Today's Web remains too expensive for many Internet users, especially in developing regions. Unfortunately, the rising complexity of the Web makes affordability an even bigger concern as it stands to limit users' access to Internet services. We propose a novel framework and a fairness metric for rethinking Web architecture for affordability and inclusion. Our proposed framework systematically adapts Web complexity based on geographic variations in mobile broadband prices and income levels. We conduct a cross-country analysis of 99 countries, showing that our framework can better balance affordability and webpage quality while preserving user privacy. To adapt Web complexity, our framework solves an optimization problem to produce webpages that maximize page quality while reducing the webpage to a given target size.

Public service websites act as official gateways to services provided by governments. Many of these websites are essential for citizens to receive reliable information and online government services. However, the lack of affordability of mobile broadband services in many developing countries and the rising complexity of websites create barriers for citizens in accessing these government websites. This paper presents the first large-scale analysis of the affordability of public service websites in developing countries. We do this by collecting a corpus of 1900 public service websites, including public websites from nine developing countries and for comparison websites from nine developed countries. Our investigation is driven by website complexity analysis as well as evaluation through a recently proposed affordability index. Our analysis reveals that, in general, public service websites in developing countries do not meet the affordability target set by the UN’s Broadband Commission. However, we show that several countries can be brought within or closer to the affordability target by implementing webpage optimizations to reduce page sizes. We also discuss policy interventions that can help make access to public service website more affordable.