Accessibility of South African university websites

Abstract

In today’s information age, many universities around the world utilize their websites as a key platform for interaction with various stakeholders. As a result, it is of crucial importance for these websites to be highly accessible so that they can be effectively used by all stakeholders. However, there has been growing evidence over the years indicating that most university websites are unable to meet accessibility criteria. This study had as objective to evaluate the accessibility of South African (SA) university websites. An accessibility evaluation of the homepages of all 26 SA university websites showed that none of the websites met all the WCAG 2.0 accessibility criteria. The websites violated an average of eight rules, of which many are fundamental Level A criteria that ideally must be addressed by all websites. Additionally, all the websites had broken links, while four of the websites failed the Google Mobile-friendly Test. These findings suggest the need for SA universities to devote the necessary financial and human resources to enhance the accessibility of their websites.