Factors Influencing Web Accessibility of Corporate Information: Indian Evidence

Introduction

In recent years, to meet the growing need of external stakeholders, there is a trend among companies to utilize information technology such as the website for their data management. These websites act as a principal instrument to improve the relationship between organizations and their stakeholders (Andres et al. 2009). From the last decade, it is quite popular among companies to disclose their corporate information on their official websites (Louwers et al., 1996; Lymer, 1999; Debreceny et al., 2002; Bonson & Escobar, 2006; Botti et al., 2014). However, the information published on the websites is not enough for the companies. King and Youngblood (2016) suggest that the success of a website depends on the activeness of the content and functionality of the webpages. Apart from this, how effectively companies are providing information in an accessible and usable manner to their stakeholders is a critical factor. Chatterjee and Hawkes (2008), presume that the information on the websites need to be present in such a manner that the users can easily access it. Thus, the accessibility of a website is a critical element to determine the usability of the website, and in general, it refers to the ability of users to access and retain the information from the distinct webpages (Cox and Dale, 2002).

Furthermore, the website’s access plays a pivotal role in establishing healthy communication between a company and its stakeholders (Mentes and Turan, 2012). Henceforth, in the absence of efficient accessibility of the information on the internet, users easily get confused, lost and unintentionally leave the website. Also, Shi (2006) indicated the significance of improving the accessibility of various web services. However, there is a dearth of empirical research around the world that measures the accessibility of corporate information on webpages explicitly. As an implication of which, this article suggests a new approach that examines the relevance of accessibility of websites for improving the corporate information. In this context, this study aims to analyze the web-accessibility of corporate information of BSE listed Indian companies, specifically to examine the extent of web accessibility of corporate information and the influence of several firm-specific characteristics on the level of web accessibility.

Previous empirical work focuses on limited aspects of the websites, such as the kind of information presented on the companies’ webpages (Debreceny et al., 2002) and the methods of disseminating information on the corporate webpages (Robbin and Stylianou, 2003). There are only a few researchers targeted the accessibility of information on corporate websites (Coupland, 2006; Chaudhri and Wang, 2007; Stewart et al., 2012). However, the previous researches, which focused on the measurement of web accessibility, limit itself only to the navigation aspect of websites (Bonson et al., 2008). Also, the measurement of web accessibility is limited to information related to governance and corporate social responsibility (Stewart et al., 2012; Adelopo et al., 2012). Thus, this study provides a comprehensive approach to the web accessibility of corporate information by developing a web accessibility index (WAI), which includes the general web accessibility information, ease of finding the corporate information on webpages and easy to navigate on the websites.