Introduction
More than 39% of UK University home pages fail to meet basic accessibility guidelines
More than 54% of UK College home pages fail to meet basic accessibility guidelines
Web site accessibility has become a high profile issue in the Higher and Further Education sector. Educational institutions are obliged, under both the Disability Discrimination Act and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act, to ensure that they do not discriminate against a disabled person in relation to the services they provide, either to students or the public at large.
It is with this in mind that Headscape has undertaken a review of over 400 web sites of Universities and Colleges throughout the UK.
Scope
The home pages of 156 UK University web sites and 255 UK colleges of further/higher education have been tested for basic accessibility and/or the presence of an alternative text-only version.
Each home page was tested using an automated accessibility tool called Bobby and checked visually for the existence of an alternative text-only version. It is important to emphasise that the level of accessibility shown is only that determined by Bobby and that no manual checks were carried out.
The Web Accessibility Initiative
Bobby was used to check each site against the guidelines set out in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) produced as part of the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Each checkpoint in the WCAG is ranked in importance based on three broad levels; priority 1 (single A), priority 2 (double A) and priority 3 (triple A).
For a site to be considered accessible, priority 1 checkpoints must be addressed, priority 2 checkpoints should be addressed, and priority 3 checkpoints may be addressed.
Limitations
In order to understand the scope of this review it is important to be clear on the limitations. Bobby is an automated tool that can only check for certain accessibility problems. It cannot address more subjective checkpoints such as sufficient contrast between foreground and background colours. In such cases the best it can do is flag a potential problem and leave it to the reviewer to make a decision. In the case of this review no such subjective decisions were made. The accessibility of each page is based purely on the automated checks carried out by Bobby. It is therefore likely that the actual level of accessibility of some of the tested sites is lower than that indicated by Bobby.
A second limitation exists in regards to alternative "accessible" versions. Each home page was visually inspected for the existence of an alternative accessible version of the site. While it is impossible to guarantee that every alternative version was found, we point out that if an alternative accessible version is not immediately obvious then it is probably redundant anyway.
Findings
The general level of accessibility of the home pages reviewed was very poor with only 43% achieving even the most basic level of accessibility (priority 1) or higher. However, there was a very obvious divide between the Universities and the Colleges. Only 35% of colleges achieved priority 1 or higher, compared with 55% of Universities.
In many cases sites could easily be made compliant with the simple addition of ALT tags. However, there were also a considerable number of more serious problems. One particularly prevalent problem was the use of JavaScript which in many cases prevented users without JavaScript (currently about 5% of those using the web) from accessing important information on the site, and in some cases prevented users from accessing the site at all.
Another disturbing trend is the number of sites which rely solely on an alternative accessible version. 13% of sites provided a separate accessible site without ensuring that the "main home page" met even the most basic level of accessibility. Organisations such as the RNIB warn against such an approach saying:
"we recommend against providing a text only version as much as possible, simply because being treated differently can reinforce the feeling of marginalisation that someone with a disability experiences."
Statistics
University conformance statistics
Of the 156 university home pages reviewed only 86 (55%) provided the most basic level of accessibility (priority 1) or higher. The results do not take into account user checks.
- Number of pages that were Priority 1 compliant: 77 (49%)
- Number of pages that were Priority 2 compliant: 8 (5%)
- Number of pages that were Priority 3 compliant: 1 (1%)
- Number of pages that were non-compliant: 61 (39%)
- Number of pages that were non-compliant but with accessible version: 22 (14%)
- Number of pages that were non-compliant and without accessible version: 40 (26%)
- Number of pages unavailable at time of testing: 9 (6%)
Colleges conformance statistics
Of the 255 college home pages reviewed only 89 (35%) provided the most basic level of accessibility (Priority 1) or higher. The results do not take into account user checks.
- Number of pages that were Priority 1 compliant: 75 (29%)
- Number of pages that were Priority 2 compliant: 12 (5%)
- Number of pages that were Priority 3 compliant: 2 (1%)
- Number of pages that were non-compliant: 138 (54%)
- Number of pages that were non-compliant but with accessible version: 30 (12%)
- Number of pages that were non-compliant and without accessible version: 108 (42%)
- Number of pages unavailable at time of testing: 28 (11%)
Combined conformance statistics
Of the 411 university and college sites reviewed only 175 (43%) provided the most basic level of accessibility (Priority 1) or higher. The results do not take into account user checks.
- Number of pages that were Priority 1 compliant: 152 (37%)
- Number of pages that were Priority 2 compliant: 20 (5%)
- Number of pages that were Priority 3 compliant: 3 (1%)
- Number of pages that were non-compliant: 199 (48%)
- Number of pages that were non-compliant but with accessible version: 52 (13%)
- Number of pages that were non-compliant and without accessible version: 148 (36%)
- Number of pages unavailable at time of testing: 37 (9%)
Conclusions
Our research has highlighted that there is still a very real problem with web site accessibility in the higher and further education sector. In our view this conclusion is not particularly surprising.
It would be unfair to imply that the higher and futher education sector institutions are not taking web accessibility seriously. We believe that most do take the issue seriously. Many higher and further education web sites are huge with no central editorial control. They are often run by many departments throughout the institution. In such cases it is hard to implement a successful accessibility policy.
It can also be hard to maintain a site's accessibility over the long term. Many sites reviewed claimed to be accessible when in actual fact they were not. This was not necessarily because there was any intention to mislead. A more likely reason is that, at some point, the site was accessible but there were inadequate processes in place to ensure that the site remained accessible when changes are made.