ABSTRACT
In 2006 the United Nations (UN) drafted the Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities (UN, 2006). This Convention declared that persons with
disabilities (PWDs) deserve access to unbridled citizenship in the world with an
emphasis on their abilities rather than their disabilities. For this reason, the UN,
along with the United States, championed accessibility to the world wide web
and new technologies as a right. But the work that web designers, corporations,
and governments, among others, have done to date to ensure accessibility for
PWDs when using the web still has much to do to achieve complete compliance
with that Convention, especially with regard to assistive technologies and navi-
gational tools. Since the pursuit of wealth is now largely the pursuit of infor-
mation, the stakes for PWDs to have easy and effective access to information in
electronic and other forms are high (Wriston, 1992, p. 8). However, information
has value only if it is usable, accessible, and relevant to its primary audience or
those who will ultimately use it. Progress toward this goal has not always been
voluntary, nor is it complete. The more one investigates the performance of
self-proclaimed accessible websites or the compliance levels of sites attempting
to abide by the standards and laws, the more one realizes that much work remains
to ensure that PWDs have the tools they need to harvest information from the
web seamlessly and effectively (De Andrés, Lorca, & Martinez, 2009). Often
small, overlooked, and difficult to find, web accessibility statements (WACs) are
nonetheless significant indicators of actual versus intended accessibility. These
seemingly innocuous documents take on the role of representing an organi-
zation’s stance on accessibility issues, a stance that is often conflicting and does
little to advance the reputation of organizations in the eyes of PWDs.1
