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15 Years of Stanca Act: Are Italian Public universities websites accessible?

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Abstract

With the increasing spread and usage of Internet technologies, the challenge of ensuring Web accessibility for all, including anyone with a form of disability, has become an hot issue, pursued both by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and by governments in different countries. In particular, W3C has developed technical Web accessibility guidelines (WCAG), while governments have legally addressed the problem, by emanating specific laws and policies. In Italy, the Stanca Act, a law regulating the design and creation of governmental and public sector websites, recently updated according to last WCAG 2.1 was enacted in 2004. To analyze its impact, this paper presents a study about the accessibility of Italian public universities websites, by particularly analyzing their conformance to the Stanca Act. The reported analysis shows that, despite that the Stanca act dates back 15 years ago, Italian public universities are still struggling to satisfy all its requirements.

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Notes

  1. For a detailed list of all checkpoints see the WCAG webpage at www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505/#gl-provide-equivalents.

  2. https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/.

  3. http://www.agid.gov.it/legge-9-gennaio-2004-n-4.

  4. http://www.agid.gov.it/dm-8-luglio-2005-allegato-A.

  5. https://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/eli/id/2018/09/11/18G00133/sg.

  6. https://www.senato.it/documenti/repository/istituzione/costituzione_inglese.pdf.

  7. https://achecker.ca/.

  8. http://ustat.miur.it/dati/didattica/italia/atenei-statali#tabistituti.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Engineering, Università degli Studi di Brescia, Via Branze 38, 25123, Brescia, Italy

    Barbara Rita Barricelli

  2. Department of Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Celoria 18, 20133, Milan, Italy

    Elena Casiraghi & Alessandro Rizzi

  3. Sasweb Research Lab, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Udine, Via Santa Chiara 1, 34170, Gorizia, Italy

    Antonina Dattolo

Authors
  1. Barbara Rita Barricelli
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  2. Elena Casiraghi
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  3. Antonina Dattolo
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  4. Alessandro Rizzi
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Correspondence to Barbara Rita Barricelli.

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Barricelli, B.R., Casiraghi, E., Dattolo, A. et al. 15 Years of Stanca Act: Are Italian Public universities websites accessible?. Univ Access Inf Soc 20, 185–200 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-020-00711-0

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