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Top2. Literature Review
Webster’s dictionary defines accessibility as “the quality of being accessible, or of admitting approach.” (Webster’s Dictionary - Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1996, 1998 MIRCA, Inc) This definition serves as an introductory note for the term, but insufficient to explicit the innate meaning of accessibility in its practical form. On the contrary, W3C providing a more contextual definition for the term, states “Web Accessibility is a term used to identify the extent to which information on Web pages can be successfully accessed by persons with disabilities including the aging” (W3C, 2000). However, this definition only includes the physical disabilities, but fails to include some other important dimensions of this multi-faceted word. Particularly, accessibility could means a lot in the context of developing countries which are far behind developed countries in terms of economic condition. Consequently, Good (2008, p. 16) defines accessibility in a more versatile manner which and encompasses the contextual requirements of developing countries. The definition goes as, “A website is said to be accessible when anyone, regardless of economic, geographic or physical circumstances, is able to access it.” This means, the ease with which, people from different economic backgrounds, people living in different geographic zones and people having different physical impairments could access the web’. Hence, for this particular study, accessibility could be defined as ‘the ease with which people with disabilities, people from different geographic regions and people having different internet connections could access the websites.’