Accessibility, usability, and security evaluation of universities’ prospective student web pages: a comparative study of Europe, North America, and Oceania

Universities' prospective student web pages aim to disseminate information about their academic and social opportunities to their stakeholders; therefore, they must be accessible, of high quality of use and reliable. This article presents the accessibility, usage performance, and security analysis of prospective student web pages of 330 universities from three continents, namely Europe, North America, and Oceania. For this purpose, university websites were selected based on the Webometrics ranking, and online automated test tools were used. The results showed that websites at universities in North America paid more attention to accessibility and quality of use on prospective student web pages, followed by Oceanian and European websites. Evaluated websites had low compliance levels according to the WCAG 2.0 guideline. No major problems were identified in terms of usability and security, but there were certain points for improvement. Moreover, we present and discuss recommendations to developers and administrators for websites to resolve accessibility, usability, and security breaches and provide information equally to all stakeholders. Hence, this analysis report provides feedback to web developers to improve accessibility, quality of use, and security issues of university websites and their prospective student web pages.