Web accessibility metrics are an invaluable tool for researchers, developers, governmental agencies and end users. Accessibility metrics help indicate the accessibility level of websites, including the accessibility level of individual websites, or even large-scale surveys of the accessibility of many websites. Recently, a plethora of metrics has been released to complement the A, AA, and AAA Levels measurement used by the WAI guidelines. However, the validity and reliability of most of these metrics are unknown and those making use of them are taking the risk of using inappropriate metrics. In order to address these concerns, this note provides a framework that considers validity, reliability, sensitivity, adequacy and complexity as the main qualities that a metric should have.

There you have it; the first research report from the W3A WAI Research and Development Working Group is now open your your comments. This report is pretty important for everyone interested in evaluation, validation, and repair, and as Chair of the group I’d like to extend my thanks to everyone involved in the symposium, and writing the report which came out of that symposium, particularly Markel Vigo, University of Manchester; Giorgio Brajnik, University of Udine; and Joshue O Connor, NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology; and Christos Kouroupetroglou, Klaus Miesenberger, Peter Thiessen, Shadi Abou-Zahra, Shawn Henry, Vivienne Conway, and Yeliz Yesilada; for their general contributions.

The next report is already being written and coming from the Mobile Accessibility Symposium in June. But if you’re interested in ‘Text Customisation’ or ‘Easy To Read’ then why not contribute to our next two symposia?

Remember, if you want to join us – just browse on over to the RDWG page.