An accessibility evaluation platform: borrowing from web 2.0

There are limitations when it comes to promoting increased Internet access to the wider population in Taiwan, mainly because efforts are centered on government-led initiatives that are guided by a Web Accessibility policy. These include the establishment of a call center to handle both technical and administrative issues; creation of a validation toolset, known as 'Freego', to detect violation of Web Accessibility guidelines; the provision of services to support Accessibility Conformances; evaluation reports of websites conducted via automated and human reviews; and progress reports that monitor compliance with Web Accessibility guidelines. The Research, Development & Evaluation Commission (RDEC) has been established as an agency of the Executive Yuan of Taiwan, and is responsible for the administration of a Web Accessibility policy. An Accessibility Evaluation platform, based on ideas taken from Web 2.0, is therefore proposed in this paper in order to leverage these public sector initiatives, as well as to allow for contributions from the wider, interested community. This platform borrows from concepts such as social learning theory (SLS) and social networking service (SNS), which demonstrate that increased social interaction and networking enables people to learn more and to utilize Internet resources more often and productively. Increased Internet accessibility overcomes the challenges of longdistance communication and allows for the maintenance of new and existing relationships, which has societal, as well as individual, benefits. The proposed platform framework is based upon front-end and back-end interfaces, which incorporate user and administrator functions that implement accessibility policies. This should enable a wider participation from the community in the accessibility evaluation process, and allow for a wider dissertation of community experience and knowledge.