The aim of this paper is to determine the expectations that French-speaking disabled persons have for electronic administrative sites (utility). At the same time, it is a matter of identifying the difficulties of use that the manipulation of these E-services poses concretely for blind people (usability) and of evaluating the psychosocial impacts on the way of life of these people with specific needs. We show that the lack of numerical accessibility is likely to accentuate the social exclusion of which these people are victim by establishing a numerical glass ceiling.
Deep Dive into Study of conditions of use of E-services accessible to visually disabled persons.
The aim of this paper is to determine the expectations that French-speaking disabled persons have for electronic administrative sites (utility). At the same time, it is a matter of identifying the difficulties of use that the manipulation of these E-services poses concretely for blind people (usability) and of evaluating the psychosocial impacts on the way of life of these people with specific needs. We show that the lack of numerical accessibility is likely to accentuate the social exclusion of which these people are victim by establishing a numerical glass ceiling.
The development of new technologies may prove to be a tremendous springboard for the integration of disabled persons (DP) provided that these environments are accessible, usable, and useful; in other words that they take into consideration the various characteristics of the activity and the needs and particularities (cognitive, perceptive, or motive) related to the disability of the users (7,9). This question is even more pertinent in the context of quasigeneralized media coverage of the service relationship (Eadministration, E-banking, E-commerce, etc.). Various studies worldwide have shown the very weak respect of accessibility criteria despite the numerous standards (section 508 in the USA, the law concerning digital accessibility of administrative services in France, etc.) or labels (Blindsurfeur in Belgium, See it Right in England, Accessiweb in France, etc.) required during the conception of these online services [5]: more than 75% of the assessed sites present level 1 WAI guideline accessibility flaws [9], meaning that accessibility to these sites is impossible for DP [2,3,4]. This is becoming a serious problem insomuch as accessibility seems to be one of the social and political levers playing a role in the amelioration of the quality of life of people with disabilities [6,8,10]. Indeed, if on the one hand, accessible Internet sites can allow DP greater autonomy by giving them the possibility to complete various activities by themselves; on the other hand, these technologies are also the source of a new type of social stigmatism because of their lack of technological accessibility. The DP must first ask for help to use the system and perform the act.
The objective of our communication is to determine the real contributions of accessible E-services for visually disabled persons as well as evaluate the repercussions of the lack of digital accessibility to these E-services on this population 1 . This is based on the hypothesis that inaccessible technologies will only confirm the inequalities of access to information and services between able-bodied persons and disabled persons, and could even reinforce and intensify them.
In this perspective, we studied the conditions of use of accessible electronic services.
In this perspective, we propose an original approach to study the conditions of use of electronic services accessible to disabled persons. The methodological approach is indeed both:
-Multidimensional: by diagnosing their utility (adaptation to user expectations), usability (ease of use), accessibility (respect of standards and principles), and acceptability (meaning and stakes attributed to the technologies).
-And comparative: since carried out on two user samples (able-bodied and visually impaired) with various levels of E-service experience (novice to expert).
Our approach draws on three complementary studies:
• The utility of the sites was studied using an online questionnaire on 439 DP with motive, perceptive, and cognitive disabilities in order to determine what the Eservices bring to the DP and what the DP expect from them.
• The usability and accessibility of the sites was evaluated 2 with user tests based on 3 scenarios (specified below) and two populations: 10 visually disabled participants (VDP) and 10 sighted participants. The participants had comparable sociobiographical characteristics (age, sex, education, etc.), only the mastery of the Internet varied equally in each group (5 novices and 5 experts). For this confrontation, we wanted to know if the problems encountered by the blind were the same as those of the sighted (general problems of usability), or if the problems were amplified by a choice of technology incompatible with their perceptive limits (problems of accessibility).
The data collection tools used were simultaneous verbalisation, observations and a satisfaction questionnaire (adapted from the Wammi grid 3 ). The indicators measured were the efficiency (time, frequency and nature of errors, omissions, number of selections/strategies to perform a scenario), satisfaction (score out of 5 on the Wammi scale) and efficacy (pass/fail test).
• The acceptability of E-services was analysed using semidirective interviews of 8 blind participants. The objective was to determine to what extent these services could transform the practices, contacts, and status of the blind. These interviews were recorded and entirely transcribed.
A thematic content analysis was performed on this corpus.
Of the 439 DP who answered the online questionnaire, 52% indicated having help with their classic administrative processes. This is due to difficulties in mobility (33.5%) physical accessibility to the building or administrative hours (30.5%), the complexity of forms (23%), or difficult contact with agents (feelings of “being different”) (13%). E-administration thus seems like an alternative solution that, incidentally, 52.4% of participants declared to have already used and 32.4% would lik
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