Assessing the accessibility and usability of Malaysia Higher Education Website

The awareness of the importance of usability and accessibility in Malaysia is demonstrated with the setting-up of usability laboratories from local universities and agency and studies in different applications. This study share the interest on creating awareness of the importance of accessibility and usability criteria by investigating the accessibility and usability level of Malaysia Higher Education Website. This study used 120 samples of higher education institution websites from the online portal of the Ministry of Higher Education (http://www.mohe.gov.my). The accessibility evaluation was done by using automatic evaluation to access the accessibility level according to WCAG 1.0 guideline. Usability evaluation was also done on page size, speed and broken link. The study revealed several accessibility and usability issues revolving Malaysia Higher Education website. We end our study with few recommendations for further improvement of the website usability and accessibility towards better improved online services and information for normal and disabled user.