Online access, participation and information credibility assessment

The Web today is as much a social space with a participatory culture spurred by online collaboration technologies, as it is an information source. The possibility that almost anyone can contribute content has made credibility assessment online important and difficult at the same time. Empirical studies claim that online credibility perceptions are based more on heuristics than on systematic processing of information and that they are greatly influenced by visual design and visual cues. These studies did not include participants using non-visual modalities to interact with the Web. To begin to address this, we performed a study of 60 Web users with visual impairments, who interact non-visually with the Web using a screen reader and keyboard. Among the findings of our study were: 1) The ability of visually impaired users to assess online information credibility is governed by the level of Web accessibility in context; 2) Their credibility assessments are supported by social factors, marked by collaboration with their information community; and 3) Visually impaired users are generally unable to use recent online collaboration technologies to the same extent as their sighted peers reportedly do, because these technologies are not very accessible to them. Our study also confirmed that for effective use of online resources, full access is important not only to online information but also to the online participatory culture, because information credibility assessment is a social process that requires a trusted community and social tools to support it. Using a participatory design process, we built an accessible and interactive online community website with social tools to provide inclusive online support as a proof-of-concept that websites can support accessibility and interactivity at the same time and these are not mutually exclusive as commonly believed.