European Internet Accessibility Observatory (EIAO)
The EIAO Project was co-funded by the European Commission under the IST contract 2003-004526-STREP.
Project description
Making sure everyone can access electronic information is a key goal for the European Union. With increasing use of the World Wide Web – not least for government information and services – it is essential that no-one is excluded. Yet many people – especially those with a visual impairment find access difficult.
CERLIM (the Centre for Research in Library & Information Management), part of MMU’s Department of Information & Communications, is working with other research institutes across Europe on solutions to this problem. The EIAO project will establish the technical basis for a European Internet Accessibility Observatory. A collection of formal measures of accessibility - web accessibility metrics (WAMs) - based on the checkpoints developed by World Wide Web Consortium for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are being developed. Tools for automated data collection and dissemination will be created and continuously improved on throughout the project by feedback from users.
The EIAO Project is co-funded by the European Commission . It brings together the following institutions from across Europe:
- Agder University College, Norway (Co-ordinating partner).
- Vista Utredning AS, Norway.
- FTB-Volmarstein, Germany.
- Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.
- Nettroken AS, Norway.
- University of Tromso, Norway.
- FBL, Italy.
- Technical University of Warsaw, Poland.
- Aalborg University, Denmark.
- Intermediaum AS, Norway.
The European Internet Accessibility Observatory will consist of the following elements:
- Internet Crawler for automatic and frequent collection of data on web accessibility
- Web Accessibility Metrics (WAMs) based on the WCAG
- Data Warehouse providing online access to the accessibility evaluation results
- A user interface to present the results
All software developed in the project will be released under an open source licence.
CERLIM's main involvement with the EIAO project was to undertake end user and stakeholder requirements gathering and to conduct user testing . This user-driven approach to support the development of EIAO included the following:
- End user requirements:
- Accessibility problems.
- Accessibility statements.
- Stakeholder groups:
- Requirements to make websites more accessible.
- Requirements of the Observatory.
- User Testing:
- Of selected checkpoints.
- User results and Observatory results.
- Usability of the Observatory interface.
- Utility of the Observatory content.
The project was carried out as part of the Web Accessibility Benchmarking cluster together with two other EC funded projects: Support-EAM and BenToWeb , to develop a Unified Web Evaluation Methodology. Further details about this work is available at: http://www.wabcluster.org/
Further information on the EIAO project can be obtained via the project website at: http://www.eiao.net/
Relevant Publications
Craven, J. and Snaprud, M. (2006) Positive Steps To Assessing, Monitoring and Comparing the Accessibility of Public Websites: Introducing The European Internet Accessibility Observatory. Freepint, issue No.212 http://www.freepint.com/issues/240806.htm
Craven, J. and Snaprud, M. (2005). Involving Users in the Development of a Web Accessibility Tool. Ariadne Issue 44. July 30 2005.
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue44/craven/intro.html
For further details about this project please contact:
Jenny Craven, Research Associate
CERLIM
The Manchester Metropolitan University
Department of Information and Communications
Geoffrey Manton Building
Rosamond Street West
Manchester M15 6LL
Tel: +44 (0)161 247 6142
Fax: +44 (0)161 247 6979
Email: j.craven@mmu.ac.uk