Evaluating the accessibility and performance of government websites in Nigeria

Government websites in Nigeria are becoming increasingly crucial for the provision of information and services to citizens. The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) published The Standards and Guidelines for Government Websites to ensure that Nigerian government websites are efficient, equitable and accessible to all regardless of their abilities and device of choice. This study aims to evaluate the accessibility and performance of government websites in compliance with NITDA’s standards and guidelines. Freely available website evaluation tools were used to examine the accessibility and performance of 50 government websites in Nigeria. Accessibility was evaluated by checking for conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 level AA, and performance through metrics related to loading time and speed, interaction response time, and visual stability on both desktop and mobile devices. The results reveal significant issues with both the accessibility and performance of Nigerian government websites. None of the evaluated websites was found to be compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA; only 52% of the websites were semi-compliant, while 48% were non-compliant. Similarly, none of the evaluated websites passed the performance tests on any device type. The results suggest the urgent need to improve the accessibility and performance of Nigerian government websites to ensure efficient and equitable access to online information and services for all citizens. This paper provides recommendations for NITDA and the Nigerian government that could lead to these needed improvements.