An evaluation of the web accessibility of China’s national-level museums

The universality of heritage carries the important connotation that it belongs to everyone. This universal value assigned to cultural heritage necessitates that it is international in nature, and that citizens of every country regardless of their background are given access and can learn from it. In this research, we investigate the web accessibility of the national-level museums of China that are ranked top three. We formulated a set of research questions and hypotheses that test assumptions, looking into the accessibility awareness in practice across 145 museums. We crawled a total of 113 web specific variables such as the number of objects in the collections, graded precious artefacts, and annual visitors. Other independent variables include summary accessibility errors such as contrast errors, alert errors, feature errors, structure, Accessible Rich Internet Applications, and social media accounts. Details of the errors in each of these categories would form the majority of the remaining data points. The findings were surprisingly, not according to our original assumptions. Museums would stand to benefit from this study, which will in turn improve accessibility and inclusivity, and thus provide the international community with access to the rich collections of over 10 million cultural heritage objects scattered across the country.