The municipal challenges of the accessibility act : A study of the challenges in compliance with the Swedish act on accessibility to digital public service within Swedish municipalities

Sammanfattning

Digitalization in society is going fast and was accelerated further by the Covid-19 pandemic. By this, many people's everyday tasks were transferred to digital environments. This meant in Sweden that most new internet users in 2020 were people over the age of 75 and people with different types of disabilities. Due to this increase in digitalization and all these new internet users, accessibility online is a subject that has gained higher significance. Since September 2020, all Swedish municipalities' websites must be accessible by law. Municipalities have a great responsibility to make information and necessary services available to the public. The purpose of this study was to investigate how well municipalities succeed with their work with web accessibility as a consequence of the legislation in Sweden and identify where the municipalities meet concrete obstacles in order to comply with the law. The purpose was also to investigate how the work with web accessibility on municipal websites can be simplified, improved, or otherwise enabled for those who work with such issues in the municipalities. To fulfill the purpose, two research question was formed for the study: 1. In the process of making municipalities’ websites accessible, which are the concrete obstacles that make the work difficult for those who work with such issues in the municipalities? 2. How can the work with the accessibility of municipal websites be simplified, improved, or otherwise enabled for those who work with such issues in the municipalities? To answer the research questions, two methods were chosen, a web survey and in-depth interviews, which corresponds to a combination of a quantitative and a qualitative method. The web survey was sent out to all municipalities in Sweden with the focus to answer RQ1 and the in-depth interviews were conducted with two accessibility experts with the focus to answer RQ2. Several obstacles were identified relating to lack of resources, lack of competence, lack of understanding of the law and the interpretation of it, attitudes, and old technology. Solutions on how the work can be simplified for those who work with web accessibility were identified relating to attitudes, resources, competence, legislation, and consumer demands. The main conclusions were that even though a municipality comply fully with the law, it does not mean that the website is accessible for all users, hence the law is not comprehensive enough. It also shows that there are several aspects that makes it hard for the municipalities to comply with the law and that most of these aspects also are the areas that needs improvement for the work to be simplified for the municipalities.