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The Accessibility Directive entered into force in the European Union in Finland in 2019. Websites published before September 23, 2018 had to comply with the directive by September 23, 2020 at the latest.

However, a newly published study conducted at the Ģ��ֱ�� demonstrated that despite the obligation of the Act on the Provision of Digital Services, many main web-pages of Finnish higher education institutions (HEIs) are not accessible, and there a is a large variation between institutions.

"Accessible digital environments and services are easy to use and are compatible with various assistive technologies. For many users, the main web pages are the first step in getting to know higher education institutions and are a digital “parade door” to their other services . The accessibility of the main page is also a good predictor for the accessibility of the rest of the institutions’ web pages," says PhD Researcher Merja Laamanen.

In the study, the main pages of the websites of all Finnish HEIs were tested for accessibility before and after the Act on the Provision of Digital Services became mandatory in 2020.

In general, web page accessibility had improved, but some institutions’ main pages were significantly less accessible. "Problems were often caused by actions that the institution might consider progressive, such as social media feeds," Hannu Puupponen, who was part of the research group, commented. According to Puupponen, the research also found strong performers: for example, the main pages of Aalto University and Laurea University of Applied Sciences were excellent in terms of accessibility, including before the law became mandatory. The Ģ��ֱ�� also did well in the survey.

The most common accessibility issues were related to contrast, hyperlinks and alternative texts

The most common accessibility flaws found in the study were related to insufficient contrasts between text and background, unclear hyperlinks and missing alternative texts of images.

"Nowadays, a trend is to put text on top of images or to use pale font colours, which hinders distinguishing the text from the background," describes Laamanen.

On websites, the words click here and read more are often used as hyperlinks without other words in the hyperlink text itself. This creates difficulties especially for those using screen reader programs, because the program cannot tell the user anything other than that the text is a hyperlink.

"The third issue is the alternative texts of images, which are often forgotten. The purpose of the alternative text is to describe the content of the image, for example to a visually impaired person. An alternative text is not the same thing as a caption," Laamanen explains.

According to Laamanen, fixing these most common accessibility issues is not expensive or difficult. For example, there are contrast checking tools that are easy to use and free of charge.

"People may think that accessibility issues are only relevant to the organization's "official" content providers, although they should be a concern for basically all employees. Better guidance to all staff could improve accessibility issues significantly."

Digital accessibility benefits everyone

The COVID-19 pandemic has further increased the role of digital services in HEIs. Therefore , accessibility of HEIs’ digital services is a significant factor in ensuring educational equality and equity in Finland.

According to the study, HEIs’ students are now a more heterogeneous group than before. "One may think that accessibility affects only few of us, however, it benefits us all. For example, browsing online content on mobile devices has become more common. It can be difficult to read text with weak contrasts and small font size on a mobile phone screen in bright sunlight. In addition, videos are often watched in noisy surroundings, and they would benefit from captions." says Laamanen.

“Highly accessible web pages demonstrate HEI’s awareness of accessibility issues more broadly," Laamanen sums up. The research group calls for a stronger commitment to accessibility from Finnish HEIs, a clear division of responsibilities for implementation and active management processes to improve accessibility across the board.

The research was conducted as part of the national DigiCampus project funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland.

More information

PhD Researcher, Merja Laamanen merja.h.laamanen@jyu.fi

Senior Lecturer, Tarja Ladonlahti tarja.ladonlahti@jyu.fi

Professor Tommi Kärkkäinen, tommi.p.karkkainen@jyu.fi

Publication details

Laamanen, M., Ladonlahti, T., Puupponen, H. & Kärkkäinen, T. 2022. Does the law matter? An empirical study on the accessibility of Finnish higher education institutions’ web pages. Universal Access in the Information Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-022-00931-6