Web Accessibility of Open Access Journals in Sub-Saharan Africa
Pastor Nso-Mangue, Sergio Luján-Mora
Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Computational Intelligence, Information Technology and Systems Research (CITS 2024), p. 21-22, Lublin (Polonia), May 14-17 2024.
(CITS'24)
Congreso internacional / International conference
Resumen
Open access journals (OAJs) play an important role in disseminating scientific knowledge to the world. Access to OAJs is primarily via the Internet, which reduces distance barriers and provides an opportunity for people with disabilities to access digital resources using assistive technologies such as screen readers. Currently, 16% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability and cannot enjoy equal access to the web. Although equal access to the web is a human right under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and a key aspect of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, people with disabilities still face barriers to accessing the web. The African population with access to the internet is growing, but approximately 80 million people with disabilities face barriers to equal access to the web. Some countries and supranational organizations like European Union have promulgated laws to enforce web accessibility, although many websites still present barriers to persons with disabilities. which has resulted in slight improvement in web accessibility. Legislation related to web accessibility in Africa is an ongoing challenge and there is decline in web accessibility in higher educations after COVID-19 pandemic ended. Despite the potential benefits of the adoption of open access journals in developing countries, there are not a lot of studies on their accessibility by persons with disabilities. The purpose of this study is to assess the web accessibility of OAJs in sub-Saharan Africa using the Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG). A selection of OAJs, from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), is evaluated against WCAG 2.1 using an automated web accessibility evaluation tool (AWAET), Mauve++. The results show that sub-Saharan African OAJ websites are not compliant to WCAG 2.1, and that further improvements are needed to ensure equal access for everybody