Authors:
Iyad Abu Doush
1
;
Mohammed Azmi Awadallah
2
and
Mohammed A. Al-Betar
3
;
4
Affiliations:
1
Computing Department, American University of Kuwait, Salmiya, Kuwait
;
2
Department of Computer Science, Al-Aqsa University, P.O. Box 4051, Gaza, Palestine
;
3
Department of Information Technology - MSAI, College of Engineering and Information Technology, Ajman University, Ajman, U.A.E.
;
4
Department of Information Technology, Al-Huson University College, Al-Balqa Applied University, Al-Huson, Irbid, Jordan
Keyword(s):
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Universities Web Accessibility, Automatic Accessibility Evaluation.
Abstract:
University web portals are considered one of the main access gateways for universities. Accessibility of university online services is a major issue for undergraduate and graduate students with disabilities. Online registration makes people with disabilities more independent to register courses, add, drop courses, or attend courses independently. Yet, many people with disabilities in Palestine face major challenges when using university websites. In order to understand the issues that face people with disabilities when they use websites of Palestinian universities, this study evaluates the accessibility of the home pages of these universities during COVID-19. In order to evaluate partially the accessibility of Palestinian universities during COVID-19, we apply automatic evaluation on all homepages of eighteen Palestinian universities. The most violated guideline is empty link which is related to success criterion 2.4.4 Link Purpose. The second highest violated error is linked image m
issing alternative text which is related to the success criterion 1.1.1 Non-text Content. The obtained results show that all the universities websites are not conforming to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 level A.
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