Accessibility, usability and security evaluation of university prospective student web pages in Turkey: Comparison with Europe, North America, and Oceania

Websites have become a preferred communication tool by all institutions as they provide information regardless of time and place. Today, the education sector also takes advantage of this progress and uses websites for e-learning, open and distance learning activities. It is important that these websites are accessible, effectively usable, and reliable by all users, including users with disabilities. In this context, this thesis examines the accessibility, usability, and security of the prospective student web pages of universities in Turkey and presents a comparative analysis with the prospective student web pages of universities in Europe, North America, and Oceania, which are included in the Webometrics World University Rankings. For this purpose, prospective student web pages of 147 universities in Turkey were examined using various automated testing tools. After the evaluation, cluster analysis was used to examine the universities in Turkey exhibiting similar behavior according to the three criteria namely accessibility, usability, and security. In addition, 320 university prospective student web pages from 32 countries in Europe, North America and Oceania were evaluated in terms of accessibility, usability and security, and the position of universities in Turkey among these universities was examined. The results of this thesis showed that the prospective student web pages of universities evaluated worldwide, especially in Turkey, have some serious problems in terms of accessibility, usability, and security. In addition, this thesis offers useful suggestions to website developers and corporate authorities to increase awareness about web accessibility, usability, and security.