II. Web Accessibility
2.1. Myths and Misunderstandings
2.1.1. Web Accessibility Knowledge Study
To establish what knowledge of web accessibility web users have I choose to conduct a questionnaire (See Appendix 1 – Web Accessibility Survey) that was posted on several French and English speaking web communities, where users are a mix of computer scientists, web developers and of people whose primary activity is not related to computing; which represent the normal population of the web. The level of expertise in the use of the Internet varies from beginners to expert; however, most of the respondents are regular users of the Internet. I choose submit this questionnaire only to people who use the Internet, on a quite regular basis, as they are the people most concerned about creating accessible web pages and sites.
The questions asked in the questionnaire were aimed at defining what percentage of the Internet user population is aware of the concept of accessibility, more especially within the population whose primary activity is related to the Internet or to computing. The questionnaire also asked three opened questions aiming at defining precisely what people know about the subject, how much they have been understanding of the concept or not. The respondents who have never heard of the concept of web accessibility before were asked to give it a guess.