A study on accessibility to mobile websites - Centering on public institution mobile websites in Korea -

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1 , pp A study on accessibility to mobile websites - Centering on public institution mobile websites in Korea - Eunju Park 1-1, Yangwon Lim 1, Hankyu Lim 1 1 Department of Multimedia Engineering, Andong National University, 1375 Gyeongdong-ro, Andong-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Republic of KOREA, eunju8921@naver.com, limyw@andong.ac.kr, hklim@andong.ac.kr, Abstract. In the 2012 electronic government development index and the online participation index announced by the UN, Korea took first place for the second consecutive. According to the 2011 survey of Actual Conditions of Information Accessibility, the informationization levels of public institutions in Korea were evaluated as being very high; homepage accessibility levels of central government departments and local governments were evaluated as being excellent at 94.8 points and 91.9 points; and those of public corporations were evaluated at 88.4 points. Recently, trends in the ICT market have been swinging toward mobile services. Surveys indicate that the most frequently used Internet services through mobile devices are mobile websites. Therefore, this study examines mobile accessibility to Korean public institutions mobile websites. The results of the study showed that the mobile accessibility compliance rates of frequently used public institutions mobile websites are very low, indicating that the construction of mobile websites with improved accessibility is crucial. Keywords: Web Accessibility, Web Standard, Mobile Accessibility 1 Introduction According to the 2012 National Informationization White Paper Korea took first place in 2010 and in 2012 on the Electronic Government Development Index and on the online participation index announced by the UN, indicating that Korea is the best electronic government country in the world [1]. According to the Page: 1: 2011 Survey of Actual Conditions of Information Accessibility, the informationization levels of public institutions were very high in Korea and overseas; the information accessibility levels of central government departments and local governments were excellent at 94.8 points and 91.9 points, respectively; and that of public corporations was normal at 88.4 points[2]. Accessibility refers to the possibility of the disabled and the aged being able to use facilities, products, services, contents, and so on. Since important services will be more frequently provided through mobile technologies because of the expansion of the supply of smartphones and other smart devices, mobile accessibility is important 1 Corresponding Author : Hankyu Lim, hklim@andong.ac.kr ISSN: ASTL Copyright 2013 SERSC

2 [3]. The government has also judged that universal accessibility is important for services provided by public institutions and has been recommending mobile web systems as standards rather than mobile applications(apps) that are subordinate to certain devices[4]. In the case of Korea, in which informationization has reached a world high level, constructing mobile websites that observe mobile accessibility for services is crucial. Therefore, in this study, mobile accessibility to the mobile websites of Korean public institutions was evaluated. To this end, 30 public institutions mobile websites with large numbers of accessors were selected, and mobile accessibility to the selected mobile websites was evaluated. According to the results of the evaluation, mobile accessibility to these mobile websites was very low. Therefore, public institutions mobile website services that are appropriate for the Korean government s informationization level should be developed as soon as possible. 2 Mobile accessibility and accessibility to public institutions mobile websites Mobile accessibility refers to the provision of utilizability for everyone who wishes to use mobile services through mobile devices[5]. W3C s mobileok is a generic term for international web standard technologies that enable free use of websites or web applications regardless of the types of wire/wireless devices. MobileOK was developed to improve mobile device users web experiences. Mobile Web Best Practices(MWBP) is the W3C web standard that was established to enable more convenient design and use of contents accessed through mobile devices. Mobile websites constructed pursuant to MWBP guidelines can be accessed by a greater number of customers and can be browsed through diverse mobile devices. Most attention on mobile services is concentrated on mobile apps. If public institutions mobile services are to be constructed as mobile apps, a problem will occur in that web contents should be constructed on all individual mobile devices separately. For instance, until 2010, domestic public mobile apps were provided only through iphones, so that the problem of ensuring universal accessibility came to the fore. Then, the government judged that ensuring universal accessibility for all people was more important for services provided by public institutions and recommended that mobile web systems be constructed as standards rather than mobile apps[4]. 3 Experiment and discussion In this study, mobile accessibility evaluation is using the automatic evaluation by W3C's mobileokchecker. The subjects of this mobile accessibility evaluation were 30 public institutions mobile websites with high rankings of access as provided by The evaluation was conducted over November 20 and 21, The Korea Housing Finance Corporation s site was excluded from the results of the evaluation because no resultant value was produced despite the site was tested five times. 141 Copyright 2013 SERSC

3 Vol.43(Multimedia Table 1 illustrates the mobile accessibility evaluation results for the 30 public institutions websites with the largest numbers of accessors. Table 1. Results for the evaluation of mobile accessibility of 30 public institutions websites with large numbers of accessors. Failure per severity rate(%) Critical SevereMedium Low Page size (KB) Page size(kb) Docu ment Style sheet Image Network Usage Network usage Docu ment Style sheet Image 30 public institutions According to the results of the evaluation, the average compliance rate for the 30 public institutions sites was 54.3%. Given the small screen sizes and low network speeds of mobile devices, accessibility should be improved to suit the information access demands of the disabled and the aged. The average page size was 153.0KB, and the average network usage was 12.2 pieces. W3C s Delivery Default Context (DDC) 1.0 recommends that the size of a mobile site should not exceed 20KB, and the Korean DDC recommends that the size of a mobile site should not exceed 50KB. According to the results of the survey, although the average value was large because of sites having sizes such as 2.1MB and 1.6MB, 21 sites showed page sizes smaller than the recommended value of 50KB. MWBP recommends saving networks and optimizing requests. Network usage is the digitization of the amount of network use; values closer to 1 or smaller indicate better accessibility. The results of the survey indicate that 18 sites had network usage values of 1, and 8 sites had network usage values exceeding 10. Figure 1 is a graph comparing page sizes, network usage, and compliance rates among public institutions mobile websites. As shown, sites with low compliance rates had large page sizes and large numbers for network usage. Fig. 1. Comparison of page size, network usage, and compliance rate among mobile websites Table 2 shows a comparison between sites with a compliance rate exceeding 80%, and those with a compliance rate of 0%. Sites with a compliance rate of 0% had three characteristics: large page sizes, high network usage, and no observance of CRITICAL, which refers to matters that must be observed without fail. Examples of CRITICAL included cases where frames not recommended by MWBP were used and cases where codes that did not meet web standards were used. There were only 4 sites with a compliance rate exceeding 80%, indicating that many sites did not consider accessibility when constructing their mobile websites. All the sites with a compliance rate exceeding 80% had page sizes smaller than the recommended values and had small network usage values. As shown in Table 2, images occupy large parts of page Copyright 2013 SERSC 142

4 sizes and network usage. Therefore, mobile websites with improved compliance rates should be constructed only using appropriate page sizes, network usage, and images. Table 2. Comparison between sites with a high compliance rate and those with a compliance rate of 0% Page Page size Network Network usage Failure per severity Division Site name Critical Severe Medium Low Docu- rate(%) size Usage ment Style sheet Image Document Style sheet Imag e m.seoul.go.kr MB 34.8KB 40.2KB 2MB rate=0% MB 76.9KB 47.7KB 1.5MB m.airport.co.kr KB 775B 60.3KB 182KB m.kma.go.kr KB 18.1KB 5.8KB 8.9KB m.kepco.co.kr B 445B 2 2 rate>=80% m.mw.go.kr KB 4.1KB 5.8KB 27.5KB B 427B 1 4 Conclusion Korean public institutions informationization is known to be at world high levels, and the government has been making diverse efforts to enhance these levels even further. As a result of these efforts, the accessibility to public institutions home pages have reached a level at which the disabled and the aged can access the home pages without difficulty. However, as the use of mobile devices, such as smartphones, increases, the construction of public institutions mobile websites that comply with accessibility not dependent on devices becomes increasingly necessary. Therefore, in this study, mobile accessibility to 30 public institutions mobile websites with large numbers of accessors was evaluated. According to the results of the evaluation, the average mobile accessibility compliance rate was 54.3%. Given the small screen sizes and relatively low network speed of mobile devices relative to wire communication devices, accessibility should be improved to meet the information access demands of the disabled and the aged. To construct sites that comply with mobile accessibility, the recommended page size, network usage, and CRITICAL, which refers to matters that must be observed without fail, should be observed. Therefore, when public institutions mobile websites are constructed, services that fit the government s informationization level should be prepared. References 1. National Information Society Agency.: 2012 National Informationization White Paper. National Information Society Agency (2012) 2. Ministry of Public Administration and Security.: 2011 Survey of Actual Conditions of Information Accessibility. Ministry of Public Administration and Security (2012) 3. Sujeong Lim.: A survey on mobile web compatibility and accessibility of Korea m- Government services. Korea University ( 2011) 143 Copyright 2013 SERSC

5 Vol.43(Multimedia 4. Sungil Lee.: The content and significance of Mobile accessibility guidelines. Journal of TTA, No. 137, pp (2011) 5. Ministry of Public Administration and Security.: Mobile Applications Accessibility Guidelines. Ministry of Public Administration and Security Notice No (2011) Copyright 2013 SERSC 144