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Good practice Imported

Panama's Law 15 Web-Accessibility Mandate Meets a 14,571-Error Reality Check

Panama · Panama City · See the Panama profile · See the Panama City profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 31% 84/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Panama's 2016 Law 15 requires accessible public-sector websites, but a 2018 University of Panama audit of 46 institutional and corporate sites found 14,571 WCAG 2.0 errors. ANTAI and SENADIS then agreed to fold accessibility checks into monthly transparency monitoring.

14,571 errors
Total WCAG 2.0 errors found across 46 websites (2018)
46 websites
Websites audited (2018)
80 %
Failure rate on the content-adaptability criterion (WCAG 1.3) (2018)
52 %
Failure rate on the robustness/compatibility criterion (WCAG 4.1) among insurance-sector sites (2018)
Panama's Law 15 Web-Accessibility Mandate Meets a 14,571-Error Reality Check

Details

Promoter
Universidad de Panamá; ANTAI & SENADIS (Panama)
Period
2016–2019
Keywords
e-government, web accessibility, transparency, disability rights

Context

Panama's Law 15 of 2016, a reform of the 1999 disability equal-opportunity Law 42, established accessibility norms requiring public-sector websites to be reachable by persons with disabilities.

Activities

In 2018, Universidad de Panama researchers Cindy Esquivel, Donna Roper and Angel Avila published an independent audit using the TAW evaluation tool against WCAG 2.0 guidelines, testing 46 websites - 14 public institutions and 32 private companies. In January 2019, Panama's National Transparency and Access to Information Authority (ANTAI) agreed with SENADIS, the national disability secretariat, to progressively add accessibility criteria to ANTAI's existing monthly Transparency Monitoring of institutional websites.

Results

The 2018 audit logged 14,571 errors in total, concentrated on the Perceivable principle, with an 80% failure rate on the 'adaptable' content criterion (1.3) and up to 52% on the robustness/compatibility criterion (4.1) among insurance-sector sites.

Conclusions

This is a cautionary case: the only quantified compliance data available is the 2018 academic snapshot showing minimal compliance two years after the law took effect, and no later independent audit was found confirming whether the 2019 monitoring agreement subsequently improved accessibility outcomes.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year) — Law 15 enacted 2016; independent academic audit published 2018; ANTAI-SENADIS monitoring agreement announced January 2019.
Staffing & skills
Universidad de Panama researchers (Cindy Esquivel, Donna Roper, Angel Avila) conducted the independent audit, ANTAI (National Transparency and Access to Information Authority) and SENADIS (national disability secretariat) jointly agreed to extend monitoring

Conditions for success

  • Using an existing, pre-established recurring monitoring process (ANTAI's monthly Transparency Monitoring) as the vehicle for adding accessibility checks, rather than creating a new mechanism from scratch
  • Independent academic audit using a standardised tool (TAW) against WCAG 2.0 criteria

Common failure modes

  • Only a single academic snapshot audit exists two years after the law took effect, with 14,571 errors found across just 46 sites
  • No later independent audit was found confirming whether the 2019 monitoring agreement improved accessibility outcomes

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes CERV — Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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