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Good practice Imported

OTAI Audit of 150 Public Platforms — Evidence Base for Costa Rica's Directriz 051-MTSS-MICITT

Costa Rica · San José · See the Costa Rica profile · See the San José profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 9% 96/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

A university observatory whose evaluation team includes blind testers audited 150 Costa Rican public digital platforms: only 2 reached WCAG A and AA, and 129 (88%) missed the basic level. The findings became the evidence base for Directriz 051-MTSS-MICITT.

150
Platforms audited (2018)
2
Platforms reaching level A and AA
129 (88%)
Platforms failing to reach basic level
OTAI Audit of 150 Public Platforms — Evidence Base for Costa Rica's Directriz 051-MTSS-MICITT

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Observatorio de Tecnologías Accesibles e Inclusivas (OTAI), Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, with CONAPDIS
Period
2018–2019 (audit); directive in force since 2019
Keywords
public administration, e-government, web accessibility, disability, higher education

Context

OTAI, at the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, working with CONAPDIS, audited 150 digital platforms of Costa Rican public organisations during 2018, spanning educational, financial, municipal, executive and judicial bodies.

Activities

The audit assessed platforms against WCAG and national standard INTE ISO/IEC 40500-2017, with blind evaluators as permanent team members pairing manual task-based testing with automated tools.

Results

Only two platforms reached both level A and AA; 15 further sites reached level A; 129 sites (88%) did not reach the basic level at all. The audit became the direct evidence base for Directriz 051-MTSS-MICITT, issued 25 June 2019, requiring public bodies to apply WCAG 2.1 with three- and six-year compliance deadlines.

Conclusions

The directive binds the executive branch only and carries no sanctions, and no published follow-up audit was found confirming whether the 2022 level-A or 2025 level-AA deadlines were actually met — the strength of this case lies in the baseline measurement and audit-to-regulation pipeline, not demonstrated compliance outcomes.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year)
Staffing & skills
OTAI evaluation team including permanent blind evaluators, CONAPDIS

Conditions for success

  • blind evaluators as permanent team members, not consulted after the fact
  • audit findings formally adopted into binding government directive

Common failure modes

  • directive covers the executive branch only, with no sanctions
  • no published follow-up audit confirms whether compliance deadlines were met

Commonly funded by

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Data sources

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