.state.al.us)

1 2 2 1 4 1 0 1 1

State Personnel Department(http://www.personnel.state.al.us)

0 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 1

Sites with no errors 11 1 0 9 5 16 36 13 4

Appendix A (continued)

486 N.E. Youngblood / Government Information Quarterly 31 (2014) 476–487

Caption: A comparison of 2003 and 2012 results.

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Youngblood, N. E., & Mackiewicz, J. (2012). A usability analysis of municipal governmentwebsite home pages in Alabama. Government Information Quarterly, 29(4), 582–588(http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2011.12.010).

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Norman E. Youngblood teaches interactive media in the School of Communication &Journalism at Auburn University and he is a co-director of the Laboratory for Usability,Communication, Interaction and Accessibility. His recent publications include “A usabilityanalysis of municipal government website home pages in Alabama,” published in Govern-ment Information Quarterly, andMultimedia Foundations, a coauthored textbook on digital