Web Accessibility: a Blind Look at the ''Pompeii Website''

Francesco Scariolo Memoria di Licenza 
4 
 
0.2. Structure of this study 
 
The structure of this study will follow the framework outlined below. 
 
Chapter 1: provides an introduction to the disability world in relation to the 
Internet. Thereafter, this chapter is divided into two parts: the accessibility history 
and laws, and the relationship between blind people and the personal computer. 
Chapter 2: proposes a summarized and revisited state of the art of the web 
accessibility from a communicative perspective instead of a technical one. This 
state of the art has been written by following W3C and WED recommendations and 
theories and contains 26 accessibility heuristics derived from them. 
Chapter 3: provides the innovation to the subject, stating six new heuristics 
derived from the inspection of the Pompeii website and the interviews with blind 
people carried out in this study. 
Chapter 4: presents the case study and is divided into two parts. The first part is 
the introduction to the case study presenting the Pompeii website. The second part 
is the analysis of the website with a documented inspection reporting problems in 
an original classification. 
Chapter 5: conclusions, limitations and future directions for research in the field. 
 
5 
1. Introduction 
In this chapter the reader will be gradually introduced to the disability world with 
regard to technologies. The focus will be assigned to visual disabilities that perhaps 
cause the most handicap in using the Internet and other technologies. 
1.1. General considerations 
Nowadays, the Internet and its services have become more and more a key 
resource for everybody in society. News, e-government, e-learning, entertainment, 
workplace interaction, e-commerce and many other online services are populating 
the network to the detriment of more traditional services such as government 
offices, stores, and so on. Going to a 6th floor department store or to a big 
museum is a natural thing that everybody can do, even a person affected by a 
physical disability. This happens because the recognition of the equality of human 
beings in this day and age gives us laws that try to provide the same opportunity to 
everybody in society. The same thing should happen also in a virtual world where 
sensory and physical disabilities limit the use of new technologies. The accessibility 
issue moves from the real to the virtual world, and contrary to public opinion, it is 
not only in relation to disabled people. In fact, also non-disabled people can, in 
some situations, perceive themselves to be at a disadvantage. For instance, when 
driving a car and simultaneously speaking with the mobile phone we cannot take 
our hands from the steering wheel or when working in a very sunny place we can 
be irritated by the brightness of the light and not be able to read the screen well. 
Therefore web accessibility assumes progressively an extremely important role both 
for disabled people who want to remain effective and involved members of society 
and for every other individual interacting with these technologies. The World Wide 
Web Consortium defines web accessibility as the “access to the Web by everyone, 
regardless of disability”
1
. Unfortunately the access for everybody is a distant ideal 
and it requires the engagement of every web designer and every company or 
person owning a web site. In this study, focus will be directed to visually impaired 
individuals, specifically completely blind ones. They are the most handicapped in 
terms of the basic nature of the human-computer interaction (HCI) which has as a 
prerequisite: sight. The interaction between a computer and an individual is mainly 
visual and blind people are disadvantaged as a result. This is emphasized by the 
development of new technologies that have progressed from the very basic text 
                                                 
1
 http://www.w3.org/Talks/WAI-Intro/slide3-0.html; last visit:09.12.2004 
Francesco Scariolo Memoria di Licenza 
6 
display, which was accessible to blind people because of the simplicity of use, 
compared with the modern, picture-filled, graphics and visual objects, multimedia 
systems. An example that depicts this situation is the archaeological Pompeii 
website that displays the situation at the moment of the eruption, various 
restorations, works in progress and above all archaeological sites. 
The intention of this work is to provide the web project manager with the 
instrument to (re)design the web site of Pompeii in an accessible way by proposing 
an analysis of the problems and supplying the instruments to resolve them. The 
first question asked was: how is it possible to improve accessibility in the case 
study website? This question may seem banal because a lot of laws and 
recommendations that guide web designers on how to create accessible web pages, 
for blind people, are already available. However, this study aims to take existing 
research in the area, evaluate it along with the case study and interviews and then 
to resolve the website accessibility issues by contributing new heuristics to the 
current research. 
 
1.2. Handicap and disabilities 
Handicap is a social phenomenon, a disadvantageous condition that is the direct 
consequence of an infirmity or a disability. This situation limits or prevents a 
“normal”
2
 social role in relation to the age, gender and socio-economic status of a 
person and therefore also prevents communication. It can be interpreted as the 
result of the contact between the physical and the social environment that means 
that the more these environments are comfortable and suitable for any person, the 
less will be their handicap. For instance, if a person has a wooden leg and therefore 
is a mildly disabled when walking on the street, this will become a greater disability 
when walking on a steep mountain path. The same thing applies to a blind person 
that in the darkness does not display his blindness (please note that for the rest of 
the text “he” will be used for ease of expression), but in the presence of the light 
gives visibility to this kind of disability. Unfortunately, the disability remains and 
problems with regard to it remain too. There are different kinds of disabilities and in 
this study blindness will be the core focus. To introduce the reader to the problem 
of disability, a brief description of the four disability categories will be provided. 
Every disability is an obstacle to the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and 
therefore also to the web. 
                                                 
2
 Intended as “usual” for the bigger part of the population 
Francesco Scariolo Memoria di Licenza 
7 
1.2.1. Cognitive impairments 
There are various cognitive impairments that can be categorized such as memory, 
perception, problem-solving and conceptualizing impairments. A convenient 
example of cognitive impairment is dyslexia which can cause significant problems in 
remembering even short sequences of numbers or letters in the correct order. 
Problems can also be more profound as with some genetic diseases such as Down’s 
syndrome, autism, and dementia. On the other hand, there are also less serious 
cognitive disabilities such as mild learning disabilities or mental inflexibility (i.e. 
elderly people), all of which will influence accessing a website. After good training, 
people with an intellectual impairment can often become familiar with the personal 
computer and the Internet, but they can be easily confused when required to 
respond quickly or when facing new or more complex situations. 
1.2.2. Motor disabilities 
When considering disabilities, the obvious first image that appears in our mind is a 
wheelchair. It has become over the years synonymous with disability, even if it is 
not the only one. Mobility is (as the other characteristics) an essential feature of 
human beings, but is considered to be the most important one because without 
moving, access to daily activities is severely limited. Even though the interaction 
with a computer does not require athletic skills, the mouse and keyboard have to 
be activated through movements. People with loss of limb(s), cerebral palsy, 
muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, Parkinson’s disease, essential 
tremor and other motor impairments not related to a disease, for example the use 
of one hand because the other is busy, can encounter difficulties in accessing the 
web. 
1.2.3. Hearing disabilities 
Hearing loss is not considered a problem by web developers; because they think 
that the web accessibility consists in following some guidelines to make speech 
synthesizers read well. On one hand this is perfectly clear, but the web is a 
multimedia vehicle of information, so that also audio and video tracks are provided 
in this extremely large virtual world. Hearing loss can be classified according to 
degree of loss (low/high tone hearing loss, conductive hearing loss, and others) and 
still remains a significant impairment for people suffering from it, even in web 
surfing. Problems that can occur are related not only to the hearing loss, but also to 
the fact that not all deaf people speak a sign language and there is no universal 
sign language (there are various sign languages) and videos on the Web are often 
Francesco Scariolo Memoria di Licenza 
8 
not clear enough (or large enough) to make sign language understandable. 
Challenges for developers are to provide transcripts for audio clips and synchronous 
captioning for video clips. 
1.2.4. Visual disabilities 
Disabilities that affect vision are widely diffused in the world. For example, 1,4%
3
 of 
the Swiss population has a significant visual impairment and half of the active 
population wear glasses, which is not considered to be a significant disability, but 
still constitutes a visual impairment. In fact the visual disabilities are essentially 
classified in three types: color blindness, low vision and blindness. It is necessary to 
understand these three types of visual impairments in more detail. In section 1.5 
“Visual disabilities” this subject will be more extensively discussed. 
1.3. A brief history of the web accessibility 
Since the basic nature of the computer itself is visually oriented, the interaction 
with a personal computer has always been “simple” (even if subjective) to non-
disabled people. From the creation of PC’s, the use of the keyboard to move 
through an interface was the only method to get in touch with the brain of the 
machine. Later came the mouse; a little instrument that allows a user to be more 
rapid in accessing information simply by moving the pointer to the desired item and 
clicking on it with a button. These simple instruments have become commonly used 
over the years and now are deeply entrenched in computer culture. In the days of 
the creation of the World Wide Web, in the early ‘90s, scientists of the European 
Organization for Nuclear Research
4
, the cradle of the web, have been more 
concerned about content than presentation. For this reason, the original form of 
HTML
5
, was structured around headings, paragraphs, and other structures that help 
to define the basic layout of the information content of a textual document. In fact 
this type of content sharing was used only in the scientific environment and was 
only one type in the multitude of file sharing methods. The Tim Berners-Lee’s
6
 idea 
grew very rapidly and also other people began to use it finding limitations on the 
presentation of information. The web grew rapidly and all types of content began to 
                                                 
3
 
http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/fr/index/themen/gesundheit/gesundheitszustand/behinderung/kennzah
len0/behinderung_im_alltag.html; last visit: 23.11.2004 
4
 CERN: Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire 
5
 HyperText Markup Language. 
6
 Tim Berners-Lee is the scientist of the CERN who invented the World Wide Web. Please refer to T., 
Berners Lee: Weaving the Web. Texere (2000) 
Francesco Scariolo Memoria di Licenza 
9 
populate it: images, videos etc. The situation remained favorable for disabled 
people until the beginning of the 21
st
 century, when building a website has become 
so easy that even non-experts can create their own website; this lead to an 
intolerable situation for blind people. The HTML code began to be wrongly used 
(because of the non-expertise of new web designers) and web pages were always 
more filled with images. 
Let’s make a step back. Problems start when a person cannot see the screen: it is 
at this initial stage that the disability appears. How can we interface with a 
computer without a screen? Merely thinking about it would be frustrating. Moving 
the mouse to click an icon would be impossible as well as opening any program. 
The blind user cannot access with traditional instruments and the only thing 
possible without seeing is to turn on the computer and leave it on without doing 
anything: the computer becomes a useless tool. It is a very depressing perspective, 
but for a blind user that does not have appropriate instruments, using a computer 
is an unattainable goal. Fortunately, for visually impaired users, the techniques 
placed at the disposal of blind people include some instruments capable of helping 
them to access the computer with a different interface. The Braille keyboard and 
Braille displays were the first technologies to help blind people to interact with the 
computer. Afterwards the speech synthesizer was introduced; it reads the screen 
from the top-left to the bottom right side. Many companies (among them IBM, HP 
and Microsoft), universities (University of Wisconsin, ETHZ) and of course also the 
W3C tried to resolve accessibility issues with additional varied initiatives. Despite 
these initiatives, some problems remained and they became more and more 
important until politicians and governments began to discuss them. 
1.4. Legal aspects 
Nowadays, almost every constitution considers the human being’s identity and 
equality as a right for everyone. On this basis, the web accessibility became also a 
legal and political problem during these past few years. In fact, in many countries, 
disabled people start to claim the accessibility to electronic documents with the 
same strength that they did with architectural features that denied access to the 
handicapped. As a superior organization, the EU states a charter of fundamental 
rights, which underlines this problem in a general way in its 26
th
 article: “The Union 
recognises and respects the right of persons with disabilities to benefit from 
measures designed to ensure their independence, social and occupational 
Francesco Scariolo Memoria di Licenza 
10 
integration and participation in the life of the community.”
7
. For more then 10 
years, the EU has been involved in several research programs trying to respond to 
the problems of disabled people; among them, the WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative 
of the W3C which will be discussed in more detail in chapter 2) and others. In 
parallel, the EU built an action plan (eEurope Action Plan 2002
8
) with the purpose of 
giving an on-line society for all. In this plan, one of the goals is to render the access 
to the web simple for disabled people and to apply the WAI findings. This project 
has been successfully carry out and subsequently developed in the eEurope Action 
Plan 2005
9
. 
In the European Union, every country develops its more specific laws and Italy, for 
instance, on 9th January 2004 amended the well-known “Legge Stanca” 
(Disposizioni per favorire l'accesso dei soggetti disabili agli strumenti informatici)
 10
. 
It is a very precise law, stating its objectives that are the protection and recognition 
of the right of every person to access every source of information and related 
services; above all computerized and telecommunication ones. In particular, 
services of the government and administration have to be accessible to everybody, 
complying with the third article of the Italian Constitution (“Tutti i cittadini hanno 
pari dignità sociale e sono eguali davanti alla legge, senza distinzione di sesso, […] 
di condizioni personali e sociali.”
11
). 
The situation is a little different in the USA, a progressive nation in this domain, 
where a similar law was already constituted at the end of the last century. Indeed, 
the eminent Section 508
12
 of the original Rehabilitation Act
 13
, law that requires to 
Federal Agencies to render “their electronic and information technology accessible 
to people with disabilities”
14
, was amended in 1998. To delineate the law, three 
Standards were defined, but accessibility requirements were not decided in that 
                                                 
7
 European Charter of Fundamental Rights, III Chapter, 26
th
 Article 
8
 
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/topics/citizens/accessibility/web/wai_2002/cec_com_web_wai_2
001/index_en.htm; last visit: 22.12.2004 
9
 http://europa.eu.int/information_society/eeurope/2005/all_about/action_plan/index_en.htm; last visit: 
22.12.2004 
10
Dispositions to make the computerized instrument accessible to disabled people. link: 
http://www.innovazione.gov.it/ita/intervento/normativa/allegati/disegno_Stanca_disabili.pdf; last visit: 
06.12.2004. 
11
 3rd Article of the Italian Constitution. http://www.quirinale.it/costituzione/costituzione.htm; last visit: 
20.01.2005 
12
 http://www.section508.gov ; last visit: 21.09.2004. 
13
 The Rehabilitation Act is the Federal legislation that authorizes the formula grant programs of 
vocational rehabilitation, supported employment, independent living, and client assistance. It also 
authorizes a variety of training and service discretionary grants administered by the Rehabilitation 
Services Administration.; link: http://www.ed.gov/policy/speced/reg/narrative.html?exp=0; last visit: 
06.12.2004. 
14
 http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=3; last visit: 06.12.2004. 
Francesco Scariolo Memoria di Licenza 
11 
year, and delegated to the Access Board
15
, the delegation of the government that 
had to determine the operational accessibility standards. This federal agency, 
composed from IT professionals, IT professors and academics and disabled 
delegates, composed the current guidelines, grouped under Section 508 that 
became operational in June 2001. These guidelines are very precise and are taken 
as reference also in other works on accessibility and often cited in parallel with W3C 
guidelines. 
In Switzerland, the Legge federale sull’eliminazione di svantaggi nei confronti dei 
disabili
16
 is the only law that considers the rights of disabled people. Unfortunately, 
until the end of 2003, no law compels the virtual world to take disabled people into 
consideration. This gap has been filled with the “Ordinanza sull’eliminazione di 
svantaggi nei confronti dei disabili”
17
 that provides a special article for Internet 
services. This article is purely indicative, because it does not refer to particular 
norms or rules to render the web accessible; it states that Internet communication 
has to be rendered accessible to people with disabilities and that the technology 
used to provide this information has to be the latest in accordance with the W3C 
directives. 
 
1.5. Visual disabilities 
The explanations that will be given in the next paragraphs do not claim to be 
scientifically precise, but clarifying for the non-medical reader. As already stated in 
the “Handicap and disabilities” section, there are fundamentally three types of 
visual disabilities (color blindness, low vision problems and blindness) that will be 
demonstrated by two figures (figure 1.1 and 1.2) enhancing the completeness of 
the explanation that originally appeared in this way: 
  
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
15
 http://www.access-board.gov; last visit: 06.12.2004. 
16
 http://www.ofj.admin.ch/themen/behinderte/vorlage-behig-i.pdf; last visit: 08.12.2004 
17
 http://www.admin.ch/ch/i/rs/151_31/index.html; last visit: 22.12.2004 
Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2