Connect the dots: Accessibility, readability and site ranking – An investigation with reference to top ranked websites of Government of India

Abstract

With the emergence of World Wide Web (WWW) as the primary reference channel of information, the need for making it barrier-free for all categories of users has evolved into a critical factor. Making the web resources barrier-free for users requires action across various dimensions such as accessibility and readability. This paper presents an analysis of accessibility, readability, and site-ranking of top ranked (N = 20) government websites of India. The accessibility analysis has been carried out using aChecker and WAVE tools. The readability of the contents of the website is measured with six different indices such as Flesch-Kincaid reading ease, Flesch-Kincaid grade level, Gunning fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau index and Automated Readability Index. The ranking of sites by National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been utilized to select the top ranked websites and their corresponding rankings are compared with global site ranking services such as Alexa. The correlation among these three factors of accessibility, readability, and site-ranking has been carried out with Spearman’s rank correlation method and the inferences derived from the results are presented. Keywords: Readability, Language complexity, Readability indices, Accessibility, Ranking, Grading, Correlation, Classification, Measurement techniques