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

Panama's Law 15 of 2016, published in Gaceta Oficial No. 28046-B on 6 June 2016 as a reform of the 1999 disability equal-opportunity Law 42, established accessibility norms for the websites of public-sector institutions, obligating government bodies to make their online information reachable to persons with disabilities.
In 2018, researchers Cindy Esquivel, Donna Roper and Ángel Ávila at the Universidad de Panamá published an empirical audit in the university's own journal, Centros: Revista Científica Universitaria. Using the TAW evaluation tool against the WCAG 2.0 guidelines, they tested 46 websites — 14 public institutions (28%) and 32 private companies (72%) — and logged 14,571 errors in total. Violations concentrated on the Perceivable principle (media and technology-sector sites showed the highest counts) and on specific success criteria: 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.
In January 2019, Panama's National Transparency and Access to Information Authority (ANTAI) announced an agreement with SENADIS, the national disability secretariat, to progressively add accessibility criteria to ANTAI's existing monthly Transparency Monitoring of institutional websites, and committed to bringing its own site up to those standards first. 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.

Read the full analysis: https://revistas.up.ac.pa/index.php/centros/article/view/290