Estudo sobre a acessibilidade do portal de uma instituição de ensino superior

Abstract

The increasing use of the Web has significantly helped bring about the so called “Information Society”, in which people, organizations and educational institutions are strongly reliant on this technology. As a consequence, it is very important for Web systems to be accessible to any type of user, independently of disabilities or any special needs. Websites of educational institutions have a responsibility to make its content and information available to all members of its community. Despite this important need for accessibility and of existing legislation, there are still many problems with the accessibility of Websites. Thus, it is necessary to perform evaluations to identify accessibility problems that may be encountered by people with disabilities in order to make the necessary correction. The purpose of this research was to perform a case study to evaluate the Web portal of a higher education institute. The evaluations were performed by means of manual and automatic evaluation using the recommendations of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0). In a sample of pages in the portal, it was observed that the pages were not in accordance even with the minimum recommended level. The results showed problems with accessibility of images, multimedia content, links, tables, among others. The research’s contribution included the identification of the most critical types of problems encountered in the Web portal and suggestions for corrections that can be used to adapt and improve the portal’s accessibility. The problems found demonstrate that it is necessary to undertake repairs on the portal to make it in accordance with Federal legislation and to provide better accessibility for people with disabilities.