Comparative Web Accessibility Compliance Evaluation of the State Universities and Colleges in the Ilocos Region Philippines

As schools transitioned into flexible learning during the pandemic, the use of web technologies has significantly increased. School websites are used to provide timely and essential information to students, staff, and the community. However, educational institutions must consider that not all people interact with online content in the same manner, as people with disabilities may need assistive technology. This article describes a study that assessed the accessibility of the contents concerning the websites of the state universities and colleges (SUC) in the Ilocos Region in the Philippines. The assessment was conducted to verify compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international standard, ISO 40500. The study primarily aims to determine if people with disabilities can access and use the websites of the SUCs based on their level of compliance with WCAG 2.0. Moreover, this study adopted the Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG- EM) to determine how well the website conforms to WCAG 2.0 using automated accessibility evaluation tools, TAW and WAVE. The evaluation results revealed that all the SUC websites tested did not achieve acceptable compliance with web accessibility regardless of academic prestige. By evaluating the different SUC websites of the Ilocos Region, over 700 errors have been detected mostly linked to user-interface components and information. These issues and non-compliance issues indicate a necessity to strengthen and apply better policies and directives for schools to make institutional websites more inclusive.