Government Websites are not accessible
According to a recent study, only 3% of 436 public sector websites achieve a minimum standard of accessibility, the report published by the UK Cabinet Office. And in another test made on UK based gov websites for Accessibility Compliance, results of automated testing against the mandatory requirements of Priority 1 (A) Accessibility:
- 196 sites had 0% of pages failing Accessibility A
- 338 sites scored less than 10% of pages with failures
- 17 sites had more than 99% of pages failing Accessibility A.
why Government Websites should be accessible ?
The main reason behind talking about accessibility of Governmental websites is their existance reasons which is serving informations for people. If we talk about a website for childrens we can have some special considerations, if a website is for business and professionals it could have other considerations too, but a website dedicated for everybody should fit the largest possible population and at least validate the minimum level A of accessibility.
The research was carried out by AbilityNet, Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID), Dublin City University and the Society for Information Technology Management (Socitm). The reasons for failure are no different to similar studies of private sector websites, such as text alternatives missing from images and navigation that becomes impossible for anyone unable to use a mouse.
The resolution recommanded Government websites to be at least compliant with level AA, and the Parliament Resolution of June 2002 of the European commission e-Europe talked about this as a part of their development action of Europe
5- whereas access of disabled and elderly people to public websites and their contents is an opportunity to improve their participation in society
I think this sentence resume everything that could be said with WAI and accessibility compliance, its not only technical issue we need to have in our websites, but its also a choice of the government to improve the participation of people with disabilities in the society.
