Accountability & Web Accessibility of the Portuguese official municipal Websites

Local government is a political power close to citizens and constitutes a mainstay of democracy. Because of their mission, the guidelines promoted by local government must be embedded in strategies of accountability and public communication. In that sense, it is worthwhile to ask if "local government accountability is being an inclusive concept?" In Portugal, transparency of municipalities is being accessed through the Municipality Transparency Index (MTI). The aims of the paper are, firstly, to examine the availability of local government information on websites of municipalities and, secondly, to present the results of the web accessibility based on W3C guidelines on a quantitative evaluation, using an automated tool. Based on the main concepts of transparency and accessibility, it explored static association between MTI and web accessibility. This study contributed to the discussion about transparency as a social value and is of great importance for local policy makers and civic movements in favor of disabled people.