| dc.description.abstract | A website is an essential part of the education system, mainly in schools or universities, as it aids the
students with diverse abilities to access the information offering the flexibility in times and locations for
learning and personal growth (Kuakiatwong & Whittier, 2011). However, due to the lack of accessibility and
usability of the websites, the students with disabilities who solely rely on screen reader software faces
challenges accessing the contents on the webpage.
This study aims to assess the current level of accessibility and usability issues, screen reader students
frequently encounter while interacting with the Norwegian University webpages. To address the research
question, this study performed the sequential explanatory design approach to collect the data in two
different phases. Quantitative data were collected at first using two automated tools and questionnaire to
assess the accessibility and usability level of the selected websites. In the second phase, the study
implemented follow-up interviews with the participants to address the further issues which were not
discovered in the first phase. Sixteen visually impaired participants were recruited and were assigned the 5
usability tasks on 4 different university websites to analyze the usability and accessibility of sampled
websites.
Analysis from the qualitative and quantitative data demonstrated that none of the selected Norwegian
University websites (N=4) met the minimum checkpoint requirement of WCAG 2.1. The findings further
depicted that the average usability level of the educational websites in Norway was below average and,
only one of the 4 evaluated websites came close to average usability score. In addition, based on the
interview, the most remarkable accessibility issues discovered on Norwegian University webpages were
poorly design of heading and link-list structure, screen reader incompatibility with the browsers, ambiguous
link structure, and inaccessible keyboard navigation. Likewise, the majority of the participant response to
most common usability issues they experienced on the webpages were poor labeling of the forms,
duplication of page titles, awful labeling of links, inconsistent breadcrumb trail, and inadequate keyboard
access on webpages.
Further, correlating the results reported by two automated tools concluded that there was inconsistent
between the two automated tools result. On this basis, it is recommended that manual accessibility
evaluation of the website should be implemented to confirm the quantitative findings. It is further
recommended that universities need to give emphasis to make a website to be accessible and usable to
screen reader users. Further study is necessary to explore and overcome the limitations of the current
study. | en |
