The Appropriate Way to Define Heading Information in Accessible Medical Institution Webpages

Abstract

　［Introduction］ To create an accessible medical institution website, it is necessary to mark up a content of webpage correctly so that important information can be understood along with the context of webpage. As heading information is particularly important for web accessibility and web usability, we investigate whether the placement of heading information based on properties of human short-term memory does not hinder browsing by the visually-impaired and sighted people or not. ［Methods］ The authors prepared two top pages of medical institution website with little and much (4.7 links per heading) heading information, and conducted a questionnaire survey asking visually-impaired and sighted people to answer which was better via e-mail. ［Results］ There was no tendency to choose the top page with little heading information for both the visually-impaired and sighted. ［Discussion］ Considering the way of visually-impaired browsing webpages, the authors think that the more heading information will improve web accessibility and web usability of medical institution webpage.