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Good practice Imported

KDU–Kelaniya Guidelines — Community-Tested Web Accessibility Fixes for Sri Lanka's Visually Impaired Users

Sri Lanka · Ratmalana · See the Sri Lanka profile

Evidence: Quasi-experimental Top 82% 52/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

A 2016 IEEE audit found over 90% of 47 Sri Lankan government sites inaccessible to disabled users. A 2023 study then co-tested nine fixes with blind and low-vision focus groups, finding unanimous moderate-to-high satisfaction with semantic, keyboard-navigable design.

47 sites
Government sites audited (2016 baseline) (2016)
90 % of 47 sites
Sites found inaccessible or inconvenient in practice (2016) (2016)
0 sites
Sites reaching full WCAG 2.0 compliance (2016) (2016)
9 interventions
Accessibility interventions tested (2023) (2023)
10 participants
Focus-group participants (paired-website test) (2023)
20 participants
Focus-group participants (semantic navigation & keyboard-shortcut test) (2023)
10 %
Satisfaction rated 'very high' (semantic navigation test) (2023)
45 %
Satisfaction rated 'high' (semantic navigation test) (2023)
45 %
Satisfaction rated 'moderate' (semantic navigation test) (2023)
5 experts
Independent experts validating the recommendations
9 %
People over 40 with vision impairment nationally (Ministry of Health estimate)
KDU–Kelaniya Guidelines — Community-Tested Web Accessibility Fixes for Sri Lanka's Visually Impaired Users

Details

Promoter
General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University & University of Kelaniya
Period
2016–2023
Keywords
higher education, disability rights, web design

Context

Sri Lanka's Ministry of Health estimates roughly 9% of people over 40 live with some vision impairment, yet as of 2016 no dedicated design guidance existed for building accessible government or public websites in the country.

Objectives

Establish an accessibility baseline for Sri Lankan government websites, then co-develop and test concrete design fixes directly with blind and low-vision users rather than relying on automated compliance scans alone.

Activities

A 2016 IEEE audit tested 47 government websites with the WAVE tool; a 2023 design-science study then tested nine accessibility interventions (alt text, semantic headings, resizable text, keyboard navigation, audio narration, Braille-exportable print) with blind and low-vision focus groups rating paired websites with and without the features, validated by five independent accessibility experts.

Results

The 2016 audit found more than 90% of the 47 sites remained inaccessible or inconvenient in practice, with none reaching full WCAG 2.0 compliance. The 2023 study's 20-person focus group testing semantic navigation and keyboard shortcuts reported no low or no-satisfaction ratings at all (10% very high, 45% high, 45% moderate); versions without key features drew explicit complaints of being 'difficult' or 'very inconvenient'.

Conclusions

This remains a small-sample academic study — 10 to 20 participants per test — rather than a deployed national standard; the authors identify no follow-on institutional programme that adopted the guidelines at scale.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
2016 audit: Gopinath, Senthooran, Lojenaa and Kartheeswaran (IEEE TENSYMP); 2023 study: researchers from General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University and the University of Kelaniya

Conditions for success

  • Interventions co-tested directly with blind and low-vision focus groups, not just automated tooling like WAVE
  • Final recommendations validated by five independent web-accessibility experts

Common failure modes

  • Versions without audio narration drew explicit user complaints of being 'difficult' or 'very inconvenient', showing which features are load-bearing for users rather than optional

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

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