Web Accessibility of Indian University Library Website: An Evaluation with WAVE Website Evaluation Tool

The advent of new teaching-learning methods has brought a great demand for accessible educational websites. There is much research on the accessibility of the website on educational websites in recent years from different countries. A website serves as a communication channel for publishing information and services in higher education. It is expected that higher education institutions must provide access to their information resources and services to all its user in an equal manner irrespective of their physical disability. Hence, it should be mandatory for higher education institutions to include web accessibility as an important part of their websites. Libraries are the heart and an integral part of the higher education system. A library website is the main door from where learners are benefited by the information resources and services of an institute. This paper takes the issue of web accessibility of the home page of the library website for the top fifty universities ranked by NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework).NIRF is approved by MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource Department) and it ranks institution across the country in India. The home page of the top fifty Universities Library websites has been analyzed for accessibility errors and related issues with the help of WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool). Results revealed that maximum universities had accessibility issues on their library home page