Research and improving web accessibility in Japan

Internet use by the people with disabilities and the elderly in Japan is still low, but growing. However, the majority of web contents written in Japanese, even government sites, have very low accessibility. This paper introduces the active measures being taken in Japan to improve such conditions; consideration of a web contents accessibility guideline tailored to the unique characteristics of the Japanese language, development of a system to evaluate accessibility and implementation of actual trials.© (2001) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.