An evaluation of the accessibility of top-ranking university websites: Accessibility rates from 2005 to 2015
Year: 2016
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Accessibility evaluation is an important equity step in assessing effectiveness and usefulness ofonline learning materials for disabled students. With popular uptake of blended and online learningit is timely to evaluate the accessibility attained by universities in their websites and LearningManagement Systems (LMS) .The present study considers this question for the period 2005through 2015. Previous studies in this area have indicated that university websites have becomegradually inaccessible, as the complexity of their content increases, and that the amount ofattention being paid to this problem by the universities is low. This study employed a comparativequantitative method, and a random sample of universities websites was evaluated using theaccessibility evaluation tool designed by AChecker. The inclusion of the specific universitieschosen for this study was based on their ranking in the world, and/or in the Oceania and Arabregions. Moreover, the evaluation is organised by page type: homepage, administration page orcourse description/syllabus page. Thus, through a statistical and empirical study, we demonstratedthat there was no significant improvement in the accessibility of universities web sites between2005 and 2015. Furthermore, access to media and document files had the most influentialaccessibility errors. In addition, there were 27,308 (33%) total home page errors among the 180evaluated pages from 60 of the top world, Oceania and Arab universities sites. There are nosignificant differences in accessibility level between top-ranking universities in developed ordeveloping countries. Therefore, with participation rate at universities expanding world-wide andequity being a common corporate theme there is a growing need for universities to commit to andresponsibly address accessibility to online learning materials for disabled students.
Authors: Tahani Jaser Alahmadi, Steve Drew
Institutions: Griffith University, University of Tasmania
Language: English
Subfield: Human Factors and Ergonomics
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2735279993