Web accessibility evaluation of Chilean universities

Abstract

This research article examined the web accessibility of Chilean universities. The analysis was conducted based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, an international standard established by the World Wide Web Consortium. The analysis was performed using automated web accessibility assessment tools and the home page of each university. The results revealed that Chilean universities websites presented barriers for information accessing to people with disabilities. These websites showed scarce compliance with standard guidelines. It is concluded that the problems detected in the examined universities were mainly due to the HTML encoding implemented on their websites, information perception, and the lack of user assistant mechanisms for web content interaction.