Accessibility barriers in arabic news websites for visually impaired users: a mixed-method evaluation approach

News media has always been a powerful medium to inform the public about political and public issues, whether in print, radio, television, or online. Thus, accessibility barriers must be broken down to ensure that news can be reached by everyone, regardless of their disability. This mixed-methods evaluation study investigates the level of accessibility in Arabic news websites and identifies any accessibility issues from visually impaired (VI) users' perspective. The most visited Arabic news websites from each of 19 different Arab countries were evaluated using the TAW automated accessibility evaluation tool to help identify the most accessibility issues of these news websites. In addition to heuristic evaluation, semi-structured interviews were conducted with six VI users of news websites. Results revealed a lack of compliance with accessibility standards in all four principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust of the WCAG 2.1 standard. The Perceivable principle was the most violated by all websites, with 45% of total errors, followed by Operable and Robust, with 38% and 14% respectively. While the Understandable principle was the least violated principle, with 3%. According to the error type, 40% of the errors were related to links and navigation, while 31% were associated with images lacking alternative texts. Interview data confirmed these results, where the VI users identified challenges related to navigation, multimedia, and website organization. The findings indicate that more attention is needed to enhance Arabic news websites' accessibility, especially with the increased reliance on the Internet to access the most recent news. These findings are hoped to inform decision-makers on the importance of enforcing accessibility standards to empower special needs communities and enhance inclusion and equality. Additionally, awareness must be raised among developers of Arabic news websites on current accessibility standards and guidelines and how to apply these standards to ensure accessibility for all users.