To enable the capturing of the user requirements, both from developers and end-users, a survey took place from April 2009 through July 2009. This was undertaken via face-to-face interviews, as well as through online questionnaires in 7 countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and the United Kingdom). Developers, service providers, public bodies/governmental agencies and accessibility assessors were mostly surveyed online, while interviews with elderly and disabled users were mainly undertaken face-to-face.
The project decided that, while the online survey and user requirements extraction has been completed, the survey itself will be kept online to allow for the collection of further data in order to enlarge the representative character of the random sampling.
A total of 408 individuals were interviewed.
| User group | Number interviewed individuals |
| Accessibility Assessors | 38 |
| Developers | 254 |
| Elderly and Disabled Users | 67 |
| Public Bodies/Governmental Agencies | 18 |
| Service Providers | 31 |
| Total | 408 |
An analysis of the gender distribution indicated that 76,2% of the random sample were male. This thus confirms recent findings of a European study that indicated females represent less than 25 percent of all computing graduates in the EU-27 (as mentioned by A. Gras-Velazquez, A. Joyce & M. Debry in the white paper “Women and ICT, Why are girls still not attracted to ICT studies and careers?”, June 2009, CISCO). The same study revealed that in the ICT sector, only 27,8 percent of computer and information systems managers are women, and among computer hardware engineers, a mere 9,6 percent are female. Also, only 5,8 percent of senior academic positions in engineering and technology fields are held by women. This is hardly any different for the accessibility ICT sector which equally still remains largely dominated by men.
For this survey, 5 main target groups were identified:
- Developers (software developers and designers) that will use ACCESSIBLE as a supportive tool for the development and testing of accessible software applications;
- Accessibility Assessors who are involved in assessing existing software solutions, and the accessibility of its user interfaces;
- Public Bodies/Governmental Agencies who are involved in policy making and provide the basis for future policies;
- Service Providers (public and private enterprises and organisations responsible for the content and graphic layout of Web products) who set (commercial) objectives and are key decision makers in web accessibility development;
- Elderly and Disabled Users who benefit from enhanced accessibility and are the actual endusers of all developed solutions.
The survey carried out by the ACCESSIBLE project so far shows a clear need for simulation environments. On the one hand there are the end-users who have ongoing problems with the accessibility of user interfaces, and their compatibility with AT. On the other hand, there are the managers, developers, website managers and designers who are not fully aware of accessibility, lack the appropriate tools, and do not have access to the needed assessment tools and methodologies to evaluate whatever they create/develop.
The findings of the survey do as such substantiate the ACCESSIBLE concept, both from the needs of the people with disabilities that face inaccessible user interface, and also from the needs of the developers, designers, etc. that are increasingly (legally) forced to make their interfaces accessible to all.
Based on these generic functional requirements, performance, operational, reliability and maintainability and interoperability requirements will be defined.
