Twenty Years Later: Measuring the Accessibility of the U.S. State Government Websites

Authors

• Tanya Goette, Georgia College & State UniversityFollow
• Sean Lynch, Georgia College & State University

Abstract

Web accessibility remains an important issue as individuals rely on Internet access and web site accessibility for daily functions. It is an unwritten rule that people should access an organization’s website to search for answers before calling to ask a human (or a bot). Over twenty years ago, in 2005, a study (White, Goette, & Young) was conducted to analyze the accessibility of state government web sites. The assumption was made that state governments should be setting an example of following accessibility guidelines. The study found that about a third of the home pages did not meet basic accessibility guidelines. In February 2026, the home sites of all 50 states and the District of Columbia were evaluated again. This time, using the Axe browser extension, 12 states had no errors. Using a Python program as a checker, 13 states had no errors. Putting the results of the two methods together, seven sites had 0 errors. This resulted in 86.27% of the 51 sites not meeting the April 2026 requirements. Because the deadline was April 26, 2026, the sites were tested again on Monday, April 27, 2026. Two states had corrected their errors, resulting in nine states with no errors. Amazingly, 17 states still had more than five issues with 15 additional states still having one to three issues.

Recommended Citation

Goette, Tanya and Lynch, Sean (2026) "Twenty Years Later: Measuring the Accessibility of the U.S. State Government Websites," Communications of the IIMA: Vol. 24: Iss. 1, Article 17.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.58729/1941-6687.1497
Available at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/ciima/vol24/iss1/17