Web Accessibility: A Revisit of U.S. State and Territory COVID-19 Websites After Two Years

Abstract

This study is a longitudinal replication of a website accessibility study conducted in 2021 to compare if COVID-19 sites had improved, declined, or stayed the same in terms of accessibility. Two automated accessibility checker tools, MAUVE++ and WAVE, were used to assess the accessibility of all available U.S. state and territory COVID-19 websites. Each state and territory's home page, testing page, and vaccine page were examined, and accessibility ratings were determined. The number of errors and the overall accessibility ratings were compared between the current (2023) and previous (2021) versions of the sites, both archived using the WayBack Machine. Multi-level modelling methods were employed to analyze the data. The results indicated that the most inaccessible components were those requiring visual interaction, and there were no significant changes in the overall accessibility of websites over the years. A closer examination of individual Success Criteria revealed a significant increase in violation rate of 1.4.11 (non-text contrast) from 2021 to 2023. Overall, this research suggests that there has been a lack of improvement in accessibility of the chosen COVID-19 websites over the past two years, and it has also identified areas that need to be improved.