U.S. state health agencies and organizational learning: An exploratory analysis of website accessibility during COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inaccessibility of government information and communication technologies (ICTs) for members of the disability community. Organizational learning around ICT accessibility can be impacted by factors influencing strategies and assumptions or values and norms. Using data collected over two time periods in 2021, we study how the accessibility of US state health agencies COVID-19 information and vaccine websites improve over time. We examine how time, state policies, and partisanship influence organizational learning around website accessibility. Our analysis determines that the longer a COVID-19 related website exists on the Internet, the less accessible the website. We also find that more extensive internal state accessibility policies are more correlated with websites that meet fundamental accessibility requirements. Additionally, we find that partisanship plays an unexpected role in meeting fundamental accessibility demands, although both state policies and politics do not influence if an ICT meets the best practices standards of accessibility. Our paper initiates a discussion around the factors that influence organizational learning about government website accessibility and points to future research questions where the primary ICT function is not influenced by a rapidly evolving pandemic.