Invisible, Unreadable, and Inaudible Cookie Notices: An Evaluation of Cookie Notices for Users with Visual Impairments

TL;DR

This study evaluates the accessibility of cookie notices for visually impaired users on UK websites, revealing prevalent issues and proposing recommendations to improve usability and privacy for this group.

Contribution

The paper provides a comprehensive assessment of cookie notice accessibility for visually impaired users and offers practical recommendations for enhancing online privacy and usability.

Findings

Most cookie notices have accessibility issues like contrast and missing headings.

Users with VIs have negative perceptions of cookie notices.

There is a gap between user preferences and actual responses to cookie notices.

Abstract

This paper investigates the accessibility of cookie notices on websites for users with visual impairments (VI) via a set of system studies on top UK websites (n=46) and a user study (n=100). We use a set of methods and tools--including accessibility testing tools, text-only browsers, and screen readers, to perform our system studies. Our results demonstrate that the majority of cookie notices on these websites have some form of accessibility issues including contrast issues, not having headings, and not being read aloud immediately when the page is loaded. We discuss how such practises impact the user experience and privacy and provide a set of recommendations for multiple stakeholders for more accessible websites and better privacy practises for users with VIs. To complement our technical contribution we conduct a user study and finding that people with VIs generally have a negative view of cookie notices and believe our recommendations could help their online experience. We also find a disparity in how users wish to respond to cookie notices as apposed to how they do in reality.