The Process
The first step - long before Greytower got involved - consisted of formulating a so-called "audit question", in this case:
To which extent do government websites fulfill the need and prerequisites of citizens?
A number of secondary questions - omitted for brevity - were formulated based on this. In order to answer the question, 92 different government agency websites were chosen for testing.
The selection process were based on proximity to normal people - e.g. agencies which primarily address regular citizens as opposed to other agencies or companies. This list of sites then underwent testing:
- A representative for each government agency, ranging from "webmaster" to the person in charge of information, was tasked with answering a list of 65 questions.
- Each website was tested against the full set of checkpoints from WCAG 1.0. Five additional points were added 1.
- A group of 16 people were interviewed in depth to define critera for how well websites adapt to the needs of the elderly 2 and immigrants 3. The two groups were represented by 8 individuals each.
The next three chapters will detail these steps.
1
On added checkpoints: the five points added are not related to the Web
Accessibility Initiative in any way. They cover a few issues that seem
endemic to Sweden such as the use of site-specific solutions for adjusting
font-sizes, colours and soforth. Another example is the presence or not
of action plans for dealing with accessbility problems.
2
On "The elderly": in this case the term refers to people who experience
such things as reduced eye-sight, loss of muscle control, and other
problems directly related to old age. A 99-year-old with 20/20 vision and
no Parkinsons is, per this definition, not "elderly" :)
3
On immigrants: this group is singled out mainly for an often-occurring
lack of the same detailed knowledge of a country's language(s) and culture
as could be expected from a native. For instance, the use of clearly
defined and marked up abbreviations can be a great help to a person who
might, in this case, have learnt Swedish but has yet to pick up all the
culturally dependent abbreviated terms. As a non-native speaker of Swedish
I run across this problem myself.