Accessibility for all, from all
by Rob Mason ~ February 26th, 2007 Filed under: Accessibility, Web standards.
Interesting survey provided by SiteMorse covering the websites for FTSE 100 companies in December last year. Makes for some interesting reading if you have an interest in Accessibility and Web Standards.
It seems as though large corporations are the slowest to react to accessibility. Which is interesting considering how risk averse and legal-driven they tend to be. Overall the scores were:
- 4.56% tests found functional failure
- 73.9% pages failed code standards
- 25.8% pages failed accessibility (level A)
- 94.9% pages failed accessibility (level AA)
Nearly 5% had functional failures meaning the websites simply didn’t do what you’d expect them to do when you asked them to. Frankly this is inexcusable, especially for big companies who take stock in brand and corporate image. This does nothing to help them. Ironically BAE Systems, one of the world’s foremost defence engineering companies, came last in this section. For someone who is “engaged in the development, delivery and support of advanced defence and aerospace systems in the air, on land and at sea” you’d hope this lack of attention to detail didn’t filter through to their end products.
Nearly three quarters of sites surveyed failed against code standards, which plainly shows how ignorant these companies are of web standards. When you think about some of the companies involved (Royal Bank Of Scotland Group, Astrazeneca, etc) all of whom reside in highly regulated and governance-led sectors, it’s doubly saddening.
A quarter failed basic level accessibility. Since the introduction of the Disabilities and Discriminations Act (DDA) in 1995 (and subsequently renewed and re-enforced in 2005) it means that all companies offering a product or service must conform to the act. This also covers having a website. Maybe this is less about not caring and more about the lack of legal precedent in this area. Until there is a test case, no-one is going to do anything about it.
Working in a large corporate it’s easy to see why these things happen. Most of the time business people (like marketing, sales or managers) see accessibility as a technical problem. Whilst the technical people see it as a thorn in their side. Their both wrong.
Standards based, accessible and functional sites deliver many benefits, including long term viability of a site (therefore lowering re-development costs), greater market coverage (more access = more potential customers) and corporate responsibility (shows you care).