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Good practice Imported

eMAG & TIC Web Acessibilidade — Brazil's Mandatory E-Government Accessibility Model and Independent Compliance Monitor

Brazil · Brasília · See the Brazil profile · See the Brasília profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 30% 88/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Brazil has required WCAG-aligned accessibility on federal sites since 2007 under eMAG, but an independent survey of 418 gov.br sites and 267,090 pages found only one page fully free of errors — a mandate paired with honest measurement of its own shortfall.

418
Government websites assessed
267,090
Pages assessed
0
Sites scoring 95-100% conformance
60
Sites scoring 85-94.99% conformance
1 of 267,090
Pages with zero detected errors
99%+
Pages with HTML markup validity failures
eMAG & TIC Web Acessibilidade — Brazil's Mandatory E-Government Accessibility Model and Independent Compliance Monitor

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Secretaria de Governo Digital (SGD) & NIC.br / Ceweb.br
Period
2007–present
Keywords
digital accessibility, e-government, public sector ICT, disability inclusion, independent monitoring

Context

Brazil mandated web accessibility for federal public administration sites in 2007 (Portaria SLTI/MP no. 3), institutionalising eMAG, a WCAG-aligned accessibility model maintained by the Secretaria de Governo Digital with the Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Sul.

Objectives

To make federal e-government websites accessible under a mandatory standard, and to measure real compliance independently rather than relying on agency self-reporting.

Activities

NIC.br's Ceweb.br programme runs TIC Web Acessibilidade, an annual survey built with the Federal University of Minas Gerais, that automatically scores gov.br websites against eMAG/WCAG criteria.

Results

The first full collection assessed 418 government websites and 267,090 pages: zero sites scored in the 95-100% conformance band, only 60 sites scored 85-94.99%, and just one page out of 267,090 had zero detected errors. The most common failure — basic HTML markup validity — appeared on more than 99% of pages evaluated.

Conclusions

Pairing a mandatory standard with an independent, large-scale, recurring public audit turns a paper mandate into a measurable, longitudinal record of a persistent implementation gap, giving reformers concrete targets rather than aspirational claims.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — A recurring independent survey run by a separate organisation (NIC.br) alongside an existing government standard — low direct cost, mostly automated scoring at scale.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — eMAG mandatory since 2007; TIC Web Acessibilidade runs as a recurring annual survey, with the cited results from its first full collection.
Staffing & skills
Secretaria de Governo Digital (SGD), Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Sul (eMAG standard co-authors), NIC.br / Ceweb.br (independent monitor), Federal University of Minas Gerais (survey methodology partner)

Conditions for success

  • Independent, university-backed measurement separate from the mandating agency, avoiding agency self-certification
  • Large, near-census sample (hundreds of sites, hundreds of thousands of pages) rather than a spot-check

Common failure modes

  • Zero sites reached the top conformance band in the first collection, and a basic markup-validity defect affected over 99% of pages, showing the mandate has not yet translated into compliance

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

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