Accessibility of Norwegian Municipalities Websites: A Decision Support Tool

Access to public websites is crucial to assure equal opportunities for all citizens to participate in society. Although, a range of studies to analyse the accessibility of websites have been carried out, we have not been able to find any study evaluating the effect of managerial decisions on the accessibility of websites. This paper presents a demonstrator simulation model, built using System Dynamics methodology. The model focuses on accessibility of Norwegian Municipal websites, and is intended to be used as a decision support tool, mainly for managers responsible for website development and maintenance. To build the underlying model we have used information collected from in-depth interviews with representatives from a group of Norwegian municipalities, and the outcomes of a review of the relevant literature. The paper contains a description of the model structure, and the behaviour from running the model using parameters of two Norwegian municipalities.