Published In
Autism in Adulthood
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2020
Subjects
Autistic people, Autism -- Research -- Citizen participation
Abstract
Websites figure predominantly in everyday life. However, many websites remain inaccessible to autistic people, and existing efforts to improve accessibility are in early stages, do not directly include autistic users in their development, or have not been empirically evaluated. The Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE) used a community-based participatory research approach to create a website to improve health care access for autistic adults. We used the creation of that website as a ‘‘living laboratory’’ to develop the AASPIRE Web Accessibility Guidelines for Autistic Web Users. Our guidelines are grounded in accessibility theory, had autistic end-user involvement at all stages, and were empirically evaluated through a usability study and evaluation surveys. We incorporated what we learned into the design of the website, and compiled the accessibility information into a set of guidelines. The guidelines offer recommendations for increasing the physical, intellectual, and social acceptability of websites for use by autistic adults. In the evaluation of the website by 170 autistic end users, nearly all indicated it was easy to use (97%), easy to understand (95%), important (97%), and useful (96%). Ninety-two percent would recommend it to a friend, and 95% would recommend it to a health care provider. There were no significant associations between usability or understandability and education level, receipt of help using the site, browser type (e.g., IE or Safari), or device type (e.g., PC or tablet). We recommend using the guidelines to improve website accessibility for autistic Internet users.
DOI
10.1089/aut.2018.0020
Locate the Document
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/32712
Citation Details
Raymaker, D. M., Kapp, S. K., McDonald, K. E., Weiner, M., Ashkenazy, E., & Nicolaidis, C. (2019). Development of the AASPIRE web accessibility guidelines for autistic web users. Autism in Adulthood, 1(2), 146-157.
Description
© Dora M. Raymaker, et al, 2020; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).