Accessibility analysis of some Indian educational web portals
This work addresses accessibility issues in educational web portals for students with diverse needs, but it is incremental as it applies existing guidelines to new data.
The study analyzed the accessibility of 30 Indian university web portals against WCAG 2.0 guidelines to identify common deficiencies, aiming to help designers improve accessibility for all students.
Web portals are being considered as excellent means for conducting teaching and learning activities electronically. The number of online services such as course enrollment, tutoring through online course materials, evaluation and even certification through web portals is increasing day by day. However, the effectiveness of an educational web portal depends on its accessibility to a wide range of students irrespective of their age, and physical abilities. Accessibility of web portals largely depends on their userfriendliness in terms of design, contents, assistive features, and online support. In this paper, we have critically analyzed the web portals of thirty Indian Universities of different categories based on the WCAG 2.0 guidelines. The purpose of this study is to point out the deficiencies that are commonly observed in web portals and help web designers to remove such deficiencies from the academic web portals with a view to enhance their accessibility.