Web Accessibility in Social Networking Services

Considering the rise of social networking services occurred in recent years and that about 15% of the world's population have some form of disability, it's important to estimate the software quality sub-characteristic of web accessibility offered by such services. The objective of this study is to evaluate web accessibility of a social networking sites sample, considering the most popular portals of this domain, by the perspective of one of the most common disabilities: visual impairment. These assessments were planned using GQM paradigm and were carried out considering two stages, including evaluations by WCAG 2.0 automated tools and computer specialists with expertise in web accessibility. With results generated, it was possible to indicate which web accessibility issues need more attention from web developers in social networking context and to observe that none of the sample sites analyzed did not reach even the lowest conformance level of web accessibility described by WCAG 2.0.