Access denied: Overcoming barriers to adoption and implementation of web accessibility

As Canadians increasingly integrate online activities into their daily lives, disabled people are frequently impeded from accessing websites due to code and design barriers. Despite the W3C guidelines to improve web accessibility, adoption remains low. The responsibility to implement accessibility tends to fall on web practitioners, yet prior scholarship has failed to consult this group on their barriers to adoption. Qualitative interviews with web practitioners found that current social and individual values, inadequate guidelines and support, and monetary demands are halting the diffusion of web accessibility in Canada. These factors perpetuate an artificial construct of online disability and impede developments towards an inclusive Web medium. Recommendations to remediate this environment and thus improve accessibility rates in Canada are offered.;Keywords. Web accessibility, accessibility, disability, web development, web design.