WUCA: An Analysis of Web Usability and Content Accessibility of Webpages with Respect to Ailment People

The present age is the age of Information Technology (IT) and the Governments across the globe focuses on e-governance services. The websites serve as an excellent information dissemination platform, which is used by both disabled and non-disabled population. This study investigates the web usability and content accessibility called WUCA of webpages with a case study of affiliated college websites of Pondicherry University (PU), which is a leading central university in India. It also explores whether they are ranked high in terms of WUCA and whether these two measures are correlated. We have used automatic evaluation tools such as TAW, Pingdom, and PageSpeed tools to measure the accessibility and usability of eighty-three (83) college websites affiliated with Pondicherry University. Based on evaluation results, it has been observed that the overall performance grade (out of A, B, C, D) of these websites falls in category B and \(12\%\) websites fall in lower grade performance category D. It is found that the desktop device user experience is better than mobile device user experience. It is also found that out of 83 websites selected, 12 websites are highly optimized, 20 websites are less optimized, and 51 websites are not optimized. The correlation between accessibility and usability rank cases (SPSS Procedure) indicates that the accessibility is highly correlated with load-time and page-size. It was also inferred from the results that there is comparatively better compliance with accessibility and a relatively low web usability for most of the websites. Based on these results, some suggestions are framed to improve the WUCA of said websites for efficient access by persons with disabilities (PwDs).