Evaluating the accessibility of Saudi tourism websites: Sector and audience focus comparisons

Digital accessibility has become an essential aspect of web design, ensuring that online services are usable by all individuals, including those with disabilities. Yet, the accessibility of tourism websites, particularly in developing regions, remains underexplored. This study has three primary objectives. The first is to examine the accessibility of tourism websites in Saudi Arabia. The second is to investigate the impact of sector type (public vs. private) and audience focus (religious vs. leisure) on web accessibility implementation. The third is to explore the correlations among the outputs of the different accessibility evaluation tools. Results revealed that all evaluated websites fell short of full compliance with WCAG 2.1 guidelines, limiting many users' ability to fully utilize their services. Private sector sites showed significantly more issues, especially under the perceivable principle, while no significant differences appeared between religious and leisure websites. Furthermore, there was no statistically significant relationship between the outputs of TAW and MAUVE++.