The findings of the study were introduced through a multi-perspectival dialogue. Sixteen interviewees and thirty policy and policy-informing documents from stakeholder groups related to the topic participated in the dialogue. This dialogue produced eleven salient findings. 

Research Question 1

The extent of Ableism or Social Inclusiveness in Web Accessibility Policymaking:
How They Play Out in Policies

Ableist biases in Web accessibility policies are widespread; they exceed indications of social inclusiveness revealed in policies evidenced at all levels. The prevalent biases in Web accessibility policymaking involve the following: treating persons with disabilities as a marginal minority and as a population that needs managing; addressing matters related to Web accessibility only under pressure of the law; policies’ focus on the individuals and their impairment rather than on the social response to disability; considering the norm’s need first; and exclusion and avoidance of persons with disabilities. The exclusion of persons with disabilities revealed in Web accessibility policies involves dissolving differences rather than accepting them, perpetuating disadvantage, and politically disempowering persons with disabilities. Additional ableist biases that were not included in the literature reviewed for this study but were revealed in the findings of this study included the norm’s dictation of the scope and form of policy, as well as the pretense advocating that is not materialized in reality. At the CCC level, it is important to note that guidelines created by the CCC system are merely a reflection of policies made at the federal level along with their ableist biases.

While these ableist biases dominate Web accessibility policies, several social inclusiveness elements were also found in Web accessibility policymaking: inclusive intent and commitment to civil rights; understanding of the critical need for inclusiveness in ICT product development; aiming at harmonization across policies and emphasis on usability in Web accessibility; and, finally, attempts to empower persons with disability as a community.

Figure 5 summarizes the extent of ableist biases and elements of social inclusiveness in Web accessibility policymaking as revealed in this study. The figure demonstrates that the abovementioned ableist biases are reflected in the following policymaking-related matters: assistive technologies; environments that are designed to accommodate; the lack of commitment to built-in accessibility at the ICT industry; additive policymaking; a political climate that strives for efficiency over equality and is less attentive to social inclusiveness; lip service in policy statements; and the lack of institutional discourse regarding accepting difference.

Figure 5: The extent of ableist biases and elements of social inclusiveness in Web accessibility policymaking

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Research Question 2

The extent of Ableism or Social Inclusiveness in Web Accessibility Policy Implementation: How They Play Out in Policy Implementation Practices

Ableist biases in Web accessibility implementation practices are widespread; they exceed indications of social inclusiveness revealed in practices evidenced at all levels. The prevalent ableist biases in Web accessibility policy implementation practices involve: attitudes and responsibilities; implementing policies only under pressure of the law; treating persons with disabilities as a marginal minority that needs managing; considering the norm’s needs first; and policies’ focus on the individuals and their impairments rather than on the social response to disability. An additional ableist bias that was not included in the literature reviewed for this study but was revealed in the findings of the study included the norm’s dictation of the scope and form of policy. This bias is reflected mainly in the process of procuring ICT products at the federal and CCC levels.

While these ableist biases dominate Web accessibility policy implementation practices, several social inclusiveness elements were also found in this study: inclusive intent and commitment to civil rights, as well as some inclusive ICT product development efforts.

Figure 6 summarizes the extent of ableist biases and elements of social inclusiveness in Web accessibility policy implementation practices as revealed in this study. The figure demonstrates that a large extent of the abovementioned ableist biases are reflected in the following Web accessibility implementation practices: the procurement process and the selection of procurement as the main implementation method to promote Web accessibility at all levels; implementers’ dispositions at all levels; the lack of accountability practices; stakeholders’ questioning applicability of the law and shifting responsibilities during implementation processes; training efforts and resources allocation made to comply with the law rather than promoting the inclusiveness that is needed. The figure also demonstrates that social inclusiveness is reflected in some implementation practices that include resource allocation and stakeholder training in efforts to comply with the law. Similarly, a certain degree of social inclusiveness is reflected in the idea of the procurement process as a means for reaching accessibility, in recognizing students with disabilities as part of the overall Web end-users population, and in isolated cases of ICT products that were designed with built-in accessibility features beginning at the early design stages.

The extent of ableist biases and elements of social inclusiveness in Web accessibility policy implementation practices

Implication for Practice:

Procurement
Policy intended audience
Responsibility
Scope of federal directive
Innovation
Cost
Hope
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Procurement implications:
Need for government and CCC to identify ways to either be accountable for current directives or work with the ICT industry on a different directive.
Scope reduction (Buy accessible only / buy most accessible) in directives opened the door to ableist biases; neither is as strong as “sell accessible only”. 

Policy intended audience:
Harmonization is not enough. Avoid placing the responsibility on the last player in the chain: the content creators.
Intended target audience of policies and guidelines is atypical of the population required to comply with the policies (higher education faculty). Also, training is only as effective as its ability to reach content creators. 

Responsibility:
Identify milestones needed to provide accessibility at each level; avoid passing on responsibility from one level to another.
Stakeholders at all levels pass accessibility responsibility to another level, or lack accountability in performing their share of the responsibility. 

Scope of federal directive:
Broaden the scope of Web accessibility government policies to include higher education and curriculum integration.
Limiting the single federal law addressing Web accessibility to government agencies hurts accessibility implementation outside this realm and in higher education. 

Innovation:
Higher education institutions should focus on their role in promoting academic success in an inclusive manner.
Accessibility does not stifle innovation. Professors should not be discouraged from developing innovative content, or ask to justify their use of instructional material, that creates accessibility challenges.  

Cost:
The government and higher education institutions should engage in a social assessment of accessibility rather than focusing only on the economic assessment. 
Cost involved in retrofitting for accessibility is much higher than the cost of built-in accessibility. Equality involves more than money and technical standards.

Hope:
Discuss hope in the context of “lessons learned” to bring about the hopeful change. Federal directives regarding Web accessibility need to be challenged by higher education institutions and their related experiences. 
Hope alone does not bring about change. A critical component is needed for hope to materialize.  

The study applied a qualitative examination of the research questions through an overarching deliberative strategy utilizing document analysis and interview methodologies. The qualitative examination was selected for this study due to its critical role of illuminating the problematic and telling the story behind the formal experience in higher education institutions, as evidenced at the CCC when implementing accessibility standards required by law. Moreover, the use of a qualitative research form in interpretive policy analysis was necessary to identify factors that contribute or inhibit effective implementation of policies (Yanow, 2000), and to provide policymaking bodies with the rationale for inclusion of socially informed directives in their educational policies (Giroux, 1992).

Case Study:
• Qualitative methodologies: document analysis and interviews.
• Critical deliberative strategy : combining dialogue, analysis, reflection and understanding when studying and analyzing policy implementation challenges and attempting to illuminate needed changes. 

Researcher’s Role: A critical postmodernist cultural researcher
Conducting the study, I strived to keep a flexible approach and display a high degree of variation in investigating the social phenomenon and aspects related to the topic. Inspired by Freire (2006) and Tierney (1993), I saw my role in this study as that of a critical postmodernist cultural researcher. In that role, the concrete struggle that I examined in this study involved the difficulties experienced by students with disabilities when accessing Web material and information. My main task as a critical postmodernist cultural researcher was to introduce a multiperspectival dialogue into the current discourse involved in Web accessibility policy used in the CCC system, in order to identify the sources leading to both successful and challenging Web accessibility policy implementation, and to inform possible ways to make Web accessibility policy implementation in higher education more feasible. In doing so, I focused on evidence related to inclusive or ableist ideological forces that surfaced in my examination. 

Data Collection:
 Purposeful sampling was used to ensure the representation of the different perspectives associated with this study. The stakeholder groups whose representatives’ perspectives were critical to inform this study were: (a) government, represented by Web accessibility policymakers; (b) higher-education, represented by policy implementers at the state level (c) California Community Colleges (CCC), represented by policymakers and implementers at the CCC level; (d) e-content providers, represented by a source from a textbook publisher that markets e-learning material to higher education institutions; (e) ICT developers, represented by sources from companies that develop tools and courseware programs for use in the higher education market developers; (f) persons with disabilities; and (g) inclusiveness advocates, represented by a legal professional with a practice associated with facilitating digital access to persons with disabilities.

Selection Criteria:
Documents and interviewees included in the study were selected based on their ability to illuminate both historical and current considerations of the research questions. While many of the documents and some interviewees had been identified in the study preparation interviews, additional sources of information were selected to promote the study credibility and ensure unbiased representation of the related perspectives. Some of these additional documents and interviewees were selected (a) based on references included in the literature reviewed for this study, and (b) through my encounter with them during the 23rd Annual International Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities held in Los Angeles in March 2008.

This study introduces a theoretical construct informed by a discourse of difference and norm, using a critical lens of policy implementation theories and a postmodernist lens inspired by the social model of disability (Goggin & Newell, 2000; Marks, 1997; Oliver, 1990; Oliver 1996). The construct frames Web accessibility policy within a multifaceted additive approach, which reveals itself in disability policymaking, in development of ICTs, in multicultural education and other practices in higher education. 

Theoretical construct: A critical postmodernist view of difference

Critical and postmodernist theories do not necessarily reflect opposite approaches. Addressing matters of difference in higher education, Tierney (1993) asserted that it is helpful to combine these theoretical schemas and use them together as a framework to generate change: “Critical theory’s advocacy for empowerment and the development of voice for the oppressed needs to be defused with postmodern notion of difference” (p. 10).

Thus, the critical portion of the critical postmodernist framework asks ‘what can be done to understand difference’ and generate actual change, and the postmodernist portion of the critical postmodernist approach asks ‘how we can change the way that difference is thought of’. Gioroux (1990) offered another rationale for connecting the two approaches. He claimed that one must not separate rights from their everyday life implementation and use, since the issue is not about one’s understanding of the other, but rather one’s involvement in the construction of the other. Griffin, et al. (2007) further clarified this issue when arguing that normality is defined so narrowly that it becomes disabling; thus, critical approaches need a wide postmodernist understanding to generate the change they seek.  

Trustworthiness

The study demonstrates its trustworthiness through its data’s dependability, credibility, confirmability, and transferability as following:

Data dependability was ensured through evidence that was gathered from multiple sources of information included in the document analysis and interviews. Every effort was made to ensure that the individuals representing the multiple sources of information were selected based not only on their professional affiliation with the topic, but also on the fact that they are prominent leaders in the stakeholder groups they represented for this study.

Data credibility was ensured through the richness of the information gathered and the analytical process used in this study. Data Summary Views were used to match patterns and commonalities identified in the data collected with their corresponding positive or negative indicators on the theoretical construct created for this study. Furthermore, the case study methodology chosen for this inquiry is a recognized credible form of qualitative research, capable of generating new knowledge regarding the making and implementation of public policy, as well as the factors influencing policymaking (Edwards, 1980; Larson, Moses & Gair, 2004; Schneider, & Ingram, 1997; Yanow, 2000). Triangulation of data sources, theoretical knowledge and my experience as an e-learning leader at a California community college were used to ascertain the credibility of the study.

Data confirmability was demonstrated through the availability of a trail consisting of the raw data, analysis notes and synthesis, process notes, and personal notes (Hoepfl, 1997). Additionally, member checks were used to corroborate interview findings for those interviewees who agreed to confirm the accuracy of their phone interview input as transcribed.

Finally, aiming at transferability, the study provided stakeholders with naturalistic generalization and sufficient information to determine whether its findings can be used to justify modifications in the current policy or related implementation practices.

Other considerations that contribute to the study trustworthiness include the following:

a. An Institutional Review Board review, regulated by the U.S. Department of Human Services, assured that the participants in this study were not harmed in any way.

b. The study delimitations have been disclosed in the Introduction section of this study.

c. Finally, knowledge structures included in this study demonstrated a high degree of local and global coherence with a clear and straightforward knowledge construction in which attention to inconsistencies between the perspectives, data findings and their interpretation was evident.

Limitations

             It is important to note that the snapshot provided in this research study findings was taken along a continuum of a dynamic Web accessibility policymaking and implementation process. By the time this research is completed, it is quite possible that new policies, standards, guidelines, or implementation practices at the federal, state or local CCC levels may enter the big picture that is used to inform this study. However, it is also important to recognize that this exact limitation is also identified as one of the problems in this study involving the additive approach to Web accessibility policymaking and its implementation on the policymaking level, ICT development level, higher education implementation level, and other levels as discussed in chapter 5 of this study.

Furthermore, while most documents and interviewees identified for inclusion in this study were within my reach and access, several government policies could not be analyzed in this study since they were still in their development stages. Similarly, at least three interviewees that I believed to be invaluable for informing this study either did not respond to my inquiries or were unable to participate at the time this research study was conducted.

Two research questions:

a. To what extent do ableist biases or social inclusiveness exist in Web accessibility policymaking, and how do they play out in higher education Web accessibility policies as evidenced in the California Community College system?

b. To what extent do ableist biases or social inclusiveness exist in Web accessibility policy implementation in higher education, and how do they play out in implementation practices as evidenced in the California Community College system? 

Documents were selected for analysis based on their direct association with the research questions and their relation to Web accessibility in higher education as evidenced in the CCC system. To be includes in the study, the documents had to be either actual Web accessibility policies at the federal, state, or local level, or deliverables used to inform these policies.

Thirty primary and secondary documents were used in this study as depicted in Table 2 below. Primary documents included actual policy articles, standards, and guidelines for Web accessibility at the federal, state, or the local stakeholder group level (e.g. CCC, or ICT industry); secondary documents were deliverables and narratives that informed the policies or were part of the policymaking process, such as legal opinions or minutes of meetings.

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◊ Higher education federal accessibility standards: 
Include Web accessibility in Higher Education Act to
1. Fill the void which allows implementers to legitimize confusions, procrastinate, or pass on responsibilities related to Web accessibility in e-learning.
2. Support the ICT industry in promoting the development of inclusive ICT products free of ableist biases
3. Engage higher education institutions in federal Web accessibility discussions. 

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◊ Institutional dialogues on accepting difference
      

Need for higher education and the CCC to engage in meaningful external and internal dialogues regarding their response to difference in general, and difference related to Web accessibility in particular. 
Higher education should capitalize on its market power at the ICT and textbook publisher levels and motivate them to produce inclusive accessible product and e-content

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◊ Redirecting government policy to include the ICT industry

The government should take the lead to redirect accessibility responsibility back to the ICT industry (see array). This will also eliminate the need for the government to predict future technologies and update its guidelines every time new technological innovations are released to the market. 

 

Current responsibility for inclusive ICT - need to redirect

 

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◊ Active involvement of higher education and CCC in future policymaking

To address its students inclusively, the CCC should take an active role in informing state and federal policymakers of challenges experienced by the system in attempting to implement portions of the policies, and be truthful regarding existing barriers (external and internal).