Rattanavalee Maisak

Justin Brown

Edith Cowan University

Over 600 million people with disabilities -The World Health Organization (WHO)

The Thai government has been a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) since 2007.

This research aims to investigate the accessibility of Thai higher education websites.

What level of web accessibility is apparent in Thai universities against WCAG 2.0 guidelines?

Which aspects of the WCAG are the most issues seen?

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0

- 3 Levels: A, AA and AAA

- POUR principles

- Critical Failures: Checkpoint 1.4.2, 2.1.2, 2.2.2

and 2.3.1

Web Accessibility Evaluation

- Automated testing

- Manual Testing

Related work

9 higher education websites in Thailand: 5 top ranked Thai universities, 2 open universities, 1 special college for disabled students and 1 online institution.

7 representative webpages according to WCAG-EM 1.0

Selected

websites

University

Homepage

Library

Webmail

login

page

Contact

us

E-learning

Homepage

E-learning

Forums

E-learning

Content

Automated Testing (SortSite, WAVE)

Manual Expert Testing

Scrolling : N/A, 0, 1

WCAG 2.0 guidelines (POUR principles)

Principle Level A Level AA % of total

Perceivable 9 5 36.84

Operable 9 3 31.58

Understandable 5 5 26.32

Robust 2 0 5.26

Total 25 13 100%

Tests of Normality

Kolmogorov-Smirnova Shapiro-Wilk

Statistic df Sig. Statistic df Sig.

P .227 158 .000 .890 158 .000

O .192 158 .000 .906 158 .000

U .258 158 .000 .866 158 .000

R .332 158 .000 .740 158 .000

a. Lilliefors Significance Correction

Test Statisticsa,b

P O U R

Chi-Square 12.888 10.946 4.487 4.144

df 3 3 3 3

Asymp. Sig. .005 .012 .213 .246

a. Kruskal Wallis Test

b. Grouping Variable: uni_purpose

GROUPS P O U R

Common

Mean 2.74 2.18 1.86 .75

N 93 93 93 93

SD 1.950 1.628 1.486 .816

Open

Mean 2.15 1.94 1.39 .61

N 33 33 33 33

SD 1.839 1.478 1.116 .788

Online

Mean 2.00 2.50 1.64 .57

N 14 14 14 14

SD 1.301 1.557 1.550 .756

Special

Mean 1.22 1.06 1.17 .33

N 18 18 18 18

SD .943 1.211 1.200 .485

1.1.1 1.2.1 1.2.2 1.2.3 1.2.4 1.2.5 1.3.1 1.3.2 1.3.3 1.4.1 1.4.2 1.4.3 1.4.4 1.4.5

Common 69 5 3 3 0 3 75 4 10 13 1 33 28 8

Open 23 1 1 1 0 1 17 3 1 1 0 10 9 3

Online 9 1 0 0 0 0 10 1 1 0 0 3 2 1

Special 7 2 0 1 1 0 6 0 0 0 0 2 2 1

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80N

o. o

f Er

rors

2.1.1 2.1.2 2.2.1 2.2.2 2.3.1 2.4.1 2.4.2 2.4.3 2.4.4 2.4.5 2.4.6 2.4.7

Common 21 3 1 17 3 29 10 2 64 21 28 4

Open 5 0 1 6 1 12 3 3 21 7 4 1

Online 4 0 0 4 1 5 4 0 9 5 3 0

Special 3 1 0 1 0 2 3 0 2 5 1 1

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

No

. of

Erro

rs

1.4.2 2.1.2 2.2.2 2.3.1

Common 1 3 17 3

Open 0 0 6 1

Online 0 0 4 1

Special 0 1 1 0

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18N

o. o

f Er

rors

UniversityHomepage

E-learningHomepage

LibraryContact Us

PageWebmail Login

PageE-learning

ForumE-learning

Content Page

P 529 387 483 396 270 189 125

O 435 287 433 371 179 151 78

U 248 193 225 215 239 182 89

R 136 77 144 124 134 52 32

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

Tota

l Err

ors

Accessibility problems on Thai university websites

Possible causes: Lack of awareness, lack of policy and lack of WCAG 2.0 implementation, testing and knowledge

Recommendation – the Thai government strengthen its policy and requirements around accessibility of online technologies.