An Assessment of Applying the Quality Standards of Tourism Websites for People ‎with Disabilities (Applied to The Egyptian Tourism Authority Website)‎

Abstract

People with Disabilities (PwD) are one of the excellent opportunities for the survival of tourism in the future in many countries. When providing appropriate websites for special needs tourists, countries will be able to continue their itineraries and have a competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to assessing the Egyptian Tourism Authority website by utilization of the quality standards for special needs tourists and suggesting some key factors to improve the website to supply information and offers for them. This paper describes the requirements of special needs tourists in tourism websites for establishing the intention of purchase and making travel decisions and attempts to suggest some of the steps accessibility issues and the usage of website. TAW WCAG 2.0 as an online analysis tool was used for analyzing the Egyptian Tourism Authority website to verify its level of accessibility of PwD. Furthermore, ten interviews with tourism experts were conducted to determine the most accessibility problems that face them in the website. Results revealed that the Egyptian Tourism Authority Website accessibility is very difficult for PwD as well as many criteria are not applied that enable them to access the site easily. This study suggested that web designers should develop the Egyptian Tourism Authority Website by incorporating the guidelines of web accessibility to access tourism information available to all PwD.