This thesis evaluates a DEMO version of the mobile web site for medical recordsonline, m.minavardkontakter.se, from a web accessibility point of view. The evaluationis an expert evaluation based on the ISO standard for web accessibility, Web ContentAccessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 that is complemented with an evaluation basedon fictitious characters, so called personas. The personas were used to representthree groups of people with different kinds of disabilities; perceptual impairment(aniridia), physical impairment (rheumatism) and cognitive impairment (aphasia). Bycombining and comparing these two methods of evaluation, the thesis also evaluatesthe methods themselves. It was seen from both evaluations that the mobile web sitedoes not entirely fulfill the requirements (success criteria) for web accessibility.WCAG 2.0 found more problems in accessibility than did the personas. However, thepersonas found some problems that were overseen by WCAG 2.0, especially whenthe mobile web site was explored using voice synthesis. The results from the twoevaluations were combined in a set of recommendations for improvement, ranked inorder of importance according to the author. The results conclude that WCAG 2.0 isa good tool for evaluating web accessibility but it is recommended to continue to usethe personas in the future development of the mobile web site.

Since the start of 2019 a new law has been introduced in Sweden, it serves to regulate web accessibility conformity for all publicly funded organisations. At the same time, many services and businesses move their physical fronts to the web. With more digitalization comes a greater need for web accessibility and there might be a risk that users with cognitive disabilities are neglected or forgotten when new and advanced tools and technologies are developed. Accessibility often receives low or no priority in the private sector due to the lack of time and resources. Cognitive disabilities do not always show and there is a risk that the difficulties are not taken into account when services or webpages are developed. These disabilities can affect areas such as the ability to learn new things, memory and the ability to plan one's actions. The purpose of this study is to investigate if there is any knowledge and experience among Swedish developers concerning accessibility, cognitive disabilities and the needs those individuals might have. To perform this study the needs had to be identified and connected to the standard that acts as a base for the new Swedish law. For this purpose, theory was gathered through a literature study as a foundation for a qualitative study consisting of a series of interviews with developers from six different organisations in the Swedish private sector. The interview subjects were selected from different organisations so that their views and opinions would not be affected by one and other for the purpose of increasing the studies generalizability. The interviews were held at locations selected by the interviewees by two different interviewers. The result from the literature study showed that there was no direct support for cognitive disabilities in the standard, but there are guidelines that could be applied to some of the needs identified in the study. Furthermore, the results of the interviews showed that the general knowledge and experience concerning accessibility and specifically cognitive accessibility is very low among Swedish developers. This study is aimed towards people working with development but is also suitable for students and teachers who wish to know more about accessibility and cognitive accessibility.

I takt med införandet av webbtillgänglighetsdirektivet har fenomenet webb­tillgänglighet aktualiserats. Begreppet tillgänglighet används inom webbutveckling för att be­skriva i vilken mån en produkt, en service eller en miljö är användbar och navigerbar för per­soner med särskilda behov eller funktionsnedsättningar. Webbtillgänglighet innebär strävanden efter att göra det enklare för sådana personer att uppfatta, navigera, förstå och bidra till webben (Kulkarni 2019). Den här uppsatsen undersöker vad arbetsverksamma inom webbutveckling anser krävs för att införa tillgänglighet på webben. Syftet är att nå en ökad förståelse av vad arbetsverksamma anser krävs för att införa tillgänglighet på webben samt vilka hinder och vil­ken problematik de stöter på i processen. Forskningsfrågan är ”vad tycker webbutvecklare och interaktionsdesigners krävs för att skapa tillgäng­lighet på webben?”. Undersökningen är utformad som en kvalitativ, deskriptiv fallstudie. Datainsamlingen utförs genom semistruktu­rerade intervjuer med konsulter hos IT-bolaget XLENT. Datan har tematiserats med hjälp av kodning och analyserats utifrån det teoretiska ramverket som används, nämligen aktivitetsteori (AT). Problem är bland annat att webtillgänglighet ofta prioriteras lågt hos beställare, svårig­heter att förklara fördelar och vikt av webbtillgänglighet samt begränsade resurser. Slutsatsen är att det som anses krävas är ökad kunskap och medvetenhet om webbtillgänglighet hos be­ställare och arbetsverksamma, fler incitament för att införa tillgänglighet, pragmatisk lagstift­ning, prioritering av tillgänglighet från början av ett projekt, mer samarbete med testpersoner samt fler färdigt inbyggda lösningar i webbläsare. / The web accessibility directive has made web accessibility as a phenomenon a current issue. The concept of accessibility is used in web development to describe to what extent a product, a service or an environment is usable and navigable for people with certain needs or disabilities. Web accessibility involves the goal of making it easier for such persons to perceive, navigate, understand and contribute to the web (Kulkarni 2019). This study examines what practitioners in web development think is required to initiate accessibility on the web. The pur­pose is to reach a greater insight into what practitioners think is required to initiate web acces­sibility and what obstacles and problems they encounter during the process. The research ques­tion is: “what do web developers and interaction designers think is required to initiate web accessibil­ity?”. The study is a qualitative, descriptive case study. The data collection is made through semi-structured interviews with consultants at the IT-company XLENT. The data has been the­matized through coding and has been analyzed based on the theoretical framework, namely activity theory (AT). Problems observed are, among others, that web accessibility often is a low priority among clients, difficulties in explaining advantages and the importance of web acces­sibility and limited resources. The conclusion is that what is considered required is increased knowledge and awareness among clients and practitioners, more incentives to initiating web accessibility, pragmatic legislation, that web accessibility is prioritized from the very beginning of a project, more cooperation with people with disabilities during the process and more ready-made solutions in browsers.

Enabling access for people with disabilities, brings benefits to everyone, notonly people with disabilities. Therefore, accessibility is an important aspect to consider when designing a website. The purpose with this research paper is to explore how media agencies within the private sector that provides this service to others, work with web accessibility towards their customers and on their own websites. This report aims to examine media agencies’ level of knowledge  about web accessibility as well as their attitude and perception towards it. Furthermore, possible improvements of media agency’s websites will be investigated and suggested.   To answer our research questions, we have chosen a qualitative research approach. The method chosen is semi-structured interviews, these were conducted with three media agencies in Sweden. Additionally, an accessibility evaluation was performed of the media agencies websites with the accessibility tools AChecker and WAVE.  How much each media agency worked with web accessibility and WCAG differed, one of them did stand out among the others. The media agencies knowledge was broad, and their perception was comparable to the result from the accessibility evaluation of their website. The accessibility was high according to the accessibility tools, but there's room for improvements mainly when it comes to contrast issues, naming and labeling. In conclusion all media agencies are aware of web accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines which could be  seen on the results from the accessibility evaluation.

The goal of this thesis is to support the automated identification of accessibility in user reviews or bug reports, to help technology professionals prioritize their handling, and, thus, to create more inclusive apps. Particularly, we propose a model that takes as input accessibility user reviews or bug reports and learns their keyword-based features to make a classification decision, for a given review, on whether it is about accessibility or not. Our empirically driven study follows a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods. We introduced models that can accurately identify accessibility reviews and bug reports and automate detecting them. Our models can automatically classify app reviews and bug reports as accessibility-related or not so developers can easily detect accessibility issues with their products and improve them to more accessible and inclusive apps utilizing the users' input. Our goal is to create a sustainable change by including a model in the developer's software maintenance pipeline and raising awareness of existing errors that hinder the accessibility of mobile apps, which is a pressing need. In light of our findings from the Blackboard case study, Blackboard and the course material are not easily accessible to deaf students and hard of hearing. Thus, deaf students find that learning is extremely stressful during the pandemic.

This thesis analyzes how a decrease in the commuting time affects the region’s productivity and accessibility on the targeted area Jönköping, Vaggeryd and Värnamo. Numerous municipalities that surround the railway, within a one-hour time range have been included to determine whether an investment on the railway is efficient. The potential growth effects and productivity are measured in wages, and the accessibility is measured as population accessibility. The accessibility is calculated with an accessibility measure, also known The Potential of Opportunities. Additionally, the study includes four control variables. Out of these, four of the six variables proved to significantly influence the regions accessibility and productivity whereas multicollinearity is present in the remaining two. The study differentiates from other similar reports in such way that it investigates a brand new area, different municipalities and finally through the control variables that have not been explicitly used for this specific purpose. The investment is shown to have a substantial effect on the municipalities, especially the smaller ones close to the railway. Shorter time distances, better accessibility and increased productivity all contribute to economic growth and agglomeration.

In this study I investigate sub-national governments to determine whether the accountability derived from local elections improves the delivery of a vital resource – potable water – to the population and, additionally, consider accessibility to improved sanitation. I utilize a cross-national differenced random effects model of 156 countries from 1990-2007 and examine the complex relationship between water, sanitation, and local government. This analysis finds that States with locally elected municipal government have a higher percentage of people with access to improved water and sanitation facilities as opposed to States without locally elected municipal government.

While the need for web accessibility for people with disabilities is widely accepted, the same visibility does not apply to the accessibility needs of older adults. This research initially explored developer behaviour in terms of how they presented accessibility on their websites as well as their own accessibility practices in terms of presentation of accessibility statements, the mention of accessibility as a selling point to potential clients and homepage accessibility of company websites. Following from this starting point the research focused in on web accessibility for ageing in particular. A questionnaire was developed to explore the differences between developer views of general accessibility and accessibility for older people. The questionnaire findings indicated that ageing is not seen as an accessibility issue by a majority of developers. Awareness of ageing accessibility documentation was also very low, highlighting the need for raising awareness of accessibility practices for ageing. Current age-related documentation developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative was then examined and critiqued. The findings show a tension between the machine-centric Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) and the needs of older people. Examination of guidelines when compared to research-derived findings reveal that the Assistive Technology (AT) centric structure of the documentation does not appropriately highlight accessibility practices in a context that matches the observed behaviour of older people. The documentation also fails to appropriately address the psycho-social ramifications of how older people choose to interact with technology as well as how they identify themselves in relation to any conditions they have which may be considered disabling. The need for a novel, engaging and awareness-raising tool resulted in the development of what is essentially a "Virtual third-age simulator". This ageing simulator is the first to combine multiple impairments in an active simulation and uses eye-tracking technology to increase the fidelity of conditions resulting in partial sightedness. It also allows for developers to view their own web content in addition to the lessons provided using the simulations presented in the software. The simulator was then validated in terms of its ability to raise awareness as well as its ability to affect web industry professionals' intentions towards accessible practices that benefit older people.

This thesis documents research providing improvements in the field of accessibility modelling, which will be of particular interest as computing becomes increasingly ubiquitous. It is argued that a new approach is required that takes into account the dynamic relationship between users, their technology (both hardware and software) and any additional Assistive Technologies (ATs) that may be required. In addition, the approach must find a balance between fidelity and transportability. A theoretical framework has been developed that is able to represent both users and technology in symmetrical (hierarchical) recursive profiles, using a vocabulary that moves from device-specific to device-agnostic capabilities. The research has resulted in the development of a single unified solution that is able to functionally assess the accessibility of interactions through the use of pattern matching between graph-based profiles. A self-efficacy study was also conducted, which identified the inability of older people to provide the data necessary to drive a system based on the framework. Subsequently, the ethical considerations surrounding the use of automated data collection agents were discussed and a mechanism for representing contextual information was also included. Finally, real user data was collected and processed using a practically implemented prototype to provide an evaluation of the approach. The thesis represents a contribution through its ability to both: (1) accommodate the collection of data from a wide variety of sources, and (2) support accessibility assessments at varying levels of abstraction in order to identify if/where assistance may be necessary. The resulting approach has contributed to a work-package of the Sus-IT project, under the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) programme of research in the UK. It has also been presented to a W3C Research and Development Working Group symposium on User Modelling for Accessibility (UM4A). Finally, dissemination has been taken forward through its inclusion as an invited paper presented during a subsequent parallel session within the 8th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction.

This paper examines the effect of high-speed broadband expansion on the rural population and number of rural workplaces in Sweden in the years 2009 and 2014. Previous studies conducted on the subject have found positive correlations between broadband expansion and economic growth. However, most previous studies have been focused on urban areas and the transition from no broadband to basic broadband. This study focuses on the shift from basic broadband to high-speed access in rural areas in all 290 municipalities of Sweden. This paper uses cross-sectional data to perform OLS regressions to test the effect that an expansion of high-speed broadband has on rural population and rural workplaces. An accessibility measure is constructed to control for different access that each municipality has to the rest of the population as well as to control for spatial dependencies. The results of this paper show that there is a significant correlation between high-speed broadband expansion and the number of rural workplaces.