Web accessibility: Study of maturity level of Portuguese institutions of higher education

The European Commission proposed a European Directive establishing mandatory accessibility standards to be applied to essential public services, starting from the end of 2015. This Directive aims to ensure the universality of the Web, looking to benefit more than 180 million European citizens, but also by setting up a market estimated in €2 billion Euros. As noted in the literature review, the higher education institutions are identified as part of the problem, since many of its websites have serious accessibility problems, but also as part of the solution, teaching awareness on the benefits of the accessibility as well as the risks of its absence. Data collection was conducted through a questionnaire, based on the Charter of Commitment and the Maturity Model for Accessibility from the "Business Taskforce on Accessible Technology", applied to the Portuguese Institutions of Higher Education, to determine the average level of maturity of the institutions who participated, as well as their willingness to make a commitment towards accessibility. This paper concludes that the accessibility maturity level of Portuguese Higher Education Institutions is, on average, low but there is a great willingness to make a commitment to improve their accessibility.