15 Years of Stanca Act: Are Italian Public universities websites accessible?

Abstract

With the increasing spread and usage of Internet technologies, the challenge of ensuring Web accessibility for all, including anyone with a form of disability, has become an hot issue, pursued both by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and by governments in different countries. In particular, W3C has developed technical Web accessibility guidelines (WCAG), while governments have legally addressed the problem, by emanating specific laws and policies. In Italy, the Stanca Act, a law regulating the design and creation of governmental and public sector websites, recently updated according to last WCAG 2.1 was enacted in 2004. To analyze its impact, this paper presents a study about the accessibility of Italian public universities websites, by particularly analyzing their conformance to the Stanca Act. The reported analysis shows that, despite that the Stanca act dates back 15 years ago, Italian public universities are still struggling to satisfy all its requirements.