Zero of Eight: Nigeria's Federal and State Government Websites Fail Every Baseline Accessibility Test

Nigeria has an estimated 153 million internet users and around 35 million people living with disabilities, according to the National Commission for Persons with Disabilities (NCPWD). A May 2026 TechCabal investigation audited eight major public websites — the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Lagos State University (LASU), the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), the Federal Inland Revenue Service (now the Nigeria Revenue Service), the Lagos State Government portal, and the NCPWD's own website — using WAVE WebAIM, axe DevTools and the WebAIM contrast checker against a WCAG 2.1 AA baseline. Every single site failed: none offered a language toggle, font-size control, high-contrast mode, or plain-language alternative. The NCPWD, the body legally mandated to enforce disability rights, scored zero on its own website.
This was not an isolated finding. In July 2024, the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) assessed the websites of all 36 Nigerian states plus the Federal Capital Territory against NITDA's own Standards and Guidelines for Government Websites, which require adoption of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). FIJ found 26 of 37 assessed government websites non-compliant, and rated 14 as unusable for people with disabilities, citing missing text alternatives for images among other defects. A separate June 2025 TechCabal investigation found the same pattern of unlabelled buttons, missing alt text, inaccessible forms and poor screen-reader compatibility spanning government portals, banks, fintechs, e-commerce platforms and telecoms.
Nigeria is not without a legal framework: the Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities (Prohibition) Act 2018 mandated accessible services, with a five-year compliance grace period that expired in 2024, and NITDA's guidelines already required WCAG conformance. In July 2024, Communications Minister Bosun Tijani announced a national Web Design Standards initiative, developed with NITDA and the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation, promising a public toolkit within 8 to 10 weeks of its July 2025 launch. As of August 2026, FIJ reported it could not find the promised toolkit published anywhere, nor any evidence it had received Federal Executive Council approval or been implemented across government agencies — even though the Ministry's own 2025 Year in Review listed the initiative's launch as a completed achievement.
The case illustrates a recurring failure mode: a country can have accessibility legislation, published technical guidelines, and even an announced national design-standards programme, and still have every audited government website fail basic accessibility tests years after the legal compliance deadline has passed, because none of those instruments were backed by independent verification or enforcement.

Read the full analysis: https://techcabal.com/2026/05/18/why-no-nigerian-government-website-is-actually-accessible/