Five of Western Australia’s top universities are supporting a new research project designed by CFA Australia to improve digital accessibility standards for students with disability.
The Higher Education for All project is funded by the WA Department of Communities and created in response to requests from people living with disability – 27 current and prospective students – who contacted the CFA Australia for help to navigate university websites.
The study highlights common digital accessibility issues on university websites, including those to do with colour contrast, poor navigation and heading structure, PDF accessibility and visible focus. In addition, students commented on the need for an accessible campus map and improved options for contacting universities, either for disability-specific support, or to raise complaints about digital access.
Participating universities received training to ensure their website management teams can improve and maintain standards against the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.
The study is the first of its kind in WA, providing critical benchmarking data that will become more applicable to other higher education institutes as CFA Australia continues its work across this sector.
View the Higher Education for All report.