Integrating Accessibility into Digital Design Processes : A Systemic Approach

Integrating

Accessibility into

Digital Design

Processes

MASTER THESIS WITHIN: Informatics NUMBER OF CREDITS: 30

PROGRAMME OF STUDY: Information Architecture & Innovation AUTHOR: Jasmin Pihavaara

JÖNKÖPING May 2020

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Master Thesis - Informatics

Title: Integrating Accessibility into Digital Design Processes – A Systemic Approach

Author: Jasmin Pihavaara

Tutors: Andrea Resmini & Domina Robert Kiunsi

Date: 2020-05-19

Key terms: digital accessibility – web accessibility – inclusive design – wicked problems –

systems thinking – system archetypes

Abstract

Today’s digital products, services and experiences need to be designed with accessibility in mind in order to provide equal opportunities in use and enjoyment for the growing group of users with permanent, temporary and situational impairments. However, the topic still seems to be an afterthought in practice. With the research question ‘What are the enablers and inhibitors for integrating accessibility into digital design processes from a systemic perspective?’, this thesis aims to identify factors that drive or hinder accessibility efforts among design practitioners in Germany and how these forces may interrelate. Accessibility integration is therefore defined as a system. The research is based on a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with four UX Designers, two UI Designers and one Chief Creative Officer with varying experiences regarding accessibility in past projects. By conducting a content analysis, the responses are grouped into categories and further visualized in the form of system archetypes to understand systemic behavior. The findings indicate that integration of accessibility into digital design processes is influenced by many enabling and inhibiting factors, of technical, individual, societal, institutional, regulatory, economic and financial as well as cliental and organizational nature, turning the topic into a complex, wicked problem. While economic reasons were a dominant force driving the system’s behavior, it appears that the underlying mental models of all actors involved are significantly contributing to the state of accessibility integration in design practice.

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Acknowledgment

Countless bottles of Fritz-Kola and post-its later, the work is finally done. It is time to express my sincere gratitude to a couple of people without whom this thesis would not have become what it is.

First of all, I would like to thank my thesis supervisors Domina and Andrea for their input throughout this process, and especially for the freedom given. Tack!

Special thanks to every interview participant for agreeing to participate in my study and providing me with valuable insights. Vielen Dank an euch!

Big shout out to my project group Denkfabrik, I had a blast with you during our first year in Sweden. I loved how we kept fun while working hard. I still morn our BlackBox idea, if we only had the right investors, right?

Finally, gratitude is also owed to my parents, who have always supported my journey unconditionally. Kiitos! And Felix, many thanks for proof-reading my manuscript and the great support along the way!

I would like to close with a quote connected to my research topic that inspires me to take the responsibility that is being given to us designers and use it for good.

“Diversity is our world’s greatest asset and inclusion is our greatest challenge.” - Jutta Treviranus, Director of the Inclusive Design Research Center

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Table of Contents

1 Introduction ... 8

1.1 Background ... 8

1.2 Problem Discussion ... 10

1.3 Purpose and Scope ... 13

1.4 Topic Justification and Personal Motivation ... 15

1.5 Delimitations ... 15 1.6 Definitions ... 17

2 Theoretical Framework ... 19

2.3.1.3 Laws, Regulations and Guidelines ... 25

2.3.1.4 Personalization Options ... 27

2.3.1.5 The Definition of Digital Accessibility ... 28

2.3.1.6 Accessibility in Design Processes ... 30

2.3.1.7 Previous Integration Models ... 34

2.3.2 Systems Theory ... 40

2.3.2.1 Complex Systems ... 40

2.3.2.2 Systems Thinking ... 43

2.3.2.3 System Archetypes ... 45

2.3.3 The Wicked Problem of Digital Accessibility ... 49

2.3.4 Factors Influencing Accessibility Integration ... 50

2.3.4.1 Enabling Factors and Benefits ... 51

2.3.4.2 Inhibiting Factors and Barriers ... 53

2.3.4.3 Summary of Factors from Literature ... 56

3 Methodology ... 59

3.1 Research Philosophy ... 59

3.2 Research Approach ... 61

iv 3.3.1 Sampling Strategy ... 63 3.3.2 Interview Design ... 65 3.3.3 Data Collection ... 67 3.3.4 Data Analysis ... 69 3.3.4.1 Content Analysis ... 69 3.4 Research Quality ... 70 3.5 Research Ethics ... 72

4 Findings ... 74

4.2.2 Attitude and Mental Model ... 78

4.2.3 Personal Preferences ... 81

4.2.4 Perceptions ... 82

4.3 Societal Factors ... 83

4.3.1 Moral Obligation ... 83

4.3.2 Media and Industry ... 84

4.3.3 Dialogue ... 84

4.4 Economic and Financial Factors ... 84

4.4.1 Budget ... 84 4.4.2 Costs ... 85 4.4.3 Revenue ... 85 4.5 Market Factors ... 86 4.5.1 Consumer Demand ... 86 4.5.2 Reputation ... 87 4.5.3 Customer Segments ... 87

4.6 Institutional and Regulatory Factors ... 88

4.6.1 Education ... 88

4.6.2 Legislation ... 88

v 4.7 Organizational Factors ... 90 4.7.1 Management’s Commitment ... 90 4.7.2 Internal Training ... 91 4.7.3 Accessibility Champion ... 93 4.8 Cliental Factors ... 93

4.8.1 Attitude and Mental Model as Perceived ... 93

4.8.2 Prerequisites ... 93

4.8.3 Perceptions ... 94

4.9 Factors Related to Tools, Resources and Processes ... 95

4.9.1 Tools ... 95

4.9.2 Resources ... 95

4.9.3 Processes ... 96

4.10 Responsibility and Change ... 96

4.10.1 Responsibility ... 96

4.10.2 Change ... 97

5 Analysis ... 100

5.1 Balancing and Reinforcing Loops ... 100

5.2 ‘Fixes that Fail’ Archetype ... 102

5.3 ‘Shifting the Burden’ Archetype ... 104

5.4 ‘Drifting Goals’ Archetype ... 105

5.5 ‘Success to the Successful’ Archetype ...106

6 Conclusions ... 109

6.1 Intervention Possibilities ... 112

6.2 Target Group Appropriateness ... 114

6.3 Summary ... 117

7 Discussion ... 118

7.1 Results Discussion ... 118

7.2 Methods Discussion ... 118

7.3 Implications for Practice ... 121

7.4 Future Research ... 122

Reference List ... 124

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Figures

Figure 1: Examples of Mismatch ...11

Figure 2: Desirability, Feasibility and Viability Diagram ...12

Figure 3: Disabilities Overview ...22

Figure 4: The Persona Spectrum ...23

Figure 5: Original Double Diamond Model ...31

Figure 6: Extended Double Diamond Model ...31

Figure 7: The Inclusive Panda Map ...32

Figure 8: Accessibility Lifecycle Cross-Functional Team Roles ...34

Figure 9: Web Accessibility Integration Model ...35

Figure 10: Contextualized Model of Accessible E-Learning Practice in Higher Education 36 Figure 11: Expanded Web Accessibility Integration Model ...37

Figure 12: Factors Influencing Adoption and Implementation Processes of Accessibility ...38

Figure 13: Causal Loop Diagram of Public Website Accessibility Key Variables ...39

Figure 14: Workforce Training ...40

Figure 15: The Component Parts of a System ...41

Figure 16: Basics of Feedback Loops ...42

Figure 17: Styles of Thinking ...44

Figure 18: ‘Fixes that Fail’ Template ...46

Figure 19: ‘Shifting the Burden’ Template ...47

Figure 20: ‘Drifting Goals’ Template ...48

Figure 21: ‘Success to the Successful’ Template ...49

Figure 22: Sample Overview ...65

Figure 23: Data Collection Information ...68

Figure 24: Balancing Loop of Knowledge and Training...100

Figure 25: Vicious Cycle of Media Coverage ...101

Figure 26: Vicious Cycle of Profession Preparation ...102

Figure 27: ‘Fixes that Fail’ Archetype ...103

Figure 28: ‘Shifting the Burden’ Archetype ...104

Figure 29: ‘Drifting Goals’ Archetype ...106

Figure 30: ‘Success to the Successful’ Archetype ...107

Figure 31: Expanded ‘Success to the Successful’ Archetype ...108

Figure 32: The Inclusive Panda Map with Car Manufacturer Example ...115

Tables

Table 2: Overview of Enablers and Inhibitors from Literature ...56

Table 3: Comparison of Enablers and Inhibitors from Literature and Data Collection....110

Appendix

Appendix 2: Topic Guide ...134

Appendix 3: Consent Form ...137

Appendix 4: Laddering Technique Examples ...139

Appendix 5: Excerpt from Coding Agenda ...141

Appendix 6: Sample of Coding ...142

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List of Abbreviations

ADA – Americans With Disabilities Act AG – Accessibility Guidelines

AI – Artificial Intelligence AR – Augmented Reality CCO – Chief Creative Officer CI – Corporate Identity

EAA – European Accessibility Act HCD – Human-Centered Design IS – Information Systems

ICT – Information & Communication Technology QA – Quality Assurance

ROI – Return on Investments UI – User Interface

UN – United Nations UX – User Experience VR – Virtual Reality WA – Web Accessibility

WCAG – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WHO – World Health Organization

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1 Introduction

_____________________________________________________________________________________ This first chapter provides the background necessary to understand the studied subject matter and the motivation behind it, the identified problem in connection to the topic, and the purpose and scope for the research. Additionally, a research question is formulated based on the problem discussion. The introduction ends with briefly describing delimitations and essential definitions of the thesis.

______________________________________________________________________

1.1 Background

Recognizing human diversity, efforts have been made to design our physical world to be accessible to all of us with respect to equal human dignity. Manifestations of it can be seen in the form of escalators, elevators, access ramps and curb cuts. In fact, the lowered curbs in sidewalks, primarily built for war veterans using wheelchairs, have proved to work as an aid for everyone else too, including people, who are not permanently but temporarily or situationally hindered in their physical ability to lift their legs or while pushing a stroller, known as the ‘curb-cut effect’ (Bhawalkar, 2018). The same is true for the invention of the typewriter, which was originally designed for a blind woman and still lives on in the form of computer keyboards (Lazar et al., 2015). Hence, historically seen, accessibility has been a driver for innovation in many cases. Bell, inventor of the telephone in 1876, had a deaf mother, married a woman with the same disposition, and additionally, was also a teacher for the deaf. His efforts in regard to this communication means were clearly driven by his curiosity towards sound, being indirectly affected by the lack of it (Proctor, 2013).

Moving forward from past times to our present reality of a postdigital world, where interfaces are now considered objects of design too. Mixing digital into the physical space has brought whole new opportunities as well as challenges. Both are increasingly converging into a blended space of blurring boundaries that require the design of seamless experiences for users to find pleasure and meaning in use, as these experiences can nowadays take place across different channels and touchpoints (Resmini & Rosati, 2011).

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“Everything is becoming information, and the information we can (and cannot) access increases constantly.” (Resmini & Rosati, 2011, p.51)

The Internet has made it possible for people with disabilities to participate in society to the same extent as their fully able peers. A new practice of Web accessibility (WA) arose with the aim “to help people with disabilities to perceive, understand, navigate, interact with, and contribute to the Web” (Harper & Chen, 2012, p. 63). It can be argued that for this group of users the online world – the biggest public space we have - and digital devices may be an even more important source for daily information when alternatives in the physical world are inaccessible for various reasons (Leitner & Strauss, 2010). For instance, the invention of video calls has made it possible for the deaf and hard of hearing community to read the lips of their conversation partner while calling each other. “Information can be conveyed bodily through auditory, visual, tactile clues [...]” (Lacerda et al., 2019, p. 735). However, if you are affected by any kind of impairment in regard to these senses, the information then becomes inaccessible. With advancements in immersive technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), where these senses are important anchors to the experience, it becomes even more important to face accessibility challenges in such hybrid realities from the beginning on. That is, to not push new technologies into the market as fast as possible just for the sake of speed and foregoing the addition of lasting value. The blurry target of ‘fixing inaccessibility issues later’ will most certainly only facilitate the continuous growth of accessibility barriers. Nowadays, with information systems (IS) being more and more pervasive in our daily lives, the ethical responsibility that comes with creating interactions between humans and diverse touchpoints becomes an integral part of the design process itself: “Denial of access resulting from the inaccessibility of mainstream information technology is considered to be discrimination” (Yu, 2002, p. 417). To ensure access as well as smooth user experiences (UX) for not just the majority of people but also the minorities to the same extent, requires an inclusive attitude. For the web and its content, laws, regulations and guidelines exist that bind certain businesses (depending on the country) as well as help design teams to fulfill accessibility conformance requirements. Though there are two ways to measure if something is accessible or not: in terms of conformance to guidelines

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or as perceived by those affected. In 2019, the inaccessibility of Beyoncé’s official website was brought to court as it was claimed to violate the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) from 1990 for users with visual impairments due to lacking alternative text (alt text) for images as well as not being navigable by keyboard and hence, depriving them from equal enjoyment of services offered by the website (Snapes, 2019).

Disabilities can be as obvious as a broken arm or less apparent such as one’s non-fluency in the language of the residence country, which too, hinders participation or navigation in daily online or offline life to some extent (Bhawalkar, 2018; Proctor, 2013). Though there exists a variety of assistive technologies for users in question to ease their experiences. However, with advancements in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector, “questions have arisen whether new media and ICTs empower or disenfranchise, unify or divide, and bridge the gap in social and economic inequality or widen it” (Zhang & Kim, 2016, p. 216).

1.2 Problem Discussion

By definition, accessibility refers to the qualities that make an experience open to everyone (Microsoft Inclusive Design, 2016b), knowing no borders whether something takes place in a physical or digital sphere. With age, disabilities tend to increase, and given the fact that we are faced with a growing proportion of elderly people in our societies (Langdon et al., 2018), accessibility defects will subsequently have an even farther impact on a much larger group of users. According to the WHO, 15% of the world’s population consists of people with disabilities (Gay et al., 2018). De facto, the largest minority in the world is formed by this demographic (Bhawalkar, 2018).

‘Disability’ is not just to be defined as the binary state of ability (Goodwin, 2009) but as already illustrated with the ‘curb-cut effect’, impairments do not solely come as a permanent state such as being born blind or decreasing eyesight with age. Mismatches of interactions leading to inaccessibility can occur on many levels such as the human and the environment, the human and an object or between humans, as shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1: Examples of Mismatch (Microsoft Inclusive Design, 2016a, p. 24)

Temporary, as well as situational disabilities both need to be considered to the same extent, scaling up to even more people being affected: needing subtitles for videos in an environment where audio is prohibited, or someone temporarily disabled due to an arm injury for instance. By including these groups’ close social networks into the picture as well, the numbers reach up to 50% of the population being affected to some extent (Gay et al., 2018), as word of mouth and personal referrals of brands and products is still common. Having this spectrum in mind, the conversation shifts towards the need to understand that accessibility compliance benefits everyone in some way or the other. Such lawsuits as mentioned in 1.1 have certainly raised awareness about digital accessibility and led enterprises to rethink their standards and priorities when designing products, services or platforms. However, treating this topic as something one has to comply with in order to not get sued in a million-dollar trial or in fear of bad reputation for not showing acts of corporate social responsibility are questionable motives. Moreover, quick fixes to the problem are often seen in the form of separate assistive websites, accessibility buttons to adjust color contrasts and text sizes, or so-called overlay solutions, which repair accessibility defects in a site’s HTML. These seem to be well-intended measures but only treat the symptoms of the problem and not its underlying root cause (Byrne-Haber, 2014). Unfortunately, these serve more as “a digital backdoor, similar to the physical backdoor that wheelchair users would have to use if the front entrance isn’t designed accessibly” (Gerard, 2019). In this way, those affected are turned

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into second-class citizens. Further, maintenance of alternative solutions are rarely kept up to the same extent as the primary ones and are therefore doomed to failure easily (Gay et al., 2018). Hence, treating accessibility matters as an afterthought in design processes seems to make the problem only worse.

“Barriers do not arise from impairments themselves but, instead, are erected by humans, who often have not considered a greater variation in sensory, cognitive and physical user capabilities.” (Langdon et al., 2018, p. v). Design communities have praised the importance of human-centered design (HCD) as a counterbalance to profit-driven design regularly in the past (Fenn & Hobbs, 2015), but why do humans with disabilities then still play such a minor role in the discussions and implementations we see out there? It becomes a matter of how ethical it is to improve the lives of some while worsen it for others. While providing equal access to all is relatively common sense and obviously ‘the right thing to do’, those arguments are not always the most convincing drivers for implementing measures to achieve it. The field of design has been dominated by striving for aesthetically pleasing products, while oftentimes sacrificing usability instead, or the other way around. Awards have been won by putting aesthetics first, rewarding designers for ‘good design’ (Norman, 2002). Driven by well-meant intentions to design with the user in focus and making the outcome in some way usable and desirable for him/her, designers seldomly act without also having to fulfill economic viability or technological feasibility requirements at the same time (Guenther, 2013). The simple Venn diagram in Figure 2, originating from IDEO (2009), already illustrates the complexity of forces that are usually affecting design processes. “Web practitioners do not operate in a vacuum, however, and are faced with business environments focused on profit” (Farrelly 2011, p. 228).

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Yu (2002) states that the barriers regarding the implementation of web accessibility are systemic, embedded within a larger context of contributing factors. “A combination of legal, technological, and attitudinal factors has contributed to the situation” (p. 412). Given this overall framing, the topic is considered as a wicked problem; one where the solution does not lie at hand. Accessibility integration seems to be stuck in reductionist thinking and therefore lacks the required focus to see the whole and interconnected forces influencing the problem.

Although the corresponding literature is vastly coined by the term ‘web accessibility’, this thesis is aimed at widening the scope to include everything considered digital and thus, uses ‘digital accessibility’ wherever more appropriate. Following Resmini and Rosati’s (2011) thoughts, our experiences today do not take place in the Web only but across different channels spanning physical and digital environments. The heavy use of the wording ‘web accessibility’ surely derives from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), being the most commonly referred ground rules. Future releases of these guidelines plan to drop the WC, standing for ‘Web Content’, as it is considered outdated, and simply go by ‘Accessibility Guidelines’ (AG). As ‘Ag’ refers to the chemical element silver, Silver is therefore being used as the working title for the successor to WCAG (Sims, 2017). For the sake of simplicity, the word ‘accessibility’ will be used on its own from time to time, which should be understood as including digital, given this thesis’ context.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, there appears to be limited research as well as very few applications of complex systems approaches regarding digital accessibility. Hence, there exists an opportunity to change the mindset and efforts around this topic for every emerging technology to come in the future.

1.3 Purpose and Scope

The purpose of this study is to reverse the reductionist thinking of fixing accessibility issues individually, postponing them to later, or simply ignoring them at all. Instead, the thesis will take a systemic view on digital accessibility in design practices to detect the dynamics, causing the aforementioned conditions and problems to happen in the first place. Thus, taking a new angle on a long-researched topic by mapping the mess and

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broadening the view about it (Armson, 2011). Following, this motivates the thesis’ research question:

RQ: What are the enablers and inhibitors for integrating accessibility into digital design processes from a systemic perspective?

Hereby, the aim is to identify the factors that either account for such efforts to be taken, or else, hinder them to be executed. While such an analysis of enabling and inhibiting factors is quite static per se, the addition of the systemic perspective directs the purpose towards a more dynamic approach, not only spotting the driving and restraining forces in the system but also their relationships and reciprocal effects to each other. Aiming to gain a deeper understanding of the context in which digital accessibility operates, findings are visualized in the form of causal loop diagrams and system archetypes when mapping the complex environment. By identifying negative qualities of the system, points of leverage potential shall be spotted which could foster high impact and thus, result in sustained change, e.g. how to build a culture of accessibility among design practitioners and embed it into design processes. Culture in this context being defined as “an overarching consciousness or awareness throughout an organization” (Gay et al., 2018, p.59). It is to be noted that with complex systems, the purpose is not to find a fixed solution but rather to determine the underlying patterns, aiming to unlock a healthier state of the system. “The idea is that awareness of the mess is the precondition to its dissolution” (Gharajedaghi, 2011, p. 168). As a larger vision guiding this thesis, the research shall contribute to a more inclusive design practice in general; a practice that produces digital products accessible to everyone irrespective of disability (be it permanent, situational or temporary). A shift regarding the mindset of actors towards an accessible-first mentality (in reference to mobile-first approaches) should be a long-term goal for the design practice to make its own contribution towards equality.

Let us spare no effort to ensure that policies, programmes, guidelines and 21st century technologies are accessible to persons with disabilities, and sensitive to their perspectives and experiences. Together, let us work for a better future that is inclusive, equitable and sustainable for all. (Ki-moon, 2014)

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1.4 Topic Justification and Personal Motivation

Embracing one of Jönköping International Business School’s guiding principles, namely ‘responsible in action’, motivates the author of this thesis to be reflective of her values during the educational journey in becoming a designer in this Digital Era. It requires obtaining an awareness of the complex intertwinings between different actors, layers and environments involved in the ecosystem one is part of – and first and foremost to take responsibility for actions concerning design decisions. With this realization comes empowerment as well as the awareness of one’s role in the bigger picture and how every personal action unavoidably contributes to the outcome. Hence, taking a systemic perspective is not far-fetched as it also implies to critically reflect on one’s own contributions (Stroh, 2015). Consequently, the task of holding oneself accountable for the solutions produced, becomes an important daily challenge for the sake of the greater good. After initial review of the current state of digital accessibility, the author realised that her motivation is not to create yet another solution that would solve any disability defects or test if A or B works better. Instead, the author decided to go back a few steps, analyze the system by adding a level of abstraction in an attempt to make sense of the current mess and in that way help free the conversations from blame. The importance of this topic is something everyone intuitively knows but that is oftentimes ignored, which is why it needs more advocates in the field to shift attitudes towards it.

1.5 Delimitations

Concerning the practical limits of this study, the findings gathered only represent opinions and experiences from practitioners working in Germany, as access to professionals from other countries was limited due to the chosen sampling strategy and availability of participants. Limiting the geographical focus of this research was therefore necessary. For the same reasons are neither clients’ nor users’ perspectives included. Furthermore, the sample refers to design roles only and will not consider developers. Although a systemic approach aims at capturing the environment circling a topic to its largest possible extent, boundaries of the system are nevertheless imperative in order to not end up with infinite interconnections. Hence, the factors identified in chapter 6 for answering the research question are surely not exhaustive but merely a framed snapshot. This thesis did not attempt to map the whole system (defined as digital accessibility integration in chapter

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2.3.3) as this would have presented an insurmountable challenge, especially given the limited time frame of a master thesis. Instead, using system archetypes, which selectively highlight ongoing issues in the system, served as an appropriate method for the story to be told and to achieve comprehensible conclusions within the narrative.

Lastly, readers may expect a thesis about accessibility to follow the author’s findings and own advice in regard to the need for compliance with standards. However, the material produced and shared during this research (e.g. PDFs, tables and figures) was not actively made accessible, as this thesis is more theoretical groundwork than concerned with the practicalities of accessibility standards.

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1.6 Definitions

Design a synthesis of creativity (imagining new things) and

innovation (bringing those things into existence); both process and artefact

(Li, 2002, p. 391)

Accessibility design that enables people with disabilities to interact with

buildings, products, services, etc.; the qualities that make an experience open to all

(Tigwell et al., 2018, p. 389; citing Henry et al., 2014; Microsoft Inclusive Design, 2016b, p. 12)

Disability a mismatch between the needs of the individual and the

environment, product or service (Treviranus, 2016, p. 3)

Digital Accessibility the principles and techniques observed while designing,

constructing, maintaining and updating websites and mobile applications to make them more accessible to users, particularly to persons with disabilities

(Nishchyk & Chen, 2018, p. 56)

Inclusive Design a way of designing products, services and environments that

include the needs of the widest number of people as possible; used to understand marginalised, overlooked or vulnerable populations to help innovation for the good of society

(Langdon et al., 2018, p. 4)

Information Architecture the structural design of shared information environments

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System groups or combinations of interrelated, interdependent, or

interacting elements forming collective entities (Arnold & Wade 2015, p. 675)

Actor an actor is any agent active within the ecosystem

(Resmini & Lacerda, 2016, p. 19)

Wicked Problems class of social system problems which are ill-formulated,

where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing

(Churchman, 1967, p. B-141; citing Rittel, n.d.)

Systems Thinking the ability to understand the interconnected set of elements

that are coherently organized in a way to achieve a desired purpose; a skill set

(Stroh, 2015, p. 16; Arnold & Wade, 2015)

System Archetypes recurring, generic systemic structures that are found in many

kinds of organizations, under many circumstances, and at different levels or scales, from internal personal dynamics to global international relations

(Kim & Anderson, 1998, p. 1)

Causal Loop Diagrams graphic representations of dynamic interrelationships,

consisting of feedback loops that are either reinforcing or balancing processes, using ‘+’ and ‘-‘ signs as notation

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2 Theoretical Framework

_____________________________________________________________________________________ This chapter is dedicated to a review of the current state of literature on the relevant topics at hand, forming the theoretical framework for this thesis. Further, a gap is derived from the literature to justify the following research.

______________________________________________________________________ The present thesis combines two different topics in a novel way, digital accessibility on the one hand and systems theory as well as related concepts on the other hand. Thus, the theory behind both needs to be defined, understood and finally, merged into one comprising framework.

2.1 Choice of Method

Referring to concept-centric literature reviews, Webster and Watson (2002) advise the usage of concept matrixes to visualize categories and varying topics as well as their subtopics in the subject matter of research, taking into account diverse sources and related research areas. This approach is an alternative to often seen author-centric reviews. To conduct a literature review, the university library’s search engine Primo as well as the database Scopus were used based on familiarity with the first choice, while the second one was judged as very well evolved for the purpose of a literature review. Scopus contains peer-reviewed research literature, web sources of quality and allows to set various filters to narrow down the search in order to increase the relevance of the results. Additionally, it also displays the field-weighted citation impact factor to help researchers make selections based on how often an output was cited, while at the same time taking differences in research behavior across disciplines into account (Elsevier, 2020). This fact seemed to be specifically appropriate for the literature review, as Webster and Watson (2002) also state that the field of IS often has to draw on theories from related fields due to being a relatively young discipline. Additionally, Web of Science was made used of, as another multidisciplinary database, retrieving scholarly sources with a focus on the domains of science and engineering. In case sources were listed but not available from Primo, Scopus or Web of Science, Research Gate’s search engine facilitated to gain access to the respective publications.

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2.2 Application of Method

In general, with every retrieval process and database, the first 50 results were considered to keep a relatively wide spectrum and not narrow the choices down already too soon. With Primo, the default settings were kept, meaning that the results were sorted by relevance, no additional filters or periods were set, neither were categories or fields excluded. Scopus was approached in the same way, which meant that the given term was searched for in the article’s title, abstract and keywords. With Web of Science, the search was conducted with the default setting ‘topic’, which scanned the title, abstract, author and keywords with the specific term used. Next, the process was continued by examining the abstracts and tagged keywords in order to decide whether an article would provide relevant data or information for the analysis. Doing a first quick review, helped to identify core concepts and methods these results contained. All selected sources were organized in a spreadsheet by filling out the categories title, author(s), year, source, keywords plus a summary extracted from the abstract.

The thesis topic was split into subtopics to search for web/digital accessibility and the intended systemic approach independently at first and then combine both concepts in an additional round. Hereby, Boolean operators such as AND or OR were used for various sequences. Keywords used for the searches were following variations: web accessibility, digital accessibility, systems thinking, wicked problem digital accessibility, integration of digital accessibility, digital accessibility systemic, web accessibility systems thinking. Moreover, related terms and synonyms, that correlated with the topic of interest, were considered as well, while using the same settings as before to ensure consistency in the method used: e-accessibility, digital inclusion, accessible user experience, universal accessibility, ICT accessibility.

‘Culture of accessibility’ was a concept that emerged from the literature review; therefore, another round was conducted searching for results regarding this topic. Moreover, as no fields were excluded from the search, there appeared to be many cases where accessibility had been researched in higher education context, which proved to be of interest when discussing processes and models later on. Relevant articles, which were considered as adding value, were added to the spreadsheet. Articles of possible relevance resulting from the literature review were then examined further. With the research direction in mind, the

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selection was translated into a concept-matrix with main topics and subtopics augmented by units of analysis that can be found in Appendix 1. Additionally, further literature was included using a back and forth snowball approach by checking references of retrieved articles to complement the knowledge base for the theoretical framework.

It is to be noted that another related subtopic emerged from the literature on accessibility, which was not included in the scope of this research, namely evaluation and testing methods.

2.3 Literature Review

The application of the method described in 2.2 resulted in a significant amount of literature to be reviewed and discussed. Regarding the timeliness of the chosen articles, those concerning web/digital accessibility were mainly dated to the past two decades and are therefore considered to be rather recent publications, providing relevant insights and findings. Admittedly, this is due to the nature of the topic itself. Moreover, all of the results were peer-reviewed journal articles, academic books or relevant conference proceedings.

2.3.1 Accessibility

For something to be accessible, it is required that the condition of equal opportunities for all members of the society, regardless of location or physical ability, to experience information systems (in this case) is given (Microsoft Inclusive Design, 2016b; Mutula, 2013). Regarding the term, a distinction is made between technical and usable accessibility. The former implies following technical best practices, e.g. providing alt text for images. At the same time the latter concerns the usability of an artefact, e.g. how easily a user can understand, navigate and interact with it when solving a desired task. However, fulfilling technical accessibility requirements does not per se ensure that the user perceives the artifact as usable (Bai et al., 2017). Different forms of disabilities can handicap people’s interactions and experiences with today’s IS. These are usually categorized into visual, auditory, speech, physical and cognitive, learning-related or neurological impairments, and restrictions appearing with age, which are described in the following chapter.

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Figure 3: Disabilities Overview (adapted from W3C WAI, 2017)

To exemplify the challenges of users with visual impairments, Morris et al. (2016) mention Twitter’s shift from a text-only platform to one with increasing visual content. Nowadays, it is possible to include images into posts, which has led to a trend of embedding text within the images instead of placing the text into the original text input field, drastically increasing barriers for blind people using screen readers. With the ongoing addition of visualized content to the web, visual barriers render affected population groups as unable to experience this content to its fullest extent (Harper & Chen, 2012). Alt text as a means to describe images should be used cautiously, and as Pereira et al. (2015) state, exclude decorative imaging to prevent unreasonable information overflow.

Pascual et al. (2015) classify hearing impairments into four subcategories: mild, moderate, severe and profound, with more than 5% of all people directly affected. Captioning and subtitles are a means to help include these groups of people when audio or sound is present (Brophy & Craven, 2007).

Figure 4 shows an overview of the spectrum of exemplary disabilities occurring in permanent, temporary or situational forms. The figure lists impairments around people’s ability to speak as another category. One might either be non-verbal permanently, affected by laryngitis, having a heavy accent or not be fluent in a language (Microsoft Inclusive Design, 2016b; Pascual et al., 2015). Biswas (2012) exemplifies subtitles as one of the

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features that have significantly exceeded its original target group, showing that in the end, accessibility benefits everybody (Brophy & Craven, 2007).

Figure 4: The Persona Spectrum (Microsoft Inclusive Design, 2016b, p. 42)

In other cases, people might have missing limbs from the day they were born, limited fine motor control in general or are temporarily wearing a cast due to an arm injury. Physical impairments further extend to everyday situations, e.g. a parent carrying a newborn around, hindering them in their ability to use both arms and hands (Microsoft Inclusive Design, 2016b).

Cognitive and learning disabilities are additional forms of impairments. These can occur over time (e.g. dementia, Alzheimer’s disease), manifest in the form of down syndrome for instance, or result from incidents (e.g. traumatic brain injury, amnesia). Lazar et al. (2015) claim it to be the most challenging category of impairments, hardest to design and test for. With the rise of mobile applications comes the opportunity to simplify web content while integrating accessibility matters from the very beginning as mobile per se craves less complicated and clearer design due to the compact space. These requirements benefit users with impairments regarding cognitive capacity as they are in need of content

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to be displayed and presented as simple as possible (Lewis, 2011), e.g. via screen readers for users with dyslexia (Brophy & Craven, 2007).

A group that is often forgotten when referring to people with impairments are the elderly (Petrie et al., 2015). However, with age the chance for impairments increases naturally, e.g. memory performance, which in turn is needed in cognitive tasks (Harper & Yesilada, 2008).

A smart speaker is an example of a device that benefits many of these disability categories listed in Figure 3. On the one hand, visually impaired users can interact with, for instance, Amazons’ Alexa by speaking to the device and using voice commands. On the other hand, smart speakers have removed the need for a keyboard or touch screen for people limited in their mobility. The so-called ‘tap to Alexa’-button benefits the hard of hearing community as it can activate pre-programmed routines or else, provide transcripts for incoming voice messages. Lastly, for people having mental illnesses, such smart devices are nowadays able to spot signs from low mood (Barcelona, 2019).

2.3.1.2 Assistive Technology

Assistive technologies can provide access to users who are otherwise excluded. Petrie et al. (2015) mention a range from screen magnification and screen readers, over alternative mouse and keyboard options to advanced voice input devices. These means easily can reach their limits if no appropriate input was delivered, e.g. no alt text provided.

On the other side, some tools help developers and designers to view their artifacts through the eyes of the intended audience by simulating how these users will see (e.g. aDesigner, NoCoffee), hear (e.g. JAWS for Windows, VoiceOver by Apple) and experience a website, in order to understand their requirements regarding font sizes, color contrasts (e.g. Tanaguru Contrast-Finder) and the like. Images can be manipulated by software to simulate the experience for different stages of vision impairments (Langdon et al., 2018). Lastly, automatic evaluation tools can be used to receive a report listing detected inaccessibility issues. However, not all problems are detected equally by different tools, as the underlying evaluation cases may differ (Bustamante et al., 2018). The open-source

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software AChecker helps to evaluate a website’s conformance with WCAG (Shestakevych et al., 2018).

2.3.1.3 Laws, Regulations and Guidelines

Within the field of accessibility, several guidelines exist that designers can use. Concerning the UX and user interface (UI) of digital artifacts, the Universal Design Principles as well as Google’s Material Design patterns are an excellent source to start from (Pellegrini et al., 2020). The principles of UD are a timeless resource to guide every designer in his/her process to design for all. Tenets such as ‘Equitable use’ and ‘Flexibility in use’ encourage the consideration of the variety of people with disabilities and allow the adaptation of design artifacts to a wide range of user preferences and abilities (National Disability Authority, n.d.). Most often, UX best practices are more or less basic accessibility standards, though accessibility is more concerned with technical aspects than what is true for usability considerations in general (Silva et al., 2019).

WCAG are the most commonly referred guidelines and have become an international web standard in the form of ISO/IEC: 40500:2012 (ISO, 2012). The guidelines contain, for instance, that any content or interface must be perceivable and operable by each user regardless of any special need and have to be understandable to them. Moreover, the content must be robust enough to work with existing and future technologies (Brophy & Craven, 2007).

Table 1: Accessibility Principles, Guidelines and Success Criteria in WCAG 2.0 (Bustamante et

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Besides the four principles, the most recent version (WCAG 2.1) contains 13 guidelines and 78 success criteria that relate to the principles. Success criteria are testable; however, they only refer to functional testing, which does not ensure actual usability as perceived by people with disabilities concerning the intended purpose. Conformance to the criteria can be achieved on three levels: A, AA or AAA, starting from minimum requirements to more strict ones (W3C, n.d.). In terms of UI considerations about color, Level A is the easiest to be met, e.g. prescribing that interface components are not allowed to be identified by color only for the user to find its way. Level AA then concerns color contrast requirements, whereas level AAA takes it further, failing almost all text that is colored except for very dark text on a very light background or vice versa (My Accessible Website, 2020). In sum, aiming for the WCAG Level AA is a common industry standard, for both private and governmental organizations (Bhawalkar, 2018).

Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics have some overlaps with specific success criteria. For instance, the heuristic of User control and freedom, demanding emergency exits for the user to leave an unwanted state if necessary, is also covered by success criteria 1.4.2 (A)/G171 to allow sounds to be played only by user request (Moreno et al., 2009). Users should be able to manipulate controlling elements as they prefer.

Regarding juridical forms, WCAG level AA is required for all governmental pages, for instance, in Canada, China, Finland, Germany, India, Italy, The Netherlands, New Zealand and the US (W3C WAI, 2018). Nevertheless, criticism is raised that directives and regulations are rather ineffective when they are of encouraging and voluntary nature with no force of law behind (Lazar et al., 2015). The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 demands to “provide a clear and comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities” (Moy, 2000, p. 2) and further “no individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations for any place of public accommodation [...]” (Joffee, 1999, p. 107). However, this definition is still in place and has a significant shortcoming: It does not provide a precise formulation in what ways it applies to online content or ‘online places’. In the past, this has led to a disputable judicial decision, when Netflix aired the series Daredevil, of which many people with visual impairments happen to be fans of,

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sympathizing with its main character being a blind lawyer and a superhero fighting crimes. At first, the streaming service did not provide audio descriptions to the series and hence, excluded these fans from the enjoyment. In this particular case, the court decided that the ADA definition of ‘place of public accommodation’ refers to physical places only and thus does not apply to Netflix, being an online service (Shah, 2016).

The German Federal Ordinance on Barrier-Free Information Technology covers “(1) web sites and webpages, (2) web sites and webpages which are publicly accessible, and (3) graphical user interfaces created on the basis of information technology which are publicly accessible” (BITV, n.d.), requiring the design of these to enable persons with disabilities equal access in order to avoid discrimination. Recently, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) has been introduced, which requires national governments to implement the Directive 2019/882 until 2022. The directive covers smartphones, tablets, computers, ticketing machines, TVs, ATMs, e-books as well as online shopping sites and mobile apps to become more accessible, containing that private entities can then be held accountable, too (European Disability Forum, n.d.).

In the case of existing laws and regulations, there is certainly no lack of these. However, difficulties rather arise due to missing obligations to fulfill them or because of vagueness in the formulation of specific laws that give room for various interpretations and hence, result in differing levels and results seen with accessibility implementations.

2.3.1.4 Personalization Options

Although the impairments mentioned earlier were placed into categories of their own, it is to be noted that disabilities can also co-occur, e.g. deaf-blind (Lazar et al., 2015). This increases the complexity of designing a perfect-fit solution and speaks for interface personalization options.

Derived from the field of information architecture, Resmini and Rosati (2011) propose a list of heuristics for human-information interaction processes, of which one is defined as resilience, referring to “the capability (or incapability) of an information space to adapt itself to the needs of its users” (p. 113). For an information system to become resilient, personalized choices are mentioned as beneficial in order to adapt in a flexible and

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adaptive manner to the diversity of user needs. Tailoring aspects of the experience to the specific preferences of users enables content providers to meet their real needs, especially beneficial as different user needs can conflict. However, such extra support can be considered annoying for people who do not need these options. Further, for some users, the need to learn new widgets can form another hindrance to be able to make use of such features (W3C, 2020a).

Furthermore, Treviranus (2016) suggests approaching accessibility more systemically, and hence, guidelines or laws not to require uniform experiences for every user but instead opt for personalized experiences, recognizing the variety of disabilities existing. Biswas et al. (2014) have developed an inclusive user model that is stored in a cloud and can be accessed from any device. It stores a personalized profile that is adjusted to the required font size, colour preferences, spacing adjustments, age, gender as well as any disability the specific user might have. With their study, the authors proved that if interface personalization is given, it reduces task completion times significantly. Lastly, Abou-Zahra et al. (2017) propose that the Internet of Things holds enormous possibilities and relevance to people with diverging abilities, referring to smart homes in particular. 2.3.1.5 The Definition of Digital Accessibility

From a medical perspective the definition of accessibility is linked to a person’s disability resulting from any impairment they may have (Crabb et al., 2019). A disability, as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1980, was expressed as a restriction or inability to act in the usual way that is considered ‘normal’ for human beings (Microsoft Inclusive Design, 2016b).

Article 9 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities postulates regarding accessibility “to promote access for persons with disabilities to new information and communications technologies and systems, including the Internet” (UN, n.d.). The 173 countries that have ratified this convention, have therefore committed to following along (Bustamante et al., 2018). This article implied that on the web - considered an ever more important part of everyday life where we pursue all the same things as in the physical world - all barriers or obstacles should therefore be eliminated along the same lines. However, the aforementioned Article 9 was formulated long ago.

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Ever since society has moved away from the idea that digital was a different place, as in our postdigital world “things are increasingly smeared between multiple sites and moments in complex and often indeterminate ways” (Mitchell, 2004, p. 14). In travel scenarios where some steps might include entering a building in order to use some technological service to book transportation means, physical and digital accessibility then become intertwined (Ponsard et al., 2017).

Meanwhile, the WHO has adjusted its definition accordingly by viewing disabilities as dependent on the context of people’s lives and features of it, moving away from the perception as just a personal health attribute (Microsoft Inclusive Design, 2016b). Additionally, a new social model of disability claims to shift the responsibility away from an individual’s limitations towards holding society accountable for erecting barriers, though acknowledging the topics’ complexity (Leitner & Strauss, 2008).

Digital accessibility is “the extent to which customers are able to get value out of a digital experience regardless of variations in their abilities” (Bhawalkar, 2018, p. 2). According to the European Web and Mobile Accessibility Directive, the term is referred to as

the principles and techniques observed while designing, constructing, maintaining and updating websites and mobile applications to make them more accessible to users, particularly to persons with disabilities. (Nishchyk & Chen, 2018, p. 56) Lazar et al. (2015) classify access to e-books, software applications, smartphones, websites and other sorts of digital information or electronic devices (kiosks, voting machines, etc.) under this term.

Everyday examples of inaccessible digital products consist of websites with missing alt texts concerning images, mobile applications lacking descriptions of their interface components, videos provided without captions, or webpages, which are not navigable by keyboard only (Pellegrini et al., 2020). It can be argued that determining whether something is accessible or inaccessible depends on what standards were taken as a basis for measurement. Brajnik et al. (2012) claim accessibility to be an elusive property, highly determined by a significant degree of subjectivity and contextuality of individual users. Therefore, WCAG 2.1 and the like are to be taken as best practices literally guiding design and development processes since accessibility comes with such a complexity of factors

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(e.g. technical, operational, psychological) itself. There is not one solution but many acceptable ways depending on purpose and context to achieve accessibility (Kelly et al., 2007). “Accessibility is relative (to the individual requirements, goal and context), not absolute” (Treviranus, 2016, p. 1). An interesting point is made by Treviranus (2016) when she gives the example of a blind person, who is disabled to see, which is commonly categorized as a permanent impairment. However, with the environment changing and the lights going out to complete darkness, the person, who is usually fully able to see, becomes the one who is situationally disabled by that context if seeing was the underlying goal.

2.3.1.6 Accessibility in Design Processes

The term process originates from the Latin word processus, of which procedere is its infinitive and translates to proceed, move or go (Resmini & Rosati, 2011). Quite commonly, a process is defined as a series of events with the aim to move towards a result of some kind. Design, as framed by Resmini & Rosati (2011), “is geared toward building both an artifact and a better comprehension of the problem space. Design produces ideas and objects.” (p. 45). Designing also involves problem-solving. Along the process, designers utilize different methods to arrive at their goals. It is noted that the process of designing and developing digital artifacts varies from organization to organization in the amount of phases as well as their order of execution. Furthermore, they depend on the tools and methods used plus in general, what outcome needs to be delivered, even differing individually from one designer to the other (Silva et al., 2019; Tigwell et al., 2018).

Taking the interpretation of Jones (1992) as described by Resmini & Rosati (2011), process relates to the cognitive act of designing, when the mind wanders freely back and forth, exploring the problem space and possible solutions, not so much focused on a specific method. Hence, when speaking of design processes throughout this thesis, the term shall not be based on a specific method defined but viewed more generically, covering any given project lifecycle. Moreover, the sampling of interview participants in the research design is not based on one project team only that would allow linking the wording to a specific way of designing or recent methodologies in the field (see chapter 3.3.1). However, if one would want to dive deeper into specific design methodology, the

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famous Double Diamond model, developed by the Design Council as a framework, can be considered to generalize and exemplify such processes in a more or less defined and structured way. It is based on four phases consisting of discover, define, develop and deliver, reflecting the modes of thinking in design processes (Design Council, 2007).

Figure 5: Original Double Diamond Model (adapted from Design Council, 2007)

The following adaptation from the original model shall serve as an illustration to explain the processes involved in more detail and link them to accessibility.

Figure 6: Extended Double Diamond Model (Design for Health, 2020)

Figure 6 splits the process into the two phases of problem space and solution space, while within each diamond, the cycles are determined by divergent and convergent thinking. In the left diamond, the team first diverges, e.g. opens up to alternative viewpoints,

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formulates ideas, and afterwards converges everything. This helps not to get trapped into relying on pre-existing ideas about the solution. By reaching this point, they (should) have made sure to design the right thing while exploring the current reality with the challenges and needs of the users. The right diamond consists of developing concepts and prototypes, and of delivering a solution after testing as well as iterating the prototype by narrowing it down step by step. Its emphasis lies in designing things the right way (Design for Health, 2020). It is in the first diamond where things get critical about accessibility, when the user is in the focus of research and analysis. Questions to be asked are: are we designing the right thing with no harm or negative impact on anybody? Have we taken the bigger picture into account? Consequently, accessibility is defined as the outcome of a successful Inclusive Design process behind it.

Figure 7: The Inclusive Panda Map (Axbom, 2017)

Applying the Inclusive Design lens, there is always another story to be mapped besides the average user’s typical journey. With his model of the Inclusive Panda (see Figure 7),

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Axbom (2019) aims to visualize the so-called neglected story to increase awareness about the larger spectrum of people that might be affected by design solutions. The model asks the questions: whom are we building for, and who might potentially get hurt? The author points out that most design outcomes will be used by more people than what one would consider to be the target group plus in ways that one might not have considered before, due to spill-over effects.

Central to the model are participants engaging with one’s solution in some kind of way. This group consists of people whom you are intentionally designing for, meaning the target group. Hence, they are considered as included. However, on the edges of the participants circle are people who could be thrown out any time, becoming excluded as well as those people, who manage to use the solution but by doing it, are putting themselves and others at risk. The Inclusive Panda adds the group of unwanted people to the story; an aspect oftentimes not considered among designers. These are people you do not want using your solution, e.g. kids if age-restrictions apply. In this case, designers could intentionally add friction or obstacles to ensure control and knowledge about all the actors in the ecosystem of the solution created. The design process, generally spoken, is mostly influenced by the designer’s understanding of the problem and the factors he/she gives the most power to rule the decisions to be made (Axbom, 2019). Our subconscious thoughts and beliefs are not apparent to us but have their fair share in the outcomes we produce (Norman, 2002).

To approach responsibilities within design processes in regard to digital accessibility, the Education and Outreach Working Group, which operates under the umbrella of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to “promote awareness, understanding, and implementation of web accessibility” (W3C WAI, n.d.), has developed an overview called Accessibility Lifecycle Cross-Functional Team Roles on their collaborative Wiki (see Figure 8). Its purpose is to cultivate the understanding of who has what kind of impact on what stages in a project’s cycle concerning the integration of accessibility; in short: who actually owns accessibility?

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They have broken down the diversity of stakeholders to those being directly involved in the design and development of websites and web applications and defined four main categories of typical roles: business, design, implementation and QA Testing roles:

Figure 8: Accessibility Lifecycle Cross-Functional Team Roles (adapted from W3C, 2020b)

The framework comes with a method called decision tree which helps organizations identify which person’s input is required at what time to solve accessibility issues with the right form of intervention.

2.3.1.7 Previous Integration Models

Accessibility integration and its underlying, influential factors have been studied by several scholars with varying scopes. In 2004, Lazar et al. conducted a quantitative survey among webmasters, defined as people who manage currently existing web sites. The authors examined webmasters’ perceptions about web accessibility, aiming to determine why websites turned out to be largely inaccessible despite existing guidelines and tools. Results of identified influential factors are clustered into societal foundations, stakeholder perceptions, as well as web development, and have been summarized in the form of the Web Accessibility Integration Model:

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Figure 9: Web Accessibility Integration Model (Lazar et al., 2004, p. 271)

The model recognizes web developers and clients as the main actors of this network. Without relevant education or training, web developers will not voluntarily develop accessible outcomes. Moreover, clients’ knowledge about related policies and laws in place as well as convincing statistics were identified as having an influence on whether the project would contain accessibility requirements or not. Consequently, societal foundations, together with these stakeholder perspectives, affect the actual web development process (Lazar et al., 2004).

As a result of a Accessibility Summit held in November 2006 on the topic of higher education institutions in the United Kingdom, a manifesto was created by its participants, demanding a new approach to view accessibility, moving away from the sole focus on guideline compliance that was predominant back then. Researching in the domain of e-learning practice, Kelly et al. (2007) picked up on this and proposed a contextual approach to accessibility, considering more factors than just technical guidelines in the form of WCAG 1.0 and thus only the role of the web developer, by extending the environment to be more user-focussed as well as stakeholder-involving.

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Figure 10: Contextualized Model of Accessible E-learning Practice in Higher Education (Kelly et al., 2007, p. 142)

The authors made a differentiation between drivers of accessibility (e.g. legislation, universal guidelines & universal standards) and mediators, for instance, each involved stakeholder’s view of disability, view of accessibility, view of integration and segregation, and view of duty and responsibility to name a few. These mediators and drivers are said to influence different stakeholders in the context of higher education, e.g. students, lecturers, learning technologists and support workers. With their combination of the Tangram Model for Web development and a Stakeholder Model of Accessibility, the authors emphasize “how the relationship between the stakeholders and the context influences the responses they make and the accessible e-learning practices that develop” (Kelly et al. 2007, p. 5). Accessibility needed to be seen as a flexible process rather than a single solution-thing.

In 2011, Farrelly proposed an integrated framework called the Expanded Web Accessibility Integration Model, building upon Lazar et al.’s (2004) work mentioned earlier by conducting a qualitative, interview-based approach. He indicated that although web accessibility is built upon the combination of technological and human components,

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research focussed on this interplay in practice is lacking. Therefore, the author examined practitioners’ barriers to diffusion and implementation of web accessibility, referring to the way they learn about it and the factors affecting their ability to develop accessible products or content. Within societal foundations, Farrelly extended the previous model by adding media and industry, attitudes towards disability, customer demand and advocacy as important influences. Hence, the stakeholder perceptions were now defined as knowledge, along with attitudes. The model was expanded by adding end-users as another crucial component. At the same time the category of tools and resources was broken down to more nuances of guidelines, support material, authoring tools, testing support and hired experts.

Figure 11: Expanded Web Accessibility Integration Model (Farrelly, 2011, p. 225)

A more recent study by Velleman et al. (2017) researched in the domain of eGovernment systems and organizations and introduced a new model of key factors differentiating between adoption and implementation processes, which are borrowed concepts from innovation literature. They argued that introducing accessibility standards into an organization and its processes is to be treated similarly to innovation, hence the terms. The research was conducted by interviewing municipal stakeholders and experts, whereas factors identified were derived from the interview findings as well as previous literature on the topic. Central to their model are organizational, personal and external factors as well as those related to the design process. Detailed examples for each category are shown