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Accessibility of tourism websites: the level of countries’ commitment

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Abstract

Various initiatives have been undertaken in recent years to improve the accessibility of tourism in a large number of countries. One of the areas in which work has been done has been the inclusion and accessibility of information for all, especially for people with disabilities and other users with access needs. A focus of this work has been to the digital world, given the increasing relevance of the internet in daily life. This paper aims to determine whether the different nation states are applying appropriate standards, both under their own regulations and under those from United Nations agreements regarding accessibility to online tourism information to foster more sustainable tourism. In the study of official tourism organization website home pages of the countries contained in the World Tourism Organization reports, cluster analysis was used to identify common behaviour patterns. The main result was the need to improve the compatibility and ease of navigation of websites, as well as identifying Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea as countries that can serve as examples of good practice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Business Sciences and Tourism, University of Vigo, As Lagoas s/n, 32004, Ourense, Spain

    Trinidad Domínguez Vila & Elisa Alén González

  2. UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney, 1-15 Broadway, Broadway, NSW, 2007, Australia

    Simon Darcy

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  1. Trinidad Domínguez Vila
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Correspondence to Trinidad Domínguez Vila.

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Domínguez Vila, T., Alén González, E. & Darcy, S. Accessibility of tourism websites: the level of countries’ commitment. Univ Access Inf Soc 19, 331–346 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-019-00643-4

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