University website accessibility revisited

Dey Alexander, Principal Consultant, Dey Alexander Consulting, PO Box 2655, Cheltenham, Victoria, 3192. Email: dey@deyalexander.com.au

Scott Rippon, Associate Consultant, Dey Alexander Consulting, PO Box 2655, Cheltenham, Victoria, 3192. Email: scott@deyalexander.com.au

Keywords

accessible, accessibility, universal design, standards, guidelines, conformance, audit, evaluation, web content, WCAG 1.0, Level-A, priority 1 checkpoints, W3C, text alternatives, ALT tags, ALT text, university, Australia

Abstract

A 2003 accessibility audit of Australian university websites found that 98 per cent failed to meet the most basic requirements for web accessibility. Four pages from each site were evaluated for conformance with Level-A of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, an international standard for web accessibility. Only one university's set of four pages met these standards.

This paper presents the findings from a second audit completed in early 2007. Using a similar methodology we aimed to see if there had been any improvement in university website accessibility. We found that overall, accessibility has slightly worsened. 100 per cent of sites and 92 per cent of pages failed to meet the basic standards. The biggest problem is still the failure to provide equivalent text alternatives for content presented in non-text formats. This is a relatively easy issue to resolve, but has proved intractable.