Evaluating web accessibility of educational institutions websites using a variable magnitude approach

Abstract

The World Wide Web serves as an excellent platform for information dissemination. Educational institutions such as universities are utilizing the web medium to reach their target audience. In the post-Covid-19 scenario, the web medium has obtained increased significance as it has become the primary access channel to reach these institutions. In this backdrop, it becomes essential to analyze the accessibility of these sites for students with special needs. This paper presents an approach to compute the accessibility of web pages for persons with disabilities. A variable magnitude approach is proposed in this paper for the computation of accessibility barrier count as a combination of two different components. The proposed approach is experimented with top ranked higher educational institution websites of India. Based on the inferences from the results and inputs received from students with disabilities, a set of suggestions have been compiled by this paper to minimize the barriers faced by persons with disabilities in consuming these web resources.