Web Accessibility Compliance of Saudi Higher Education Institutions: A Comparative Automated Evaluation using A Checker, TAW, and WAVE

This study aims to evaluate the compliance of ۴۴ Saudi university websites with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The analysis was conducted by evaluating the homepages of ۴۴ Saudi university websites against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The evaluation was based on the four core accessibility principles—Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Ro-bust (POUR)—and assessed across three conformance levels: A, AA, and AAA. The adopted ap-proach was to use three automated heuristic evaluation tools, namely, A Checker, TAW, and WAVE. The results of the study showed that all evaluated websites failed to comply with the WCAG guide-lines, with major violations found at level A in the Perceivable and Operable principles. It also showed wide variability in issues detected by the three tools. A large number of issues are related to missing alternative text for images or fields, as well as color contrast errors. The findings suggest that Saudi university websites are not accessible to individuals with disabilities, which limits their ability to access educational content and services. A substantial proportion of the identified accessi-bility issues could be addressed by providing appropriate alternative text and labels, as well as im-proving color contrast. Additional improvements include ensuring the proper semantic use of empha-sis and strong tags instead of relying solely on italic and bold formatting. Furthermore, using multi-ple tools in the evaluation can highlight different issues, but additional expert opinions are needed. This study can be beneficial for future improvements in the accessibility of Saudi university web-sites and contribute to a more inclusive web environment.

کلیدواژه ها:

Accessibility ، Usability ، Heuristic Evaluation ، Universities websites ، Arabic Interfac-es ، visual impairment ، inclusive education