The Legal Handling of Digital Accessibility: a Comparison of Evaluation and Policy Approaches in Federal-Level Cases in Brazil and the United States

Delvani Antônio Mateus; Fábio Aparecido Cândido da Silva; Silvia Helena Rigatto; Tiago Silva da Silva; Paulo Afonso Parreira Júnior; Maurício Ronny de Almeida Souza; André Pimenta Freire

doi:10.5753/jbcs.2024.3259

Authors

Delvani Antônio Mateus Federal University of Lavras https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5832-3115
Fábio Aparecido Cândido da Silva Federal University of Lavras https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7359-1804
Silvia Helena Rigatto Federal University of Lavras https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5937-5611
Tiago Silva da Silva Federal University of São Paulo https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8459-7833
Paulo Afonso Parreira Júnior Federal University of Lavras https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8877-2931
Maurício Ronny de Almeida Souza Federal University of Lavras https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0182-8016
André Pimenta Freire Federal University of Lavras https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7894-9740

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5753/jbcs.2024.3259

Keywords:

Digital Accessibility, Public policies, Surveillance

Abstract

Countries in the Global South still have less well-established procedures and resources to enact public policies and surveillance of digital accessibility. This paper presents a comparative study on the legal handling of digital accessibility in one country in the Global North and one in the Global South – the United States and Brazil. The study analyzed federal-level procedures handled by government surveillance bodies concerning public and private organizations, involving 26 cases in Brazil and 124 in the United States. The results showed that most cases in Brazil were finalized based on automated accessibility evaluations and with little evidence of long-term actions for sustained accessibility. All cases analyzed from the United States resulted in settlement agreements leading to medium to long-term initiatives, which covered continuous verification of conformance to accessibility standards and, in many cases, demanded inspections by accessibility specialists and tests with users with disabilities. The paper discusses the implications of including effective accessibility evaluation methods and long-term solutions in legal cases.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Acosta-Vargas, P., Salvador-Ullauri, L. A., and Luján-Mora, S. (2019). A heuristic method to evaluate web accessibility for users with low vision. IEEE Access, 7:125634-125648. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2939068.

Beaumon, B. (2021). Digital Inclusion in the Global South: Work Globally, Act Locally. Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846413.003.0008.

Brajnik, G., Yesilada, Y., and Harper, S. (2011). The expertise effect on web accessibility evaluation methods. Human-Computer Interaction, 26(3):246-283. DOI: 10.1080/07370024.2011.601670.

Brasil (1988). Constitution of the federative republic of brazil. Available online [link]. Last accessed 7th Septembre 2022.

Brasil (2022). About the federal public ministry (informações sobre a estrutura e funcionamento do mpf). Available online [link]. Last accessed 7th Septembre 2022.

Brewer, J. and Abou-Zahra, S. (2021). The Role of Technical Standards in Improving Digital Accessibility in Under-Resourced Regions and Communities. Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846413.003.0007.

Conselho Nacional de Saúde (2016). Resolução nº 510, de 07 de abril de 2016. Available online [link]. Last accessed 9th October 2023.

Doush, I. and AlMeraj, Z. (2019). Evaluating the accessibility of kuwaiti e-government websites. Jordanian Journal of Computers and Information Technology (JJCIT), 5(03). DOI: 10.5455/jjcit.71-1557233833.

European Commission (2022). Web accessibility. Available online [link]. Last accessed May 19, 2022.

European Telecommunications Standards Institute (2021). Etsi en 301 549 - v3.2.1 - accessibility requirements for ict products and services. Available online [link]. Last accessed 30 May 2022.

Feingold, L. (2021). Structured negotiation: A winning alternative to lawsuits. A11y Books. Available online [link].

Freire, A. P. (2012). Disabled people and the Web: User-based measurement of accessibility. PhD thesis, University of York. Available online [link].

Galkute, M., P., L. A. R., and M., V. A. S. (2020). Improving the web accessibility of a university library for people with visual disabilities through a mixed evaluation approach. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, pages 56-71. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-49570-1_5.

Gallegos, H. L., Gould, M., and Leblois, A. (2021). Global Trends for Accessible Technologies in the Developing World. Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846413.003.0004.

Governo Brasileiro (2004). Decreto nº 5.296 de 2 de dezembro de 2004. Available online [link]. Accessed in: 30 May 19, 2022.

Governo Brasileiro (2014). emag - modelo de acessibilidade em governo eletrônico. Available online [link]. Last accessed Retrieved May 30, 2022.

Governo Brasileiro (2015). Lei nº 13.146, de 6 de julho de 2015. Available online [link]. Last accessed May 19, 2022.

Gov.UK (2021). Accessibility monitoring of public sector websites and mobile apps 2020-2021. Available online [link]. Last accessed 27th May 2022.

Harrison, C. and Petrie, H. (2007). Severity of usability and accessibility problems in ecommerce and egovernment websites. In People and Computers XX—Engage, pages 255-262. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-84628-664-3_19.

ISO (2018). Iso 9241-11. usability: Definitions and concepts. Available online [link]. Last accessed April 23, 2020.

Jaeger, P. T. (2006). Assessing section 508 compliance on federal e-government web sites: A multi-method, user-centered evaluation of accessibility for persons with disabilities. Government Information Quarterly, 23(2):169-190. DOI: 10.1016/j.giq.2006.03.002.

Kelly, B., Lewthwaite, S., and Sloan, D. (2010). Developing countries; developing experiences: Approaches to accessibility for the real world. In Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A), W4A '10, New York, NY, USA. Association for Computing Machinery. DOI: 10.1145/1805986.1805992.

Kirkham, R. (2016). How disability discrimination law can enable new assistive technologies. SIGACCESS Access. Comput., (116):22–31. DOI: 10.1145/3023851.3023854.

Kirkpatrick, A., Connor, J. O., Campbell, A., and Cooper, M. (2018). Web content accessibility guidelines (wcag) 2.1. Available online [link]. Last accessed 15 March 2023.

Kisselburgh, L., Beaudouin-Lafon, M., Cranor, L., Lazar, J., and Hanson, V. L. (2020). Hci ethics, privacy, accessibility, and the environment: A town hall forum on global policy issues. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '20, page 1–6, New York, NY, USA. Association for Computing Machinery. DOI: 10.1145/3334480.3381067.

Lazar, J. (2018). Due process and primary jurisdiction doctrine: A threat to accessibility research and practice? In Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, ASSETS '18, page 404–406, New York, NY, USA. Association for Computing Machinery. DOI: 10.1145/3234695.3241022.

Lazar, J. (2019a). The potential role of us consumer protection laws in improving digital accessibility for people with disabilities. U. Pa. JL & Soc. Change, 22:185. Available online [link].

Lazar, J. (2019b). Web accessibility policy and law. In Web Accessibility, pages 247-261. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-7440-0_14.

Lazar, J., Abascal, J., Barbosa, S., Barksdale, J., Friedman, B., Grossklags, J., Gulliksen, J., Johnson, J., McEwan, T., Martínez-Normand, L., et al. (2016). Human-computer interaction and international public policymaking: a framework for understanding and taking future actions. now publishers. DOI: 10.1561/1100000062.

Lazar, J., Goldstein, D., and Taylor, A. (2015). Ensuring digital accessibility through process and policy. Morgan kaufmann. Book.

Lazar, J., Williams, V., Gunderson, J., and Foltz, T. (2017). Investigating the potential of a dashboard for monitoring us federal website accessibility. In Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii international conference on system sciences. Available online [link].

Luján-Mora, S., Navarrete, R., and Peñafiel, M. (2014). Egovernment and web accessibility in south america. In 2014 First International Conference on eDemocracy & eGovernment (ICEDEG), pages 77-82. DOI: 10.1109/ICEDEG.2014.6819953.

Mateus, D. A., Silva, F. A. C. d., Silva, T. S. d., and Freire, A. P. (2022). Evaluation methods in legal procedures concerning digital accessibility in brazil: An analysis of cases investigated by the federal public ministry. In Proceedings of the 21st Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems, IHC '22, New York, NY, USA. Association for Computing Machinery. DOI: 10.1145/3554364.3559130.

Moroney, J. (2020). Reviving negotiated rulemaking for an accessible internet. Mich. L. Rev., 119:1581. Available online [link].

Mounika, P., Karia, D., Sharma, K., and Biswas, P. (2019). Accessibility evaluation of three important indian websites. In Research into Design for a Connected World, pages 243-254. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-981-13-5974-3_21.

NIC.Br (2023). Guia de boas práticas para acessibilidade digital programa de cooperação entre reino unido e brasil em acesso digital. Available online [link] Last accessed: 8 October 2023.

Petrie, H. and Bevan, N. (2009). The evaluation of accessibility, usability, and user experience. In Stephanidis, C., editor, The Universal Access Handbook, pages 1-16. CRC Press. Available online [link].

Power, C., Freire, A., Petrie, H., and Swallow, D. (2012). Guidelines are only half of the story: Accessibility problems encountered by blind users on the web. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI '12, page 433–442, New York, NY, USA. Association for Computing Machinery. DOI: 10.1145/2207676.2207736.

Romen, D. and Svanaes, D. (2012). Validating wcag versions 1.0 and 2.0 through usability testing with disabled users. Universal Access in the Information Society, 11(4):375-385. DOI: 10.1007/s10209-011-0259-3.

Silva, C. A., de Oliveira, A. F. B. A., Mateus, D. A., Costa, H. A. X., and Freire, A. P. (2019). Types of problems encountered by automated tool accessibility assessments, expert inspections and user testing: A systematic literature mapping. In Proceedings of the 18th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems, IHC '19, New York, NY, USA. Association for Computing Machinery. DOI: 10.1145/3357155.3358479.

Siqueira, M. S. S., Dias, F. S., Rigatto, S. H., Carvalho, M. C. N., Marques, T. A. M., and Freire, A. P. (2022a). Who watches the watchers? accessibility of the public prosecutor's office’s websites in brazil and implications for e-government accessibility surveillance policies. Electronic Government, an International Journal, page (in print). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1504/EG.2023.127576.

Siqueira, M. S. S., Oliveira Nascimento, P., and Freire, A. P. (2022b). Reporting behaviour of people with disabilities in relation to the lack of accessibility on government websites: Analysis in the light of the theory of planned behaviour. DOI: 10.47985/dcidj.475,.

US Government (2018). Ict accessibility 508 standards and 255 guidelines. Available online [link].

US Government (2022). Us department of justice. Available online [link]. Accessed at: 27th May 2022.

Vigo, M., Brown, J., and Conway, V. (2013). Benchmarking web accessibility evaluation tools: Measuring the harm of sole reliance on automated tests. In Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility, W4A '13, New York, NY, USA. Association for Computing Machinery. DOI: 10.1145/2461121.2461124.

Wentz, B., Pham, D., Feaser, E., Smith, D., Smith, J., and Wilson, A. (2019). Documenting the accessibility of 100 us bank and finance websites. Universal Access in the Information Society, 18(4):871-880. DOI: 10.1007/s10209-018-0616-6.

Yi, Y. J. (2020). Web accessibility of healthcare web sites of korean government and public agencies: a user test for persons with visual impairment. Universal Access in the Information Society, 19(1):41-56. DOI: 10.1007/s10209-018-0625-5.