Implementing Web Accessibility Policy. Case Studies of the United Kingdom, Norway, and the United States

• Main Author: Giannoumis, G. Anthony
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English

The development of information and communication technology (ICT) has had the unintended effect of producing inequalities between people with disabilities, who experience barriers using ICT, and others. Despite the efforts of the United Nations, European Union and national governments, such as the United Kingdom (UK), Norway, and the United States (US), research shows that the web remains broadly and substantively inaccessible to many persons with disabilities. Despite a growing body of research dedicated to examining web accessibility, scholars have yet to examine fully the design and implementation of web accessibility policies from a national and crossnational perspective. This dissertation aims to fill this gap and other relevant gaps in the literature on social regulation by investigating the role of non-State actors in designing and implementing social regulations; the long-term interactions between social norms, values and procedures and the behaviours of State and non-State actors in policy design and implementation; and the influence of non-State actors on compliance-related outcomes that result from the implementation of social regulations. Based on these gaps, this dissertation has posed one overarching research question and three subquestions. The overarching research question asks, “How do social institutions – i.e. norms, values and procedures important to a society – affect the design and implementation of web accessibility policies?” The first sub-question asks, “How and to what extent have relevant social institutions changed over time?” The second sub-question asks, “How has the institutional setting influenced the design and implementation of web accessibility policies?” The third sub-questions asks, “How have policy actors implemented legal obligations in practice?” In order to structure the analysis of web accessibility – a complex and multi-dimensional social, legal, and technological phenomenon – this dissertation poses a theoretical framework that integrates four analytic concepts. First, social institutions – i.e., norms, values and procedures important in a society – by definition pre-date policy design and implementation and act as a mechanism for constraining or enabling policy actors to participate in policy design and implementation. Second, policy design and diffusion processes contribute to establishing and spreading new or modified institutional norms, values and procedures. Third, new or amended policies frame or structure