Challenges

Digital accessibility is a multidimensional issue that includes conflicting requirements and needs. It includes people, regulations, technology and education with complicated requirements and complementing roles. This interaction is faced with great challenges and different needs and interpretations. Even though disability is common among different users from different countries, there are many external and internal challenges in addition to technological and educational challenges.

Persons with disabilities across all societies face common challenges and local challenges which are always present due to differences in income and poverty, culture and background, education and awareness. However, and despite that ICT is advancing accessibility, many challenges are still facing all e-accessibility dimensions. For example, a study to identify web Accessibility Challenges^[57] found three main challenges ^[d]with direct influence on e-accessibility advancements. Many challenges are related to regulation and standard related issues, while the other two challenges are related to the design and evaluation phases. The first category includes guidelines ambiguities, limited/ inadequate translation to other languages, incompleteness of guidelines and navigational problems. The second category includes lack of accessibility awareness and motivations due to the cost of additional design. The third category of challenges includes problems with either automated testing or evaluation tools, or user-based evaluation and testing due to time, cost, and degree of knowledge and skills required.

Based on outcomes from interviews with members of Jordan's Higher Council for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the following challenges and opportunities to e-accessibility were identified (by no means unique to the Arab region):

In many countries, e-accessibility is either a part of a law or included in a policy/strategy which makes compliance voluntary rather than mandatory.
Narrow disability definition and disaggregation varies from one country to another which affects getting accurate and reliable disability statistics.
Lack of compliance with international standards/guidelines or even national ones by public and private sector including governments, universities, business and service providers despite the fact that all Arab states are signatories to the CRPD.
The high cost of assistive technologies and quality of services provided giving the economic situation in general for people with special needs particularly in poor and rural areas (Affordability).
Lack of awareness on the needs of persons with disabilities in general and accessibility issues when designing web based or mobile Apps or even government e-services.
Cultural issues including high illiteracy rate among persons with disabilities and high school dropout.
Different priorities for the care of persons with special needs, especially in countries experiencing conflicts, security and political instability.
The use of Arabic in technology-based applications and services are not fully developed in addition to the high cost, low quality and localization issues.
Shortage of designers/developers who are familiar with accessibility design and evaluation tools. This is a problem for people with cognitive impairment in particular those who require special and simplified language in all e-accessibility solutions.
Lack or hesitation of the private sector to adopt e-accessibility due to cost-benefit considerations.
Security and privacy issues.
Emerging Technologies challenges including IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Unmanned vehicles and Robotics, Wearable's, Virtual and Augmented reality.