The status of Web Accessibility of Canadian universities and colleges: a Charter of Rights and Freedoms issue (1).

The fundamental ideal that access to education and information as one of our basic human rights must not be neglected in the electronic information age. This ideal however is not being met in the area of postsecondary Web accessibility. This study surveyed 350 postsecondary institutions in Canada to evaluate their level of Web accessibility in November 2001, and again in November 2002. Using the Centre for Applied Special Technologies accessibility tool, Bobby[TM], we found that 14.9% of postsecondary institutions surveyed were free of priority 1 errors in 2001 and 19.9% in 2002, and only 1.7% in 2001 and 5.5% in 2002 were free of both priority 1 and priority 2 errors. The specifics of these errors however, reveal that once the issues for those with disabilities and the Web are recognized, they can be easily addressed.

**********

    "The power of the Internet is in its universality. Access by
    everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."--Tim
    Berners-Lee (Web Accessibility Initiative, 2002)

Introduction

Access to education and information is a basic human right, which must not be neglected in the electronic information age. With many facets of our society's information taking a digital form, the Internet has become the primary source of information for many, including those with disabilities. Applications such as the World Wide Web, video conferencing, and e-mail provide people with disabilities the potential to participate in, and contribute to, education in a way that would never have been thought possible ten years ago (Booth, Gregor, Rowan, & Sloan, 2000). Many people with disabilities today use a variety of assistive devices to participate in the digital world. Screen readers, Braille embossers, screen magnifiers, and voice recognition technologies give some people with disabilities the ability to render electronic information accessible. But even with the use of such devices, there is no guarantee that they will be able to access electronic information. No matter what assistive device is used, poorly designed websites will continue to hinder the user from deciphering and understanding the message and information contained within. Since the end-user cannot count on either standard technology or other enabling devices to ensure access to information on the Web, the onus is on the web developer to deliver the message in such a way that allows everyone to benefit (Canada, 1998).

"Barrier-free design" which refers to design and construction practices aimed at creating private and public environments that foster greater independence (Roeher, 1996) must be instituted in post-secondary online environments. Wider hallways, ramps, better lighting, larger washrooms, lower sinks, audio and visual aids all contribute to a barrier free design in the current brick and mortar classrooms that students attend every day. These barrier free measures must be made available to those who wish to participate fully in a web-ready environment. Just as older school facilities were retrofitted to include these structural features, Canadian post-secondary institutions must mandate that Web information be retrofitted to meet the needs of those with disabilities.

These barrier free provisions will ensure that those with disabilities have the ability to access information. Just as Section 3.7 of the Canadian National Building Code describes the legal requirements for barrier-free design, there too should also be policies and laws governing the barrier free design of electronic information in Canada.

What is Web Accessibility?

In recent years there has been an increased emphasis on universal accessibility of electronic information (see, for example, French, 2002; Rowland, 2000; Valdes, 1998 and Waddell, 1998). Much of this work is based upon the work of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which was created in October 1994 "to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability" (World Wide Web Consortium, 2000).

In 1997, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the W3C undertook five complementary activities: ensuring that the core technologies of the Web support accessibility; developing guidelines for page authoring, user agents, and authoring tools; developing evaluation and repair tools for accessibility; conducting education and outreach; and tracking research and development that can affect the future accessibility of the Web. The WAI proposed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (Web Accessibility Initiative, May 5, 1999), which establishes three levels of priority errors:

* Priority 1 errors are those that seriously limit a page's accessibility. Every effort must be made by the developers to ensure that these errors do not exist. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use web documents.

* Priority 2 errors are those that the web content developer should satisfy. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing web documents.

* Priority 3 errors are those that a web content developer may need to address. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will improve access to web documents (Web Accessibility Initiative, May 5, 1999).

Why Web Accessibility is an Issue

In the video ASD Introduction to Web Accessibility (WebAIM, 2002), Dr. Cyndi Rowland gives three reasons for making Educational Web pages accessible.

1. Providing equal access is the "right thing to do." From an ethical perspective, we must remove barriers to electronic information just as we remove physical barriers to buildings containing information and learning.

2. Creating accessible formats for education is economically smart. There is an existing demand from students with disabilities for courses that are accessible to them, web-based courses can be made available to students wherever they are, whenever they are able to work on the course. Good accessible Web-based courses will attract students who register and pay tuition.

3. It is against the law, in the USA, for public institutions to discriminate against those with disabilities. Section 202 of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 states that:

    Subject to the provisions of this title, no qualified individual
    with a disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded
    from participation in or be denied the benefits of the services,
    programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to
    discrimination by any such entity.

The first two points follow closely to Canadian values and reasons for moving toward web-accessible post-secondary environments. However the third point, in regards to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, does not apply to Canadians.

Canadian Laws Governing Inclusive Education for those with Disabilities

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, part of the Constitution Act of 1982, enacted in 1985, and the Canadian Human Rights Act of 1976, along with numerous provincial human rights acts, set out the legal basis for the inclusive and anti discriminatory rights of those with disabilities. Section 15 of the Charter guarantees the equality of rights of Canadians with physical or mental disabilities.

    15 (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has
    the rights to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without
    discrimination and in particular, without discrimination based on
    race, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, sex, age, or
    mental or physical disability.

    15 (2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity
    that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of
    disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are
    disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour,
    religion, sex, age, or mental or physical disability (Canada, 1982).

Section 15 gives a strong basis on which law and policy affecting education can be framed, examined and disputed (Roeher, 1996). In extending equal protection and equal benefit of the law to all citizens, it can be used to protect the educational rights of all citizens, including those with disabilities (Roeher, 1996). These rights however, given the Charter's scope of influence, have not substantially affected the educational practice involving students with disabilities (Poirier, Goguen, & Leslie, 1988). This is an issue that must change given the evolution of the post-secondary system online.

As post-secondary institutions move towards using the Web as their consolidated point of contact, and as many post-secondary institutions move complete courses and even programs to Web-Based Learning, the inclusive rights of the individual with a disability to enroll and participate fully must be accommodated. If post-secondary institutions deny those with disabilities the ability to participate in on-line educational programs and information acquisition, those institutions are participating in unlawful discrimination. With approximately 4.2 million Canadians and approximately 7.4% of the post-secondary student population having some type of disability (Bergob, 1995; Human Resources Development Canada, 2000), web accessibility must be a major goal.

Section 15 of the Charter however, is open to the interpretation of the courts as no Canadian laws exclusively apply to electronic information. Further, there appears to be no challenge in the courts of any Canadian post-secondary institution for failing to provide equal access to electronic information to people with disabilities. There are, however, policies that have been established within branches of the federal government that address web accessibility.

Canadian Policies for Web Accessibility

The Treasury Board Secretariat, a federal government agency whose mission is to help the Government of Canada manage its human, financial, information and technology resources, established The Common Look and Feel for the Internet (CLF) (Canada, 2000), a set of standards and guidelines. These guidelines were approved on May 4, 2000 with the goal of having all government websites be free of both Priority 1 and Priority 2 errors by December 31, 2002. The CLF standards are designed to ensure that all Canadians, regardless of ability, geographic location or demographic category, are given equal access to information on Government of Canada (GoC) web sites. These guidelines establish the responsibility of the designer to ensure that information be made accessible in such a way that a wide range of technologies, including personal computers, assistive devices, and advanced technologies can be used (Canada, 2000).

Guidelines have also been established within the Employment Equity Positive Measures Program Directorate of the Public Service Commission of Canada which is an independent agency responsible for safeguarding the values of a professional public service: competence, non-partisanship and representativeness. In conjunction with the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre at the University of Toronto, they have developed the Universal Internet Access Project (Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, 1996), which aims to provide information and research on ways to enhance the provision of accessible information on the Internet. The project has created tools for web site evaluation and guidelines for web accessibility.

Both of these Canadian agencies guidelines are based on the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI, 1999) and both are aimed at web information in reference to the government of Canada. These guidelines are not mandated as policy or law as Section 508 is in the U.S. The barriers that people with disabilities face, however, have also been recognized and discussed in the House of Commons in Canada.

In 1981, a Special Committee on the Disabled and the Handicapped was established to identify factors, concerns, and issues facing people with disabilities in Canada. The committee's report: Obstacles was tabled in the House of Commons in February in 1981 (Roeher, 1996). In this report, the committee identified two kinds of obstacles that Canadians with disabilities face on a daily basis:

1. the obstacles that might arise from the specific nature of their disabilities; and

2. the attitudes of non-disabled Canadians who disregard the needs of disabled Canadians when planning Canada's protection of human and civil rights, and services related to the provision of health care, employment, education, recreation, transportation, shopping and communication (Roeher, 1996).

It is this second obstacle that hinders many people with disabilities from fully participating in a web-ready environment. With the ability of designers to make information accessible on the Web, consciousness of the issues that people with disabilities face has to be recognized. Along with the recognition of the problems, designers must also be made to understand that accommodations for people with disabilities are designed to provide equal opportunity, and that adjustments for them do not jeopardize excellence (Cox & Klas, 1996), but contribute to it. The attitude of people at Canadian universities and a general lack of understanding, contributes to hinder those with disabilities from fully participating in the university experience (Cox & Klas, 1996).

With university and college web pages serving as the gateway for many student activities such as checking grades and class schedules, even to the simplest task of finding institutional phone numbers, it is in the best interest of the institution, students, and prospective students that all information is made available and accessible. This can only happen when administrators, faculty and web designers recognize that it is in the interest of the institution to make this information accessible to all.

Assessing Web Accessibility

"There are two major validation services ... which evaluate web pages and help identify potential accessibility problems to correct" (French, 2002, p. 534). The first is Bobby, which was first provided and developed by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST, 2001) (http://www.cast.org), now owned by Watchfire. Bobby checks documents for conformance to W3C recommendations and is easily used by manually entering each URL or supplying a text list of URLs for Bobby to validate. The second validation service is the W3C's HTML validation service (http://validator.w3.org/) which is "a free service that checks documents like HTML and XHTML for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards" (W3C, 2001).

Most evaluations of the web accessibility of a large number of sites have been undertaken using Bobby. Bobby checks for all three priority errors in its evaluation. The number of each priority error in each page is displayed in the tool and the specifics of these errors are displayed in a summary report. There are a number of errors however, that cannot be detected in the automated process. For this, a list of user checks is generated that the user must manually go through while evaluating the site. In order to be recognized as a Bobby "approved site," which is equivalent to WAI Conformance Level A designation, the site must have no priority 1 errors. This includes both priority 1 errors detected by Bobby and the manual user checks. It is highly recommended however, that all Priority 2 checkpoints also be satisfied, when evaluating sites, since WAI Conformance Level AA is now frequently required by U.S government agencies and others (CAST, 2001).

Evaluating Web Accessibility

A number of U.S research studies have been conducted using Bobby as a web accessibility validation tool. These studies range in focus from distance education (Schmetzke, 1999) to library Web information (Schmetzke, 2002) to post-secondary institutions (Rowland & Smith, 1999). All found a large gap between the actual and ideal for Web accessibility; the current status of university, library, and distance education web sites are fraught with accessibility obstructions. At the very best, the accessibility figures fall between 30% and 40% (Schmetzke, 1999). In a study that evaluated the accessibility of a random sample of web pages of 400 prominent colleges and universities in the U.S., Rowland and Smith (1999) found that only 22% had front pages that would receive Bobby approval. In a follow up study by Walden, Rowland and Bohman (2000) the number rose to 24%. In a similar study, Schmetzke (1999) examined the Web pages of 219 post-secondary distance education institutions and found that 15.1% were free of major accessibility errors. The trend continues with 21% accessibility for a study on the accessibility of web sites of 80 college of communications and schools of journalism (Guthrie 2000), and 27% of 89 special education program home-pages (Flowers, Bray and Algozzine, 1999).

The Study

Studies such as Schmetzke (1999), Rowland & Smith (1999) and Walden, Rowland and Bohman (2000) identified and evaluated web accessibility issues at the post-secondary level in the USA. Similar studies of web accessibility issues at Canadian post-secondary institutions have not been undertaken. Therefore, this study evaluates the accessibility of post-secondary Canadian institutions top-level or entry level web pages.

Research Methodology

A list of 357 post-secondary web sites were identified from the Canadian Information Centre for International Credentials (CICIC, 2001). This list, which is based on information supplied by the ministries and departments responsible for education in Canada, is the only Canada-wide list of all post-secondary institutions recognized by the component governments in Canada (CICIC, 2001). Seven of these web sites were excluded from the study because they were labeled as sites under construction, duplicate sites, or the sites were unavailable at the time of the study. Of the remaining 350 sites, 166 were from universities and 184 were from colleges.

Each URL from the list was viewed and the URL was changed if it did not represent the top-level information page for the institution. For example, if the site provided a splash page with the option for an English version or French version of the page, the English version was chosen to represent the top-level information page.

The downloadable version of Bobby 3.2 was used to evaluate the pages and generate a summative report. Priority 1 and Priority 2 errors were summarized for this study. The list of sites was imported into Bobby for evaluation in November 2001 and November 2002. Priority errors were evaluated within each site and the summative report was generated. The results from this report were then entered into an Excel spreadsheet for analysis.

While Bobby did identify items that require manual user checks before approval can be granted, most studies of a great number of sites (e.g., Rowland & Smith, 1999; Walden, Rowland & Bohman, 2000) do not perform these manual checks due to the time constraints of evaluating the source code of all these sites. We also chose not to perform these manual checks, although we recognize that these checks must be done in order to display Bobby approval. It is also recognized that this study and other studies of a large number of sites are preliminary reviews and not full conformance evaluations. The draft Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WAI, 2001) state that for full conformance a combination of semi-automatic, manual, and usability testing be incorporated into the evaluation. This includes the use of two automated tests using an evaluation tool such as Bobby, WAVE, or A-Prompt, a manual check of the relevant WAI Priority checks, and a usability evaluation using a representative sample of people with disabilities, and a variety of assistive devices. These guidelines should serve as the basis for continued and extended studies for post-secondary web accessibility.

Results

Table 1 summarizes the results of the November 2001 Bobby examination. Of the 350 post-secondary sites evaluated. Bobby found that only 14.9% (n=52) of the University and College top-level Web pages were free of Priority 1 errors. Within this group only 8.7% (n=16) of the college Websites and 21.7% (n=36) of the university Websites were error free.

The most common Priority 1 errors were contained within three categories: images without alternative text 69.4% (n=243), image map hot spots without alternative text 19.1% (n=67) and not giving each frame a title 16.9% (n=59). Other priority 1 errors that were found included: not providing alternative text for applets 2.6% (n=9), not providing alternative text for all image-type buttons in forms 1.4% (n=5), and not having each frame referencing an HTML file 0.9% (n=3).

The most common Priority 2 errors were: avoid using tables to format text documents in columns unless the table can be linearized 74.6% (n=261), use relative sizing and positioning (% values) rather than absolute (pixels) 73.7% (n=258), add a descriptive title to links when needed 70.9% (n=248), and if scripts create pop-up windows or change the active window, ensure that the user is aware this is happening 63.1% (n = 221).

It is also worth noting that only 1.7% (n=6) out of the 350 sites passed both Priority 1 and Priority 2 errors, which is required to meet the Common Look and Feel for the Internet guidelines (Canada, 2000).

Given The Common Look and Feel for the Internet (Canada, 2000) which states that all government web sites will be free of both Priority 1 and Priority 2 errors by December 31, 2002, one might expect that administrators of Canadian post-secondary institutions might have become more aware of the need for making their web sites accessible and that this accessibility would have improved over time. To test this, we repeated the analysis of Canadian Sites in November 2002. Table 2 gives the results of this analysis. Note that three sites that were available in the 2001 study were not available when we collected data the second time.

Table 3 compares the results of the evaluation of sites in November 2001 with the results of the evaluation of sites in November 2002. There is a significant improvement (2) (Ch[i.sup.2] = 7.13, df=1, p=0.008) in the number of priority 1 and priority 2 error-free sites (from 1.7% in 2001 to 5.5% in 2002). There was also an improvement, but it was not significant (Ch[i.sup.2]=3.07, df=1, p=0.08), in the number of priority 1 error-free sites.

Figure 1 presents this data in a graphical form. The percentage of sites that were free from error is plotted for the type of error in each year. Sites free of Priority 1 and 2, only Priority 1, and only Priority 2 errors in each year are given. The improvement in 2002 for sites free of both Priority 1 and 2 and only Priority 1 errors can be seen.

The finding that 14.9% of Canadian University and College initial web pages (as viewed in November, 2001) would be classified as Bobby approved sites can be compared to the findings for prominent U.S. University and College initial web pages. Rowland & Smith (1999) "reported BOBBY data (version 3.0) gathered on a random sample of 400 prominent colleges, university and online learning institutions from all 50 states and the District of Columbia between December 15 and January 8, 1999" (Rowland, 2000, p. 6) and found that 90 (22%) of their institutional front pages would meet BOBBY approval. Walden, Rowland & Bohman (2000), essentially repeated the Rowland & Smith study in November 1999 and found 124 (24%) of the 518 institutions studied had institutional front pages that would meet the standard for Bobby approval.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The apparent difference between the proportion of Canadian and U.S. web pages that are free from Priority 1 errors is interesting and disturbing. The Walden, Rowland and Bohman (2000) study of the front pages of U.S. university and college web sites is comparable to our study in terms of comprehensiveness of sites studied and evaluation criteria used. The data for our study were collected approximately two years after that of Walden, Rowland and Bohman.

Table 4 provides a comparison between Priority 1 errors found in the three studies. A Ch[i.sup.2] analysis of the data comparing freedom from Priority 1 errors between Canadian and U.S. sites shows that the significant dependency (Ch[i.sup.2]=10.66, df=1, p=0.001) that existed between the U.S. web sites that were free of Priority 1 errors in 1999 (23.94%) and Canadian web sites in 2001 (14.86%) has been reduced to a dependency that is not significant (Ch[i.sup.2]=3.10, df=1, p=0.08) between the U.S. web sites in 1999 (23.94%) and Canadian web sites in 2002 (19.88%). Even though it is not significant, Canadian post-secondary web sites still had more Priority 1 errors in 2002 than did US post-secondary web sites in 1999.

Figure 2 presents a more graphic view of this data. The percentage of sites that were free from Priority 1 errors are plotted against the year the data were collected. This graph clearly shows that both U.S. and Canadian sites had less Priority 1 errors as time elapsed, but that U.S. sites had less errors than did Canadian sites. Further, the rate of change in the Canadian sites was higher than for the U.S. sites.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Discussion

Rowland's (WebAIM, 2002) three reasons for institutions to make their web sites accessible were: 1) providing equal access is ethically the "right thing to do," 2) creating accessible formats for education is economically smart, and 3) it is against the law, in the USA, for public institutions to discriminate against those with disabilities. These give a good framework for beginning to understand why this difference might exist.

First, are Canadian Post-secondary institutions less ethical than U.S. post-secondary institutions in their treatment of disabled students? This is possible, but probably not likely. Canada is a more socialistic society than is the U.S. Canada has a socialized medicine program and provides more support for its less fortunate citizens than does the U.S. It is therefore unlikely that there would be a tendency for Canadian post-secondary institution to intentionally treat students with disabilities less ethically than do U.S. post-secondary institutions. This, of course, is a testable hypothesis--for someone else to do.

Second, are Canadian institutions less economically smart than American institutions? This is possible. There is a long history in Canada of public support of post-secondary institutions. "In contrast to the United States, however, the generally higher levels of federal and provincial taxation discourage giving by the private sector and encourage the attitude that it is a government responsibility to fund higher education. Despite this, government financing of higher education has not kept pace with rising education costs ..." (Muller & Sepehri, 1988, p. 161). Recently, Canadian institutions have become much more proactive in their search for private funding, to the point where Jarrell (2000) states that "The University of Toronto is practically a textbook case of how strategic planning can naturally form the basis of campaign priority-setting." (p. 28).

Third, the U.S. law (Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990) states that public institutions may not discriminate against those with disabilities but there is no equivalent law in Canada. While the Section 15 of the Constitution Act of 1982 guarantees the equality of rights of Canadians with physical or mental disabilities (Canada, 1982), there is no legislation in Canada that is equivalent to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 or Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. It seems likely that administrators of post-secondary institutions in the U.S. are more aware of the need to provide accessibility than are administrators at post-secondary institutions in Canada, since there is a penalty in the U.S. for failing to respect Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act while there is no penalty for doing the same thing in Canada. Because of this, administrators at post-secondary institutions in the U.S. likely are more aware of, hence more responsive to, the issues of making their institutional web sites more accessible than are administrators at post-secondary institutions in Canada.

The fact that Canadian post-secondary institutions lag behind American post-secondary institutions in terms of the accessibility of their web pages should be disturbing to Canadians. More importantly, the fact that 75% of the initial web pages of all U.S. and Canadian post-secondary institutions contain barriers to accessibility should disturb us all.

Further studies must be undertaken in order to fully assess the need for a Canadian mandate for web accessibility. These further studies should included full university site evaluations including user priority checks, examination of the accessibility of web-based distance education courses, the participation rate of people with disabilities on the Web, and the evaluation of web design, instructional design, information technology programs in their address of accessibility issues in the design and delivery of web-based information. Also a part of this research would be to examine the experiences of students with disabilities and how they view university life and the extent in which they feel socially and academically integrated into the institution, as well as their individual characteristics (Duquette, 2000).

Conclusion

Bobby 3.2 was used to examine the accessibility by people with disabilities of the front pages of the universities and colleges in Canada. Approximately 14.9% of postsecondary institutions surveyed were free of priority 1 errors in 2001 and 19.9% in 2002, and only 1.7% in 2001 and 5.5% in 2002 were free of both priority 1 and priority 2 errors. This is unacceptable. Taking the broader view, over 75% of college and university initial entry pages in North America fail to meet the standards for Bobby approval, that is, they contain errors that seriously limit their accessibility to people with disabilities.

The significant investment that universities and colleges are making in institutional web sites and now institutional portals shows that administrators at these institutions recognize that the Web is one of their most important methods of communicating with their potential clientele. One can imagine that a university or college president would be terribly embarrassed it if the front page of their site displayed a "broken graphic" image, or contained a broken link. There would undoubtedly be a very sharp message to the University Webmaster that this should be fixed immediately and that it should not happen again. This is exactly what a person with disabilities encounters when they encounter a page with a Priority 1 error.

It is unlikely that any organization would intentionally alienate 7% of its clientele. It is more likely that post-secondary administrators and webmasters are unaware that their web sites are being read (or not) by people with disabilities, and what they must do to make them accessible. We suggest that the Government of Canada, along with post-secondary institutions, take the initiative to raise the awareness and stimulate action through the education of administrators and the public about equal access to information. Laws and guidelines to establish equal access to electronic information for all government, public, and post-secondary institutions should reflect this goal.

Table 1 Canadian Post-secondary Web Site Evaluations (November 2001)

                                Number of Sites (n=350)
                             Colleges  University  Total
                             (n=184)   (n=166)     (n=350)

Free of Priority 1 Errors    16        36          52
(Bobby Approved)             (8.7%)    (21.7%)     (14.9%)
Free of Priority 2 Errors    24        15          39
                             (13.0%)   (9.0%)      (11.1%)
Free of Both Priority 1 and   3         3           6
Priority 2 Errors            (1.6%)    (1.8%)      (1.7%)

Table 2 Canadian Post-Secondary Web Site Evaluations (November 2002)

                                Number of Sites (n=347)
                             Colleges   University  Total
                             (n=182)    (n=165)     (n=347)

Free of Priority 1 Errors    30         39          69
(Bobby Approved)             (16.5%)    (23.6%)     (19.9%)
Free of Priority 2 Errors    22         11          33
                             (12.1%)    (6.7%)      (9.5%)
Free of Both Priority 1 and   9         10          19
Priority 2 Errors            (4.9%)     (6.1%)      (5.5%)

Table 3 Accessibility of Canadian Post-Secondary Web Sites: 2001-2002

                             Free from       Free from   Free from
                             Priority 1 & 2  Priority 1  Priority 2
                             errors          errors      errors

Accessibility of Canadian     6              52          39
post-secondary sites (2001)  (1.7%)          (14.9%)     (11.1%)
Accessibility of Canadian    19              69          33
post-secondary sites (2002)  (5.5%)          (19.9%)     (9.5%)

                             Contained   Total
                             Priority 1
                             errors

Accessibility of Canadian    298         350
post-secondary sites (2001)  (85.1%)
Accessibility of Canadian    278         347
post-secondary sites (2002)  (80.1)

Table 4 Comparison of Canadian (2001 & 2002) and U.S. (1999 & 2000)
Post-Secondary Web Sites

                                        Free from  Contained  Total
                                        Priority   Priority
                                        1 errors   1 errors

US post-secondary Websites (Dec. 1998)   90        310        400
(Rowland & Smith, 1999)                 (22.5%)    (87.5%)
US post-secondary Websites (Nov. 1999)  124        394        518
(Walden, Rowland & Bohman, 2000)        (23.94%)   (76.06%)
Canadian post-secondary Websites         52        298        350
(Nov. 2001)                             (14.86%)   (85.14%)
Canadian post-secondary Websites         69        278        347
(Nov. 2002)                             (19.88%)   (80.12%)

Notes:

(1) This is an expanded and updated version of a paper which received an "outstanding Paper" award at Ed-MEDIA 2002.

(2) Since each site takes a binary value of either "being free of error" or "containing one or more error(s)," the non-parametric Chi2 test of independence is used to see if there is a significant dependency between the year and whether or not an error occurred.

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NICHOLAS ZAPARYNIUK AND CRAIG MONTGOMERIE

University of Alberta, Canada

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