Exploring global trade show website content accessibility and policies worldwide for social inclusion of persons with disabilities

ABSTRACT

This study investigates web-accessibility problems of global trade show websites based on WCAG 2.0 (Study 1), and the quantitative results are compared with the qualitative document analysis of various web-accessibility policy-related documents treated as complementary data to support the triangulation of study findings and theory-building (Study 2). Ultimately, based on specific mentions of People with Disabilities (PWDs) in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this study takes the perspective of macro-level social capital to connect the dots between web accessibility issues identified in the trade show industry and achieving the relevant SDGs.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable development goals (SDG)
• web-accessibility policy
• web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG)
• trade show
• people with disabilities (PWDs)
• event tourism
• accessible tourism
• W3C
• disability e-inclusion
• trade show websites

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).