The EIAO project will establish the technical basis for a European Internet Accessibility Observatory for large-scale assessment of websites accessibility. Frequently updated assessed data will be available online from a user interface of the data warehouse providing a basis for benchmarking, policymaking, research and improvement actions.
Project funding
The European Internet Accessibility Observatory is a European project funded by the EU-Commission under the 6th Framework Programme's strategic objective e-inclusion.
The project is co-funded by the European Commission DG Information Society and Media, under the contract IST-004526.
Main features of EIAO
The European Internet Accessibility Observatory consist of the following main elements elements:
Crawling and downloading web sites.
- A web crawler exploring and identifying available resources on each web site. The crawler is based on the Open Source Web Crawler HarvestMan.
- A URL repository storing web site information such as a list of pages available.
Evaluating web sites.
- A sampler randomly selecting pages from the URL repository to be evaluated by the web accessibility metrics.
- A set of web accessibility metrics (WAMs) reporting accessibility problems according to the Unified Web Evaluation Methodology (UWEM) .
Storing and presenting results
- A Data Warehouse providing on-line access to the collected data via an online reporting tool) .
Component interaction.
The figure below shows how the main components interact in the automatic monitoring process of the Observatory.
Possible effects of EIAO
By providing frequently updated data on web accessibility metrics and deviations from standards of the European websites assessed the Observatory will:
- Provide quantitative background material for policy-making and targeted actions to improve web accessibility. This may be of special importance for the ongoing discussions about legislation (anti-discrimination laws) for equal rights related to web accessibility. .
- Promote e-accessibility by raising awareness and encouraging competition through benchmarking of accessibility metrics and deviations from standards.
- Provide input for the discussion of standards and the development of new standards.
