Web sites are rubbish for disabled access: UN

by Angus Kidman

Wednesday, 06 December 2006

Virtually no major web sites are designed with disability access guidelines in mind, despite those principles being in place for years, a new report from the United Nations has found.

The study, commissioned by the UN to commemorate the International Day of Disabled Persons, examined a representative web site in five key categories -- travel, finance, media, politics and retail -- across twenty countries. Of those hundred sites, just three, representing government agencies in the UK, Germany and Spain, met even the basic requirements of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) laid down by the W3C.

"Many of the sites investigated could be easily upgraded to remove the obstacles that prevent many people with disabilities from using the sites," the study report by accessibility consultants Nomensa said. "However, the majority of sites need considerable work."

Common failings included failing to include alternate text to describe images for the visually impaired (a problem on 93% of the sites), the use of JavaScript, which is incompatible with many screen readers (73%), and the use of link text with an unclear destination (97%). A whopping 98% of sites did not conform with basic W3C standards, making compliance with the accessibility standards highly unlikely.
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