Digital Inclusion Through Sustainable Web Accessibility

In the age of digitalization, the business environment is changing dynamically due to the growing consumers' demands of the products and services provided. In an effort to respond to rapidly changing market requirements, companies restrict access to their products of certain user groups with special needs due to neglecting of imposed international accessibility standards. This can even lead to disruption of the communication equipment of people with disabilities in the digital environment, which is often the only possible one. The Web remains the largest source of information used by people around the world today. Communication on the Internet is the most common. That is why achieving web accessibility is not an end in itself, but a necessity for digital inclusion of people with special needs. In this regard, the aim of the article is to propose a web accessibility audit approach that follows a well-defined sequence of stages and applies automated tools to study the accessibility issues. The approach has been tested by auditing the accessibility of educational institutions' websites in Russia and Bulgaria.