Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11960/2910
Title: Accessibility analysis of higher education institution websites of Portugal
Authors: Ismail, Abid
Kuppusamy, K. S.
Paiva, Sara
Keywords: Web accessibility
Web evaluation tools
Accessibility issues
Accessible guidelines
Portugal institutes and universities websites
World wide web consortium (W3C)
Statistical inferences
Issue Date: 2019
Citation: Ismail, A., Kuppusamy, K. S., & Paiva, S. (2019). Accessibility analysis of higher education institution websites of Portugal. Universal Access in the Information Society, 19(3), 685-700. hppts://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-019-00653-2
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.
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11960/2910
ISSN: 1615-5297
1615-5289
Appears in Collections:ESTG - Artigos indexados à WoS/Scopus

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
2020_3.pdf1.28 MBAdobe PDFView/Open


Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.