Web accessibility of healthcare Web sites of Korean government and public agencies: a user test for persons with visual impairment

The present study attempts to evaluate the accessibility of government and public agency healthcare Web sites in Korea through user testing. The study recruited blind (24 participants) and second-level sight-impaired people (1 participant), and evaluated ten healthcare Web sites of Korean government and public institutions. These Web sites revealed problems across four principles of accessibility, i.e., perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. First, according to principle 1, perceivable, the main errors occurred in providing adequate alternate texts and clear instructions. Second, five errors were predominant with regard to principle 2, operable. These are keyboard operation errors, focus order errors, bypass blocks errors, page title errors, and the lack of appropriate link text. Third, with respect to principle 3, understandable, most problems were found in user responses, content sequence, tables, and labels. Finally, based on principle 4, robust, problems regarded markup correctness and Web application accessibility. The problems identified in the study can be simply resolved; however, similar accessibility issues have recurred. Therefore, future research needs to investigate whether government and public agencies or their Web developers are aware of the importance of accessibility.