Barrier Impact Factor

A metric for measuring the severity of web accessibility barriers by weighting detected errors according to which assistive technologies and disability groups they affect. The BIF is calculated by summing the product of the number of errors and a weight value for each affected assistive technology category. Higher weights are assigned to more critical conformance levels (e.g., WCAG Level A errors receive the highest weight). Barriers are typically grouped into categories such as screen reader/blindness, screen magnifier/low vision, colour blindness, motor impairments, deafness, cognitive disabilities, and photosensitive epilepsy. The BIF provides a more meaningful assessment than simple error counts because it reflects the real-world impact on users with different disabilities.