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Using Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, higher education web sites were retrospectively analyzed to study the effects that technological advances in web design have had on accessibility for persons with disabilities.

A convenience sample of higher education web sites was studied for years 1997‐2002. The homepage and pages 1‐level down were evaluated. Web accessibility barrier (WAB) and complexity scores were calculated. Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine trends in the data and Pearson's correlation (r) was computed to evaluate the relationship between accessibility and complexity.

Higher education web sites become progressively inaccessible as complexity increases.

The WAB score is a proxy of web accessibility. While the WAB score can give an indication of the accessibility of a web site, it cannot differentiate between barriers posing minimal limitations and those posing absolute inaccessibility. A future study is planned to have users with disabilities examine web sites with differing WAB scores to correlate how well the WAB score is gauging accessibility of web sites from the perspective of the user.

Findings from studies such as this can lead to improved guidelines, policies, and overall awareness of web accessibility for persons with disabilities.

There are limited studies that have taken a longitudinal look at the accessibility of web sites and explored the reasons for the trend of decreasing accessibility.

The purpose of this paper is to determine if the homepage of a web site is representative of the whole site with respect to accessibility.

The paper presents an intraclass correlation (ICC) between homepage web accessibility barrier (WAB) scores and the WAB scores of web site levels 1 through 3 for 33 popular web sites.

The paper finds that the homepage is not sufficient to detect the accessibility of the web site. ICC of the homepage and average of levels 1‐3 is 0.250 (p=0.062) and ICC of levels 1, 2, and 3 is 0.784 (p<0.0001). Evaluating the homepage and first‐level pages gives more accurate results of entire site accessibility.

This is first study correlating homepage accessibility with web site accessibility.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an update on the implementation of web accessibility guidelines at Kentucky academic library web sites.

The academic library home pages of Bachelor‐degree granting institutions of Kentucky were tested for accessibility compliance using an online automated program. In addition, a series of manual accessibility tests were performed. Data were collected on errors against accessibility guidelines for each site. Data collected in 2003 were compared to data collected in 2007.

The number of library home pages complying with basic accessibility guidelines is increasing. However, most sites that score well are built to comply with checkpoints that can be tested automatically. Few institutions included accessibility features which required manual verification.

This study relies largely on data collected with an imperfect accessibility‐checking software program. Some accessibility checkpoints can appear to be satisfied using automated accessibility tests despite the presence of accessibility barrier beings. Also, minor errors against accessibility guidelines are not distinguished from major accessibility barriers.

This study provides an impetus for web developers to aim higher than the automated accessibility checkpoints. It demonstrates a limited number of manual accessibility checkpoints that can be objectively tested.

This paper looks beyond accessibility guidelines that can be tested automatically to see if accessibility guidelines for which manual tests must be performed are being implemented. This study is one of the very few published follow‐up studies of web accessibility.