Resumo:
This study aims to identify, verify, and analyze the non-conformities related to accessibility of
digital news according to the Understandability criterion of the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C), of which Brazil is a signatory. The corpus of this research comprises
materials collected from Folha, O Globo.com, and Correio24horas. Considering the
complexity of the research, the hybrid research methodology (qualitative–quantitative) was
employed, developed, and improved by the Research Group on Online Journalism. The
theoretical foundation is based on Accessibility and Usability, Multimidiality, and Semantic
Resolution. The study examined the characteristics of digital news, the syntactic and semantic
elements that compose them, aspects that do not comply with the guidelines of the W3C
Consortium, and the crossing of these scientific findings with the experience of visually
impaired users when accessing this information. The methodological strategies combined
several sources of evidence, such as literature review, automatic and manual evaluations of the
vehicles as mentioned above, semi-structured interviews with editors and individuals with
visual disabilities, online quizzes, usability tests, and design and checking protocol. The data
evaluation demonstrated that the syntactic structure, semantics, and the characteristics of the
main news in the digital environment can serve as facilitators or barriers in accessing
information by individuals with visual impairment.