A new report published by the Ennis Information Age Services shows that a high percentage of public sector websites are inaccessible to a portion of the population. The EIAS ‘Web Accessibility’ report provides an analysis of the standards of accessibility achieved by 27 public sector websites, using eight criteria, all part of achieving WAI compliance ‘A’, ‘AA’ and ‘AAA’ respectively.
The findings of the research are applicable to government and business, and it is hoped will help them to understand the requirements of current website guidelines and regulations. Over 59 per cent of sites examined either provided no scaling at all or the level of scaling was inadequate. More than half the sites failed
to allow users to resize their fonts; resizing font is important for people with low vision, those with cognitive limitations such as dyslexia and users who may have to view the screen for long periods of time or from a distance.
Of the 27 sites examined by EIAS, almost 75 per cent of sites did not have access keys. Access keys allow users who are unable to control a mouse as a primary means of navigation to use the site more effectively through the use of keyboard shortcuts.
The report, released at the Irish Internet Association’s Internet Congress in September, is a follow up to research released in April by EIAS, which highlighted the need for a change in the current web practices of public sector websites.
13/12/04
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