Accessibility of cookie notifications
By law, users must give permission to website owners to collect and store personal data in so-called cookies. That is why we are greeted by a pop-up that prompts us to give our consent before we can proceed to the content on many websites. There is a wide variation in how these prompts look and how understandable they are.
Cookie notices are required for any type of personal data that is stored, whether the data is used for making features of the website work better for the user or for giving the website owner more information about visitors for marketing purposes. The notifications appear as a pop-up and can look very different. Sometimes it’s a short notice that cookies are being collected, in other places the information can take up a whole page with different choices for users to consider. The purpose of the notifications is to make users feel safe about how they share their data. But does the implementation of these pop-ups work for everyone?
In a new project, the Funka Foundation will collaborate with Norsk Regnesentral to investigate the accessibility of cookie notifications. The project is funded by the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs (BufDir) and will run throughout 2024. The project aims to increase knowledge about how cookie notifications work for people with disabilities and will develop recommendations for more accessible variants of the notifications.
As far as we know, no one has investigated how accessible cookie notifications are, says Joschua Thomas Simon-Liedtke, Senior Research Scientist at Norsk Regnesentral. The project explores the interaction between privacy and accessibility.
In this project, we will examine how some selected implementations of cookie notifications work from an accessibility point of view. Accessibility has to do both with how the pop-up box with text can be perceived and handled and also about how understandable the texts are. The sample we will look at covers both the private and public sector and is based on a user needs survey. Based on the results of the review, we will then develop and test accessible cookie notifications together with users with physical and cognitive disabilities. The results are presented in a report and a guide for website owners.
Funding: Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs BufDir
Period: May – December 2024
Consortium: Norsk Regnesentral, Funka Foundation
Budget: NOK 700 000