Accessibility analysis of higher education institution websites of Portugal

Abstract

The higher education institutions across the globe are steadily increasing their usage of the web platforms to disseminate information to its stakeholders. In this background, it becomes important to make these resources inclusive. An inclusive website of a higher education institution will facilitate seamless access to its resources for Persons with Disabilities (PwDs). This paper presents an accessibility analysis of 59 higher education websites of Portugal. Both Polytechnic (19) and University (40) websites were incorporated into the study.The accessibility analysis is carried out with three major tools: AChecker, WAVE, and aXe. With respect to the AChecker tool, the average of known problems was observed almost doubled in Universities than Polytechnic Institution websites of Portugal under all levels of conformance. With respect to WAVE tool, we found that the average of alerts, structural elements, and HTML5 & ARIA in terms of web accessibility status of websites of Polytechnic Institutes are less than the Universities, but contrast errors are found with more frequency in Polytechnic Institutes than in universities, and the average of errors and features are almost the same in both of the cases. Also, we found that the average number of violations and needs of review guidelines as per aXe tool are 50. 84 and 21.47 in Polytechnic Institutes' websites and 30.75 and 27.83 in Universities websites belonging to Portugal, respectively. Based on scores obtained by these accessibility analysis tools, the outliers of accessibility violations are calculated with respect to websites of Polytechnic Institutes and Universities of Portugal. Moreover, we also suggested and discussed the important clues to solve the accessibility violations of websites along with their issue descriptions among the selected websites in this study. Hence, this analysis report provides the feedback to website administrator and web developers to improve the accessibility evaluation status of these websites. KeywordsWeb accessibility • Web evaluation tools • Accessibility issues • Accessible guidelines • Portugal institutes and universities websites • World wide web consortium (W3C) • Statistical inferences

Empirical Studies on Web Accessibility of Educational Websites: A Systematic Literature Review

“…The quartiles of the 2019 SJR and JCR journals have not yet been published at the moment of writing this paper. Therefore, the 2018 quartiles were taken in this SLR for papers [55]- [59] published in 2019 (see full information in Table 7, Appendix A).…”

“…• Of the 25 papers, 19 were evaluated with WCAG 2.0. Papers [38]- [40], [43], [44], [46], [52] were evaluated with conformance level A; papers [45], [47], [48], [50], [53]- [55] with conformance level AA; papers [57], [58] with conformance levels A and AA; papers [36], [42], [56] with conformance levels A, AA and AA.…”

A Methodical Search of Web Content Accessibility for Visual Disabled People

“…A theoretical based assessment relative to content high quality was brought with respect to their accessibility degree [19]. It has taken into consideration internet sites of 19 poly technique and 40 university websites of Portugal and determined some usual checkpoint mistakes in the procedure of internet content accessibility examination [21]. The study [22] was taken on both measurable and qualitative method for functionality analysis as well as ultimately contrasted the outcomes obtained by the tools taken into consideration.…”

“…The research also highlighted numerous often taking place accessibility mistakes as well as later recommended to enhance the accessibility approval degrees. The confirmation of WCAG was framed to inspect the accessibility utilizing existing on the internet tools [21]. The research study assessed an open-source internet accessibility assessment device to confirm the web page conformity with WCAG [22].…”

Web Accessibility Evaluation of Videos Published on YouTube by Worldwide Top-Ranking Universities

“…Regarding the accessibility of the websites of universities, several studies have been carried out in different countries; for example, in 2010, a study was carried out in Turkey [42]; in 2016, in the Kyrgyz Republic [43]; in 2017, in Ecuador [44]; in 2018, in Israel [45]; South Africa [46] and Latin America [47]; and in 2019, in Portugal [48], Spain, Chile and Mexico [49] and the United States [50]. In these works, the evaluation process was carried out using automatic tools such as WAVE, Web Accessibility Checker, AChecker, SortSite, or TAW and considering the WCAG 2.0 or WCAG 2.1.…”