E-Government Accessibility in Ecuador:
A Preliminary Evaluation
Sandra Sanchez-Gordon
Department of Informatics and Department of Software and Computing
Computer Sciences
National Polytechnic School University of Alicante
Quito, Ecuador
sandra.sanchez@epn.edu.ec
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7157-1826 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5000-864X
Abstract— The National Council for Equal Disabilities of
Ecuador reports that there are 471,020 citizens with disabilities
registered in the country. This represents the 2.75% of the
population. From them, 290,148 are adult citizens who are
potential beneficiaries of accessible public websites. In 2016, the
Ecuadorian Institute for Standardization published the
Ecuadorian technical regulation RTE INEN 288 that applies to
web content published on public and private Ecuadorian
websites that provide public services. The regulation establishes
that the level of conformity A of the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.0 must have been fully satisfied
by 2018 and the level AA should be complied by August 2020.
Soon, this regulation should be updated to the current version
2.1 published in June 2018. This study presents the results of a
preliminary evaluation carried out with a sample of the five
most visited Ecuadorian e-Government websites that provide
online services to citizens. Two automated web accessibility
evaluation tools were used: WAVE and Cynthia Says. The
results reveal that all the evaluated websites have accessibility
issues and fail to comply with the Ecuadorian regulation. The
three most recurrent accessibility errors were a lack of
alternative texts (WCAG Success Criteria 1.1.1 Non-text
Content, Level A) and empty links (WCAG Success Criteria
2.4.4 Link Purpose, Level A). Overall, 74.8% of the issues found
corresponded to Level A while 25.2% corresponded to Level
AA.
Keywords— CRPD, Persons with Disabilities, Web
Accessibility, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG, NTE
INEN-ISO/IEC 40500, RTE INEN 288, e-Government Websites,
Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools, WAVE, Cynthia Says
I. INTRODUCTION
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted
by the United Nations in 1948 to identify and promote the
observance of rights and freedoms to which all human beings
are entitled regardless any condition. Among these rights,
Article 19 establishes: Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold
opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers [1], [2].
In 2006, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) with the support
of 159 signatories and 151 ratifications, Ecuador being one of
them. The CRPD proposes a new approach to human rights
monitoring and enforcement, shifting the responsibility for
disability from individuals and caretakers to society and
government. Kanter [3] reflects on the importance of the
CRPD envisioning a world where persons with disabilities are
recognized as right holders entitled to full and equal
citizenship, as well as social participation and inclusion. The
978-1-7281-5882-2/20/$31.00 © 2020 IEEE
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Sergio Luján-Mora Mary Sánchez-Gordón
Østfold University College
Systems Halden, Norway
mary.sanchez-gordon@hiof.no
Alicante, Spain https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5102-1122
sergio.lujan@ua.es
CRPD establishes that States Parties must take appropriate
measures to ensure that persons with disabilities have access
to the physical environment, to transportation, to information
and communications technology, and to other facilities and
services open or provided to the general public [4].
Nowadays, digital and web technologies enable an
important part of the interchange of information and
communication among citizens and government.
Nevertheless, although technologies are supposed to facilitate
such interchange, there are issues that prevent such
technologies to better contribute to a straightforward access of
citizens to public services [5].
Web accessibility, the focus of this study, emerges as a
critically important issue in e-Government, as it is a condition
for the provision of high-quality online information and
services to citizens. Web accessibility not only benefit persons
with some type of disability, either permanent (such as born
deaf) or temporary (such as a broken arm), but also other
people who have difficulties related to natural aging or derived
from unfavorable environmental situations, such as a person
in a room with low illumination or high noise [6]. Moreover,
web accessibility improves general usability, which benefits
to citizens with and without disabilities [7].
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) [8]
covers a wide range of recommendations to make web content
accessible to a wider range of persons with disabilities,
including blindness and limited vision, deafness and hearing
loss, learning disabilities, cognitive disabilities, motor
disabilities, speech disabilities, and combinations of them.
Websites that do not meet WCAG create barriers that exclude
people with disabilities. WCAG includes four principles
perceptible, operable, understandable and robust , three
conformance levels A, AA and AAA , 12 guidelines and
61 success criteria 25 of level A, 13 of level AA and 23 of
level AAA. To facilitate the evaluation, WCAG uses the
following codification: principles use one digit, guidelines use
two digits, and success criteria use three digits. For example:
1 Principle Perceivable, Guideline 1.1 Text Alternatives, and
Success Criterion 1.1.1 Non-text Content. The WCAG
version 2.0 became the standard ISO/IEC 40500:2012. In June
2018, the WCAG version 2.1 was published. In summary, the
novelties of the WCAG 2.1 are: 17 new success criteria (5 of
Level A; 7 of Level AA; 5 of Level AAA), a new guideline
(2.5 Input modalities) for organizing some of the new criteria,
increasing the number of guidelines from 12 to 13.
In 2014, the Ecuadorian Institute for Standardization
(INEN, Spanish acronym) approved the standard NTE INEN-
ISO/IEC 40500 Information technology - Accessibility
guidelines for W3C web content (WCAG) 2.0 [9]. In 2016,
50
the INEN published the Ecuadorian Technical Regulation
RTE INEN 288 Accessibility for Web Content [10]. The
regulation applies to web content published on public and
private Ecuadorian websites that provide public services.
Moreover, such a regulation establishes that the level of
conformity A must have been fully satisfied by 2018 and the
level of conformity AA should be complied by August 2020.
That is, all Ecuadorian websites that provide a public service
must comply with WCAG 2.0 level AA [9]. Soon, this
regulation should be updated to the version 2.1.
The National Council for Equal Disabilities of Ecuador
[11] reports that, in the year 2019, there were 471,020 citizens
with disabilities registered in the country. This represents the
2.75% of the Ecuadorian population. Regarding the type of
disability, the distribution is: 46.67% motor, 22.31%
cognitive, 14.09% hearing, 11.75% visual and 5.19%
psychosocial disability. Regarding age groups, the distribution
is: 12.7% under 17, 14.63% from 18 to 29 years, 46.97% from
30 to 64 years, and 25.33% over 65 years. This implies that
290,148 adult citizens of Ecuador could be the potential
beneficiaries of accessible public web portals.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section II
presents related work, Section III presents the research
method, Section IV presents results per each website
analyzed, Section V presents a discussion and Section VI
presents conclusions and future work.
II. RELATED WORK
The accessibility of e-Government websites has been
quite researched around the world. This section presents
selected studies from different countries.
Ortiz Ruiz [12] refers to Chilean laws such as the decree
No. 1 of June 2015 which approves the technical regulation
for systems and websites of the organs of the state
administration, and the National Disability Service guide to
web accessibility, updated in 2017. Those references and
regulations establish the WCAG 2.0 AA level as a
requirement for government websites. Based on them and
using the tools TAW and Examinator, Ruiz evaluated
informative and educational support home pages developed
by the Chilean Ministry of Education that are used by teachers,
students, parents and general public on a regular basis. All of
them were found to be inaccessible sites, being the most
recurrent weaknesses unclear links for assertive navigation,
and a lack of alternative texts in images, videos or other
elements.
Sikiru, Bello and Oyekunle [13] carried out a study of
official websites of Nigeria s states by using the FAE 2.0
evaluation tool. The results showed that Benue state official
website has highest implementation level score in terms of
violations, warnings, manual checks, passed rule sets and
implementation status. However, both Benue and Sokoto
states official websites reached the Partial Implementation
Required (PI-R) status , while other websites obtained the
Not Implemented Required (NI-R) status.
Recommendations were made to improve Nigeria s states
websites.
Al-Khalifa, Baazeem, and Alamer [14] evaluated how
Saudi Arabia e-Government accessibility evolved from
2010 to 2016. These authors conducted an exploratory
study on 34 Saudi Arabia e-Government websites to
evaluate their accessibility by combining the results of two
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accessibility evaluation tools: AChecker and Total
Validator. The results showed that the average number of
WCAG 2.0 violations decreased. However, the authors
suggested providing better training and increase
conformance enforcement to further improve the
accessibility of Saudi Arabia e-Government websites.
Gambino, Pirrone, and Di Giorgio [15] presented an
overview of the situation regarding accessibility of the
websites of a sample of 976 pages of public administrations
such as the chief towns of Italian provinces. These authors
tested the sample pages with the accessibility validation tool
AChecker and found many accessibility errors. Hence,
these authors conclude that the Italian institutional
websites analyzed are not accessible.
Sam-Anlas and Stable-Rodríguez [16] presented the
results of a study that evaluated the accessibility of the home
pages of five main government web portals in Peru. The
automated tool TAW discovered errors related to the use of
color, audio and text, non-text content for images that may
require longer description, and images with empty alt tags,
among others.
Akgul and Vatansever [17] explained that as governments
continue to provide citizens with value-added e-services,
citizens with disabilities are still being deprived from taking
full advantage of these services. This study evaluated the
accessibility of 25 e-Government websites in Turkey by using
WCAG 1.0 and 2.0 and automated testing tools. The results
indicated that the prevalent accessibility barriers were related
to the absence of text equivalents for non-text elements, and
the failure of the static equivalents for dynamic content to get
updated when the dynamic content changes.
Boussarhan and Daoudi [18] evaluated the accessibility of
three Moroccan e-Government websites. By using the method
AccessiWeb, these authors analyzed four to seven pages in
each website. The evaluation results show the presence of
several problems of accessibility in each of the three websites.
The authors concluded that various measures should be then
taken to make the content of these websites perceivable,
operable, understandable and robust.
Acosta, Acosta and Luján-Mora [19] states that web
developers of eGovernment websites do not follow the web
accessibility criteria, creating a gap in the accessibility of
eGovernment services. These authors present a study on the
accessibility of eGovernment interactive services offered by
two official entities of Latin America countries based on the
criterion of experts on web accessibility and the use of an
evaluation tool. The results show that none of the evaluated
websites meet an acceptable level of accessibility.
Luján-Mora, Navarrete, and Peñafiel [20] explain that
laws that enforce web accessibility do not automatically
guarantee compliance. To prove this, these authors analyze the
accessibility of three official e-Government websites of all
South American countries and Spain using a set of evaluation
tools. Most websites analyzed do not provide adequate levels
of web accessibility.
Campoverde-Molina, Luján-Mora, and Valverde [21]
evaluate the regulatory compliance of accessibility in the web
portals of 69 educational institutions of the three major
Ecuadorian cities with WCAG 2.0 Level A. These authors
used the tools Examinator, TAW, Markup Validation Service
and CSS Validation Service. The average number of errors in accessibility of the web content including checks for
the web portals of the sample is 348. compliance issues found in Section 508 and WCAG 2.1
guidelines [23]. The Section 508 is an amendment to the
Despite of the global interest in evaluating e- Workforce Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that mandates that all
Government accessibility, to the best of our knowledge, information technology developed, procured, maintained, or
there are no published studies focused specifically in the used by the United States government must be accessible to
evaluation of accessibility of Ecuadorian e-Government people with disabilities [24].
websites to verify their conformance with the Ecuadorian
technical regulation RTE INEN 288 Accessibility for Web TABLE I. CASE STUDIES SAMPLE PAGES
Content . To address this gap, this study presents a ID Organization URL
preliminary evaluation of the top-five Ecuadorian e- 1 INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE (SRI)
Government websites according to Ama on Alexa [22]. 1.1 Home https://www.sri.gob.ec
https://srienlinea.sri.gob.ec/sri-en-
III. RESEARCH METHOD 1.2 Online Login
linea/#/inicio/NAT
This research focused on the accessibility evaluation of https://srienlinea.sri.gob.ec/sri-en-
five popular e-Government websites of Ecuador. To achieve Tax Status linea/#/SriDeclaracionesWeb/EstadoTrib
1.3
Query utario/Consultas/consultaEstadoTributari
this, researchers applied the three basic phases of research o
design: data collection, measurement, and analysis. The ECUADORIAN INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SECURITY
activities carried out in each phase were: 2
(IESS)
2.1 Home https://iees.gob.ec
Phase 1. Data collection Reserve Fund https://app.iess.gob.ec/iess-fondo-
2.2
Login reserva-afiliado-web/app/index
Select the set of case studies. Medical https://app.iess.gob.ec/iess-gestion-
Select the sample pages of each case study. 2.3
Appointments agendamiento-web/
Select the automatic accessibility evaluation tools. 3 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION (MinEd)
Phase 2. Measurement 3.1 Home https://educacion.gob.ec/
Teacher https://www.educarecuador.gob.ec/index.
3.2
Configure the evaluation tools to WCAG 2.0 AA, Services php/servicios/docentes
since this is the version and level required by the Student https://www.educarecuador.gob.ec/index.
3.3
Ecuadorian technical regulation RTE INEN 288. Services php/servicios/estudiantes
ECUADORIAN INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SECURITY
Perform the measurements of the sample pages using 4
BANK (BIESS)
the evaluation tools. 4.1 Home https://biess.fin.ec/
Emergent https://pq.biess.fin.ec/pq-concesion-
Phase 3. Analysis 4.2
Loans Login web/pages/concesion/roles.jsf
Compare results of individual evaluations. Loans https://pq.biess.fin.ec/pq-concesion-
4.3 Simulator web/pages/simulador/requisitosBloqueant
Extract conclusions and recommendations. Form esSimulador.jsf
A. Selection of Case Studies 5 JUDICIAL COUNCIL (JC)
The five most visited Ecuadorian e-Government 5.1 Home http://www.funcionjudicial.gob.ec/
Alimony
websites that offer online services for citizens were 5.2 Payments
http://supa.funcionjudicial.gob.ec/pension
included in the set of case studies. According o Ama on Query
es/publico/consulta.jsf
Alexa [22], these are: Internal Revenue Services, Judicial https://appsj.funcionjudicial.gob.ec/perito
5.3
Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security, Ministry of Experts Search -web/pages/peritos_nacional.jsf
Education, Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security Bank and
The Compliance Sheriff´s Cynthia Says Portal is a joint
Judicial Council.
project of Compliance Sheriff and the Internet Society
B. Selection of Sample Pages Disability and Special Needs Chapter. Cynthia Says educates
It is very important to evaluate the level of accessibility in the concepts behind website accessibility and identifies
of the home page of any website. If the home page presents errors in web content related to Section 508 and the WCAG
accessibility barriers, the access to the rest of the pages would 2.0 guidelines [25]. To date, Cynthia Says has not released a
be jeopardized. For this preliminary evaluation, only two version compliant with WCAG 2.1.
additional pages of each study case were selected based on D. Research Limitations
the relevance of the information and services provided by
This study has certain limitations. Validation of a sample
these pages. Table I details the three sample pages of each
set of pages using automated tools give an overview of the
case study.
degree of accessibility of a website, nevertheless it is not
C. Selection of Evaluation Tools enough. Therefore, a throughout evaluation of the whole
A set of ten evaluation tools were analyzed using three website is highly desirable and should be done to ensure
criteria: ease of use, clarity of generated reports and compliance. Automated evaluations are prone to false
availability. Each criterion was evaluated with a score of one positives and false negatives and cannot identify all issues,
to 10, one being the lowest score and 10 the highest. The two for instance, if an alternative text is present but it is not
tools that obtained the higher scores were: WAVE and accurate. So, manual evaluation is also necessary including
Cynthia Says. participation of accessibility experts and final users.

WAVE is a tool developed by WebAIM to help make web

content more accessible. WAVE helps to evaluate the
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 IV. RESULTS
In this section, the results of each case study after using the
accessibility evaluation tools are presented, including an
explanation of the most recurrent errors and alerts with their
implications for users with disabilities.
A. Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service (SRI, Spanish acronym)
was created in 1997 in response to high tax evasion, fueled by
the lack of tax culture [26]. Among the online services
provided by SRI are tax status queries and tax payments
available for authenticated users.
WAVE tool found the following accessibility issues in this
case. Main page had 1 error, 153 alerts and 9 contrast errors.
SRI Online Login page had 21 errors, 54 alerts and no contrast
errors. Tax Status Query page had 20 errors, 35 alerts and no
contrast errors. The more recurrent errors were 46 empty
buttons and 3 missing form labels. The more recurrent alerts
were 152 tabindex, 54 broken same page links, 22 redundant
links and six redundant alternative texts.
Figure 1 shows a screen capture with the location of some
of the tabindex alerts. Developers must check these tabindex
since non-zero values specify an explicit navigation order for
page elements. This should be avoided because it modifies the
default tab order, causing confusion and resulting in decreased
keyboard accessibility. As a result, users that cannot use a
mouse, such as blind people or people with limited upper
limbs motor ability are affected.
Fig. 1. Tabindex Accessibility Alerts at SRI Website
Cynthia Says tool found seven non-conformities with
WCAG success criteria in this case: 1.1.1 Non-text Contents,
1.3.1 Info and Relationships, 1.4.3 Contrast Minimum, 1.4.4
Resize Text, 2.4.4 Link Purpose in Context, 3.3.2 Labels or
Instructions and 4.1.2 Name, Role, and Value.
B. Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security
The Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security (IESS, Spanish
acronym) was created in 1970 to provide specialized health
care and retirement pension for social security members.
Among the online services that IESS provides are medical
appointments, provision of reserve funds and retirement
funds, work history and unemployment assistance [27].
WAVE tool found the following accessibility issues in this
case. Main page had 26 error, 135 alerts and 10 contrast errors.
Affiliate Reserve Fund Login page had 14 errors, 9 alerts and
6 contrast errors. Medical Appointments page had 14 errors,
27 alerts and 29 contrast errors. The more recurrent errors
were 16 missing form labels, 16 empty links and 8 linked
image missing alternative text. The more recurrent alerts were
110 device dependent event handler, 30 orphaned form labels,
15 redundant links and 8 justified texts.
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Figure 2 shows a screen capture with the location of some
of the device dependent event handler alerts. Developers must
check these alerts since events should be accessible to both
mouse and keyboard users. To be fully accessible, critical
interaction should be device independent. As a result, users
that cannot use mouse, such as blind people or people with
limited upper limbs motor ability are affected by this.
Fig. 2. Device dependent handler alerts at IESS Website
Cynthia Says tool found nine non-conformities with
WCAG success criteria in this case: 1.1.1 Non-text Contents,
1.3.1 Info and Relationships, 1.4.3 Contrast Minimum, 1.4.4
Resize Text, 2.4.4 Link Purpose in Context, 3.1.1. Language
on Page, 3.2.2. On Input, 3.3.2 Labels or Instructions, and
4.1.2 Name, Role, and Value.
C. Ministry of Education
The Ministry of Education (MinEd) is the governing body
of national education policies and exercises its leadership
through intergovernmental coordination and articulation with
Local Governments to ensure that students achieve relevant
and quality learning. Among the main online services
provided by MinEd are teacher services (promotions,
communications) and students services (educational
institution assignments, student certificates, grade reports,
consultation of homework) [28].
WAVE tool found the following accessibility issues in this
case. Home page had four errors, 34 alerts and 11 contrast
errors. Teacher Services page had 43 errors, 37 alerts and 20
contrast errors. Student Services page had 45 errors, 42 alerts
and 21 contrast errors. The more recurrent errors were 47
empty links and 41 missing alternative texts. The more
recurrent alerts were 76 redundant links and 10 tabindex.
Cynthia Says tool found five non-conformities with
WCAG success criteria in this case: 1.1.1 Non-text Content,
1.3.1 Info and Relationships, 1.4.3 Contrast Minimum, 1.4.4
Resize Text, and 2.4.4 Link Purpose in Context. Figure 3
shows a screen capture with partial results of Teacher Services
page for WCAG 2.0 Level A.
Fig. 3. WCAG Compliance Level A at Teacher Services page
D. Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security Bank
The Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security Bank (BIESS,
Spanish acronym) was created in 2009, as a public financial
institution with technical, administrative and financial
autonomy, for social and public service purposes. Since then,
it has delivered mortgage and emerging loans for the benefit
of members and retirees. In addition, that bank pledges loans
to all citizens. Among the online services provided by BIESS
are loans simulator and emerging loans [29].
WAVE tool found the following accessibility issues in this
case. Home page had 29 errors, 26 alerts and 18 contrast
errors. Emergent Loans Login page had 49 errors, 43 alerts
and 0 contrast errors. Loans Simulator Form page had 8 errors,
20 alerts and 1 contrast error. The more recurrent errors were
58 linked image missing alternative texts and 9 missing
alternative texts. The more recurrent alerts were 43 device
dependent event handler and 18 redundant title texts. Figure 4 Fig. 5. Constrast errors at JC´s Home page
shows a screen capture with the summary of WAVE tool
results for Emergent Loans Login page. V. DISCUSSION
To reach the level of accessibility legally required by the
Ecuadorian technical regulation RTE INEN 288
Accessibility for Web Content , 25 success criteria of
WCAG 2.0 Level A had to be satisfied in 2018, and 13
additional success criteria of WCAG 2.0 Level AA criteria
must be satisfied by August 2020. Nevertheless, all the 5 case
studies failed to comply. Table II shows that only 6 Level A
success criteria out of 25 were partially satisfied by the web
pages analyzed according to Cynthia Says: 2.1.1 Keyboard
was passed by 93.3% of the sample pages, 2.4.1 Bypass
Blocks by 20.0%, 2.4.2 Page Titled by 86.7%, 3.1.1 Language
Fig. 4. Summary of WAVE results for Emergent Loans Login Page of Page by 60.0%, 3.2.2 On Input by 33.3%, and 4.1.2 Name,
Role, and Value by 33.3%. In Table II, number 1 means that
Cynthia Says tool found nine non-conformities with the web page complied with the criterion, zero means that the
WCAG success criteria in this case: 1.1.1 Non-text Content, web page did not pass the criterion, N means that the criterion
1.3.1 Info and Relationships, 1.4.3 Contrast Minimum, 1.4.4 did not apply and V means that a visual check was required to
Resize Text, 2.4.4 Link Purpose in Context, 3.1.1. Language further determine compliance.
of Page, 3.2.2. On Input, 3.3.2 Labels or Instructions, and
TABLE II. WCAG COMPLIANCE PER WEB PAGE
4.1.2 Name, Role, and Value.
WCAG 2.0 LEVEL A SUCCESS CRITERIA
E. Judicial Council
2.1.1 2.4.1 2.4.2 3.1.1 3.2.2 4.1.2
The Judicial Council (JC) is the governing, administrative
and disciplinary body of the Ecuadorian Judicial Function. Its 1.1 1 N 1 1 1 1
functions include the administration and maintenance of the 1.2 1 N 1 1 N 0
organs of the Judicial Function, evaluate judges and other
justice operators, manage and supervise merit and opposition 1.3 1 N 1 1 N 0
contests for the selection of new personnel of the organs, and 2.1 V N V 1 0 0
impose sanctions [30].
2.2 1 N 1 0 0 0
WAVE tool found the following accessibility issues in this
2.3 1 N 1 0 0 0
case. Home page had 11 errors, 145 alerts and 481 contrast
errors. Alimony Payments Query page had 8 errors, 9 alerts
WEB PAGES

3.1 1 1 1 1 1 1
and 0 contrast errors. Judicial Experts Search page had 12 3.2 1 1 V 1 N 1
errors, 13 alerts and 1 contrast error. The more recurrent errors
were 11 missing form labels, 5 missing alternative texts, and 3.3 1 1 1 1 N 1
5 empty links. The more recurrent alerts were 82 redundant 4.1 1 N 1 1 0 1
alternative texts, 24 links to PDFs, and 22 justified texts.
4.2 1 N 1 0 1 0
Figure 5 shows a screen capture with the location of some
4.3 1 N 1 0 1 0
of the contrast errors. Adequate contrast between foreground
and background colors is necessary for all users, especially 5.1 1 N 1 1 1 0
users with low vision. Developers must check that normal text 5.2 1 N 1 0 0 0
has a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 or text larger than 18 point or 14
point bold has a contrast ratio of 3:1. 5.3 1 N 1 0 0 0

Cynthia Says tool found ten non-conformities with ∑ 14 3 13 9 5 5

WCAG success criteria in this case: 1.1.1 Non-text Content, % 93.3 20.0 86.7 60.0 33.3 33.3
1.2.3 Audio Descriptions, 1.3.1 Info and Relationships, 1.4.3
Contrast Minimum, 1.4.4 Resize Text, 2.4.4 Link Purpose in
Context, 3.1.1 Language of Page, 3.2.2 On Input, 3.3.2 Labels
or Instructions, and 4.1.2 Name, Role, and Value. Figure 6 shows the total number of errors per web page.
According to WAVE tool, the page 4.2 BIESS Emergent
Loans Login had the larger number of errors (49) followed by
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the page 3.3 MinEd Students Services (45) and the page 3.2
MinEd Students Services (43). The fact is that all the analyzed
web pages presented accessibility errors.
Fig. 6. Total Number of Accessibility Errors per Web Page
Figure 7 shows the total number of occurrences per error.
The most frequent accessibility error was Missing Alternative
Text (95) occurrences followed by Empty Link (73), and
Empty Button (39). It is important to note that the three most
recurrent errors correspond to WCAG 2.0 success criteria of
Level A.
Fig. 7. Total Number of Occurrences per Accessibilty Error
Figure 8 shows the total number of WCAG 2.0 Levels A
and AA issues found by Cynthia Says per web page. The
pages 4.2 BIESS Emergent Loans Login and 4.3 BIESS Loans
Simulator Form had the larger number of Level A and Level
AA issues (120 and 36, respectively). All the sample pages
have Level A issues. Hence, the five evaluated websites fail to
comply with the Ecuadorian regulation mandatory since 2018.
Finally, Figure 9 shows the total number of contrast errors
and alerts per web page. According to WAVE tool, the page
5.1 JC Home had the largest number of contrast errors (481)
followed by page 2.3 IESS Appointments (29), and page 3.3
MinEd Student Services (21). Regarding alerts, the pages with
the larger number of alerts were 1.1 SRI Home, followed by
5.1 JC Home, and 2.1 IESS Home (153, 145 and 135 alerts,
respectively).
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Fig. 8. Total number of WCAG Levels A and AA Issues per Web Page
It is interesting to note that the issue with more
occurrences (missing alternative text) is particularly both
important and easy to prevent and solve. Without alternative
text, the content of an image will not be available to screen
reader users or when the image is unavailable. The solution is
to add an alt attribute to the image HTML tag. The attribute
value should accurately and succinctly present the content and
function of the image. An example of a good alt text is as
follows:
<img src="students.jpg" alt="Two girls in school
uniforms reading a textbook together sitting at a library"/>
VI. CONCLUSIONS
Governments must guarantee accessibility to the
information and online services available on the websites of
all public entities. They should make special emphasis on
universal access with the goal that all citizens can exercise
their rights under equal conditions.
The application of web accessibility to the e-Government
websites is intended to provide the necessary functionalities in
a way that citizens with disabilities can use these sites to
inform and interact.
Users with disabilities include not only citizens with
permanent disabilities but also citizens with temporary
disabilities due to accidents, illnesses, surgeries or adverse
environmental conditions such as places with poor lighting or
noise. It also includes elderly citizens who have a progressive
combination of visual, hearing, motor, and cognitive
disabilities as a result of natural aging.
Regarding the tools, each tool reports in a different way,
so the results they report are not equivalent. Also, the results
vary depending on the algorithm that each tool uses for its
analysis. Cynthia Says presents an option to export the results
in a file. This option is of great help for the offline analysis of
the website.
Automated tools can only identify a limited number of
web accessibility issues. Hence, the intervention of an expert
in the accessibility review is always necessary to make
decisions about potential problems that automated tools
cannot identify. For example, if an alternative text accurately
describes the meaning of an image.
The evaluation carried out in this research on five case
studies concluded that all these websites have accessibility
problems. Moreover, none of them comply with WCAG 2.0
Level A as required by the regulation RTE INEN 288.
 Fig. 9. Total Number of Ocurrences of Contrast Errors and Alerts per Web Page

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