Web accessibility for the handicapped: a new tool for social integration or a new reason for social exclusion?

Abstract

Nowadays, information and communication technologies (ICT), in special the Internet, have become the main channel of communication in the world, allowing the access to information and knowledge from every point and at every moment. This popularity has been feasible, in part, because in the last few years the administrative and informative services based on the web have proliferated, and also, because of the improvement of exponential number of users with access to the Internet. However, the growth of the society of information and ICT means an opportunity to improve the social and labour integration for disabled people, but it doesn't eliminate risks for them and maybe it will become a new barrier, an other impossibility for handicapped people. This paper examines how this fate can be avoided. It iintroduces the main aspects of disabled persons protection (legislation, guidelines, the disabled types, the main integration problems…), and, from them, the main problems of their access to the Internet are faced. The level of compliance of the accessibility guidelines is examined, and the available and possible tools to reduce access barriers are discussed.