Usability evaluation of academic websites using automated tools

Author

Adepoju, S.A. ; Shehu, I.S.

fYear

2014

fDate

2-5 Sept. 2014

Firstpage

186

Lastpage

191

Abstract

In a bid to reposition the universities in Nigeria, the management of various universities in the country has been embarking on various technology innovations aimed at increasing and improving the web presence of their institutions. This involves re-designing of websites using the latest state of the art technology so as to improve its usability. This research was conducted in order to know the usability level via accessibility evaluation of the federal universities in Nigeria. The automated tools used are Web Accessibility checker, HERA and WAVE. The tools inspected the conformity of the websites with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0 and 2.0) by reporting violations in forms of errors and problems. Results show that all the websites have a number of accessibility errors hence they are not in total compliance with WCAG. Recommendations for improvement on the websites are included.

Keywords

Internet; Web sites; educational institutions; HERA; WAVE; WCAG 1.0; WCAG 2.0; Web accessibility checker; Web content accessibility guidelines; Web presence; academic Web sites; accessibility error; accessibility evaluation; automated tools; federal university; technology innovation; usability evaluation; usability level; Educational institutions; Guidelines; HTML; Standards; Usability; Web pages; Nigeria; accessibility; automated tools; usability; website;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

User Science and Engineering (i-USEr), 2014 3rd International Conference on

Conference_Location

Shah Alam

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-5812-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IUSER.2014.7002700

Filename

7002700