U.S. Federal Judiciary Home Pages: Do Inaccessible Judicial Web Sites Limit Access to the Courts?

• In Event: 2421 - Disability and Society

Abstract

Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act requires Web pages of federal government agencies to be accessible to people with disabilities. Yet, accessibility laws such as the ADA and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 only apply to state and local courts. Section 508 standards, however, have now become one of the most widely used for evaluating website accessibility. Using Section 508 Standards, the presence or absence of essential usability features, and Site Accessibility Statements, this study evaluates the accessibility of the home pages of the federal judiciary—those of the U.S. district, Appellate and specialty courts, the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts (AO), the Federal Judicial Center (FJC), and the main homepage of PACER, the federal judiciary’s e-filing and e-records access system. Three levels of data collection and analyses are employed. First, to assess accessibility based on Section 508 guidelines, this study uses the web accessibility evaluation tools AChecker and Cynthia Says. Results of the Web accessibility evaluation tools reveal several detected instances of a narrow set of accessibility issues, including scripts with no accompanying functional text, images/ server-side image maps with no text equivalents, and inaccessible forms. Moreover, only about eight percent of the sites (and as low as three percent) were shown to be free of these issues. By contrast, manual checks of web sites show a much higher percentage (about 67%) of the home pages had "skip navigation" links, and about twelve percent had font size controls. Skip navigation links are crucial usability features, particularly for people who use screen readers or navigate by keyboard only. Whereas font size controls allow for users to increase and/or decrease font size to the user’s needs. A sizable proportion of home pages (about 45%) had a direct or indirect link to the text-to-voice program “BrowseAloud” explanation and download site, apparently in lieu of a statement on accessibility. Finally, a content analysis of existing website accessibility pages and policy statements (when available) shows a high degree of variation, with some being exceptionally detailed and informative, and some less so. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Author

• Mamadi Corra, East Carolina University