Web accessibility in higher education is a growing area of interest and concern for university administrators across the country. Accessible websites provide individuals with disabilities access to information and help protect their civil rights, which are guaranteed under the American’s with Disabilities Act.
In November 2019, Pope Tech conducted a survey of institutions of higher education listed in the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, which contains 7,153 institutions. Pope Tech used only institutions whose web domains end with .edu, which left the total number of institutions in the study at 3,837.
To gather the data, WAVE was used by Pope Tech’s accessibility scanning product to take a random sample of up to 99 pages of each institution’s web content starting with their homepage. These scans find common accessibility issues that create barriers for individuals with disabilities when browsing web content and categorize them into error types. Once the institutions were all scanned, Pope Tech aggregated the data and created categories for ranking institutions against one another. The rankings were based on errors detected per page within the 99-page sample.
After the data was gathered, Texas State University ranked number 1 for schools with enrollment above 20,000 students. Additionally, Texas State was number 24 overall, and number 2 in the Southwest, just behind Lamar State College Orange, a member of the Texas State University System. Finally, Texas State averaged less than one error per page, which means that a user can browse our web content with a screen reader and encounter minimal barriers to their access.
For more information, visit Pope Tech’s 4k in Higher Ed website.
Pope Tech has stated that this is a living study, and that over time, they hope this data will help institutions of higher education improve their overall website accessibility across the United States of America. The results for Texas State University demonstrate our commitment to creating an inclusive institution of higher education.
Ken Pierce is Vice President for Information Technology and CIO.
