Webpage Accessibility and Usability for Autistic Users: a Case Study on a Tourism Website

Web accessibility and usability represent an open challenge for the current research on the Web; in particular, for specific disabilities such as the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), to the best of our knowledge, no experimental case study on an autistic-friendly Website on tourism is available. However, people with ASD are usually solitary and visual thinkers and they could take advantage by the use of the Web. This paper identifies the set of basic and general guidelines provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make a Website accessible and usable to this specific set of users, and extends it, integrating new specific features. Following these new guidelines, the paper proposes a case study dedicated to a tourist, autistic-friendly, Website developed in the area of Rieti, central Italy; it has been validated through expert reviews, and several trials with users of a specialised centre for neurological and physical disabilities.