The Relationship Between Web Content and Web Accessibility at Universities: The Influence of Social and Cultural Factors

This research assesses whether universities from varied cultures rank significantly different with respect to the quality of their web contents and with regard to their web accessibility (WA) level. Moreover, this article tests whether universities, which make stronger efforts to improve the quality of their web contents, also take into account WA issues to ease the access to such contents. We use a database containing 399 universities from 16 countries. Main results suggest that universities in Anglo-Saxon countries pay more attention to WA issues and that those in Germanic countries rank significantly higher with regard to web quality contents. On a global basis, there is a significant relationship between the level of accessibility at university webpages and the quality of the web contents. However, if countries are grouped, results are different. While in Germanic, Nordic, and Anglo-Saxon countries, there is no relation between the level of accessibility of university webpages and the quality of the web contents, in Latin countries, this relation is direct and significant