IT Accessibility Policies and Practices
in Higher Education:
Research Findings
Terrill Thompson
University of Washington
tft@uw.edu
@terrillthompson
http://terrillthompson.com
The Article
• Thompson, T., Comden, D., Ferguson, S.,
Burgstahler, S., Moore, E. (2013). Seeking
Predictors of Web Accessibility in U.S. Higher
Education Institutions. Information Technology
and Disabilities E-Journal, 13(1).
• Available online at:
http://itd.athenpro.org/volume13/number1/t
hompson.html
Research Questions
1. What is the current state of web and PDF
accessibility at higher education institutions in
the United States?
2. How many higher education institutions in the
United States have policies related to web
and/or IT accessibility?
3. How do institutions compare on their level of
conversation related to web and technology
accessibility?
4. Which independent variables are the best
predictors of web and PDF accessibility?
The Population (n=3251)
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1204 Associate's Colleges
623 Master's Colleges and Universities
594 Baccalaureate Colleges
518 Special Focus Institutions
283 Doctorate-granting Universities
29 Tribal Colleges
• Includes only institutions located in the 50 U.S. states
• Individual institutions with a shared parent institution and web template (e.g., ITT
Technical Institute, Devry) were evaluated as one institution
Research Sample by Google Search
• Top 10 HTML pages at each institution
• Top 10 PDFs at each institution
• A count of number of results searching for
"web accessibility" and "technology
accessibility" (Conversation)
• A list of URLs searching for "web technology
accessibility policy"
Auto-evaluated each web page
(n=31,701)
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% of <img> elements with alt attributes
% of <input> elements with "labels"
Page has HTML headings (Y/N)
Page has a lang attribute (Y/N)
Page has ARIA landmark roles (Y/N)
Auto-evaluated each PDF (n=28,395)
• One measure: Is PDF tagged? (Y/N)
• Searched for string "/Marked true"
– A reasonably reliable method of identifying tagged
PDF
– 100% reliable with manual test of 100 PDFs
(50 tagged & 50 untagged)
Accessibility Links on Home Pages
• Automatically checked all links on institutional
home pages for the word "Accessibility"
Manually Reviewed Policy Results
• A team of reviewers generously flagged all
Google results that might be considered a
policy
• Generally reviewed only top 10 search results
at each institution, but were given latitude to
follow obvious leads one level deep
• A panel of three experts conducted a more
thorough analysis of all policies that survived
the cut.
Four Categories of "Policies"
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Formal-standalone
Formal-incorporated
Standards or guidelines
General statement
Results for Research Question 1:
What is the current state of web and
PDF accessibility at higher education
institutions in the United States?
Overall Web Accessibility
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Headings – 77.9% (83.6% for Doctorate)
Alt text – 60.4% (66.1% for Doctorate)
Labels – 39.8% (44.2% for Doctorate)
Lang – 37.3% (45.6% for Doctorate)
ARIA – 3.3% (4.2% for Doctorate)
Overall (Web) – 43.7% (48.8% for Doctorate)
Tagged PDF – 33.8% (20.7% for Doctorate)
A Few More Observations
• California State University, State of Texas, and
State of Illinois institutions significantly higher
than average overall
• Slight but significant difference between
highest-scoring region (Pacific) and lowest
(Southeast and Southwest)
• In all of the above groups, very high withingroup variance
On PDF Accessibility
• Highest scores were Tribal Colleges (40.7%)
• Second highest were Associates (39.7%)
• Explanation?
– Microsoft Word 2010 for Windows
– Automatically creates tagged PDF
– Larger institutions are creating more complex
PDFs using a wider variety of tools
• A manual inspection of a few revealed that
some really are accessible, but many are not
Results for Research Question 2:
How many higher education
institutions in the United States have
policies related to web and/or IT
accessibility?
Policies Found
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8.4% of institutions (274 policies)
26.1% of Doctorate (74 policies)
14.8% of Masters (92 policies)
6.3% of Associates (76 policies)
3.5% of Baccalaureate (21 policies)
2.1% of Special Focus (11 policies)
0 Tribal Colleges
Types of Policies
• Doctorate:
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47.3% are formal-standalone (35 policies)
24.3% are formal-incorporated (18 policies)
14.9% are general statement
13.5% are guidelines and standards
• Masters:
– Equal numbers of standalone and incorporated
(39.1%, 36 policies)
• General statements were the most common type
of policy among other types of institutions
Results for Research Question 3:
How do institutions compare on
their amount of conversation related
to web and technology
accessibility??
A Huge Range of "Conversation"
• Approx. 1000 institutions have 0 results for "web
accessibility" or "technology accessibility"
• Approx. 100 institutions have over 1000 results
• Six institutions have more than 10,000 results
• Five of these have "accessibility" links on their
home pages (67.4% of these = "Accessibility")
• The one that doesn't: Penn State
• 17 of the top 50 institutions do not have a home
page link
Results for Research Question 4:
Which independent variables are
the best predictors of web and PDF
accessibility?
A policy's effect on conversation
Institutions with a policy are:
• Significantly higher on alt text
• Significantly higher on labeled input fields
• Not significantly different on other web
accessibility measures (headings, lang, ARIA)
• Significantly less likely to have tagged PDF
Effects of type of policy
• Effect size are small, with high variance with
groups. However…
• Formal standalone policies are related to
greater accessibility
• Formal standalone policies are highly related
to higher levels of conversation. This effect is
especially strong when there is no
Accessibility link on the home page.
Stepwise Multiple Regression Analysis
• Great overall web accessibility scores are
associated with:
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More web accessibility conversation
Having an accessibility policy of any type
Being a Masters or Doctorate Institution
Being located in California
Not being located in the Southeast or Southwest
Having an accessibility link on the home page
• Together, all of these predictors only accounted
for 3.3% of total variance. Which means…
The best predictors of web
accessibility were not measured in
this study.