University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

A comparative institutional analysis of software accessibility laws, policies, and guidelines

Kyrie Zhixuan Zhou, Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/126222

Description

Title
A comparative institutional analysis of software accessibility laws, policies, and guidelines
Author(s)
Kyrie Zhixuan Zhou, Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo
Issue Date
2025-03-11
Keyword(s)
  • Accessibility law
  • Accessibility guideline
  • Software
  • Institutional analysis
Abstract
Industry compliance with disability and anti-discrimination laws is socially significant and understudied from a sociotechnical perspective. Governance approaches to address accessibility have not proven as impactful in practice as many proponents and disability advocates hoped, with prevalent inaccessible software products. Through a comparative institutional analysis of software accessibility laws/policies and guidelines, we identify where they fall short and recommend enforceable, technically feasible, clearly operationalizable improvements to such policies and guidelines. Our preliminary results found that accessibility laws and policies contain more norms than rules or strategies, limiting the extent to which they are legally enforceable and illustrating that they are more aspirational than clear in approach. This research has the potential to shed light on more enforceable accessibility regulations.
Publisher
iSchools
Series/Report Name or Number
iConference 2025 Proceedings
Type of Resource
Other
Genre of Resource
Conference Poster
Language
eng
Handle URL
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/126222
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2025 is held by Kyrie Zhixuan Zhou and Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo. Copyright permissions, when appropriate, must be obtained directly from the authors.

Owning Collections

iConference 2025 Posters PRIMARY
Posters presented at the 2025 iConference https://www.ischools.org/iconference