Exploring the relationship between web accessibility and user experience

Understanding the interplay between the user experience (UX) and Web accessibility is key to design Web sites that, beyond access, could provide a better UX for people with disabilities. In this paper we examine the relationship between UX attributes and Web accessibility. We measured accessibility in two ways: the perceived accessibility as reported by participants and accessibility in terms of conformance to guidelines. Findings uncover that perceived Web accessibility is significantly correlated with 27 of the 35 UX attributes analysed, suggesting these two qualities are closely related. The relationship between UX and conformance to WCAG 2.0 is more elusive: we only found significant correlations between the hedonic attributes original, innovative and exciting.