Global Web Accessibility Analysis of National Government Portals and Ministry Web Sites

Equal access to public information and services for all is an essential part of the United Nations (UN) Declaration of Human Rights. Today, the Web plays an important role in providing information and services to citizens. Unfortunately, many government Web sites are poorly designed and have accessibility barriers that prevent people with disabilities from using them. This article combines current Web accessibility benchmarking methodologies with a sound strategy for comparing Web accessibility among countries and continents. Furthermore, the article presents the first global analysis of the Web accessibility of 192 United Nation Member States made publically available. The article also identifies common properties of Member States that have accessible and inaccessible Web sites and shows that implementing antidisability discrimination laws is highly beneficial for the accessibility of Web sites, while signing the UN Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities has had no such effect yet. The article demonstrates that, despite the commonly held assumption to the contrary, mature, high-quality Web sites are more accessible than lower quality ones. Moreover, Web accessibility conformance claims by Web site owners are generally exaggerated.