Public sector websites are more user friendly to disabled people than their commercial counterparts, but the Government still needs to work harder to improve accessibility, according to an influential new report. An investigation by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) finds that levels of website accessibility are "unacceptable" across both the public and private sectors.
Its study covers business, leisure, web services, e-commerce and government sites. Compared to other sectors, the Government is a high achiever with 32% of home pages reaching an acceptable level of compliance with global website accessibility standards. Commercial sectors had compliance levels of just 15%.
The DRC wants the Government to take action to improve the situation across all sectors. The report includs recommendations that:
- the Government should provide more funding for access to technology for disabled people in order to bridge the digital divide;
- health and social services should respond to website accessibility needs;
- best practice guidance and a formal accreditation process should be drawn up by the Government.
Together with researchers at London's City University, the DRC investigated a sample of 1,000 public websites. A disabled users group subjected 100 sites to an in depth evaluation and the views of over 700 businesses were canvassed.
Quelle: Kablenet, 14.04.2004
