Usable and accessible websites in SMEs. Challenges for the future

In an increasingly competitive environment in which Internet occupies a prominent place, transferring a brand from the offline to the online environment has become a vital issue for companies. Usability and accessibility have become crucial to enable adequate online brand communication. Ensuring websites are usable and accessible will facilitate web navigation, will improve the company's image, and will favour loyalty towards the brand. This article presents the results of an investigation measuring the extent to what small and medium enterprises (SMEs) employ usability and accessibility as supporting pillars of brand in the online environment to communicate with their audiences. The results indicate that usability is in fact taken into account by SMEs, but it is seen more as a technological element than as a promotion tool for the brand. Accessibility, on the other hand, is of secondary concern in the design of websites analysed, since they are not certified by any standard and are not fully accessible. Thus, it can be argued that the concern to transmit the brand online is incipient but, currently, SMEs do not take advantage of all the potential offered by the Web.