The value chain for web accessibility: Challenges and opportunities

This paper presents the results of interviews with representatives of the three key groups of stakeholders in the value chain for web accessibility: website commissioners, web developers and web accessibility experts. 26 web commissioners, 7 web developers and 14 web accessibility experts were interviewed. The results show that in spite of great efforts by the World Wide Web Consortium, the European Commission and other international and national organizations to promote web accessibility, knowledge of this topic is still low. More critically, the tools to support commissioners, developers and accessibility experts are still very poor and do not provide much of the functionality that the various groups in the value chain need. We believe these results highlight some of the reasons why the state of web accessibility is still as poor as it is.