Identifying Accessibility Improvement Opportunities for Global Environmental Communication Websites

Alicia M. Masona Alicia Mason is a Professor in the Department of Communication at Pittsburg State University. Her research focuses on health, environmental, risk and crisis communication. Mason is the Director of Graduate Studies and Director of the Communication Research Lab at Pittsburg State University. Mason teaches within the Strategic Communication emphasis area and serves as a faculty contributor to the Bachelor of Integrated Studies (SSRM) degree program: Society, Sustainability and Resource ManagementCorrespondence[email protected]

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0844-7707

Josh Comptonb Josh Compton is Professor of Speech at Dartmouth College. He has been studying inoculation as a way to confer resistance to influence for more than 20 years. Most of his work of late focuses on the theory itself—how it works, why it works, and whether it might work better. His applied work is mostly in mis- and disinformation, science communication, health communication, and sport. Josh has been named Distinguished Lecturer by Dartmouth College and has won the Outstanding Professor Award from the National Speakers Association and has twice won the L. E. Norton Award for Outstanding Scholarship

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4625-3823

Sakshi Bhatic Sakshi Bhati is a Ph.D. Candidate, in the Leadership Communication Doctoral Program at Kansas State University and serves as a graduate teaching assistant, A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications

Abstract

Digital environmental information presented with low web accessibility reduces participation in environmental advocacy and information seeking behaviors for many people with disabilities, creating a consequential digital divide. We use WEB AIM computer automated analysis of web accessibility to assess the general accessibility of online environmental communication messages. Results show 95.3% of the popular websites in our sample had indicators of potentially critical accessibility errors. Our findings highlight the importance of addressing digital environmental information accessibility shortcomings so that educational, informational and persuasive environmental messages can increase environmental literacy of vulnerable populations and help to bridge the digital divide.

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Identifying Accessibility Improvement Opportunities for Global Environmental Communication Websites

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Identifying Accessibility Improvement Opportunities for Global Environmental Communication Websites

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