Abstract for: Accessibility of Norwegian Municipalities Websites: A Qualitative System Dynamics Approach

Access to all public websites is crucial to assuring equal opportunities for all citizens to participate in society. Several studies have been carried out to analyse the accessibility of websites. However, we have not been able to find studies on the factors (other than technical) affecting the accessibility of websites. The purpose of this paper is to explore different factors prior to the web page development that may have an influence on the accessibility of the municipal websites in Norway. This is achieved through reviewing relevant literature and performing a set of in-depth interviews with web-masters and web-editors from various Norwegian municipalities. The findings from these sources were compiled into a Causal Loop Diagram. Several leverage points to enhance public websites accessibility were discovered by exploring the Causal Loop Diagram: • Increasing the budget devoted to the workforce, giving more attention to the workforce selection process while recruiting and retaining the experienced workforce members. • Keeping the desired development rate at a level lower than the capacity of the available workforce. • Training the workforce on the use of HTML and WCAG, in addition to technology updates, are possible long-term investments.