Accessibility is not just about making sites accessible to the disabled, which is a legal requirement. It's also about ensuring that the links work, that the download times are acceptable and that the site does not restrict users who access the site from a range of devices or with browsers that cannot cope with, for example, Flash or JavaScript.
Perhaps most important, however, is to keep a site up and running. So it seems ironic that the site rated top among all FTSE 100 companies' sites has been down for several days. Packaging firm Bunzl.com had a good site when tested by Business2www – but at the time of writing, the domain name simply redirects to the site of Virtual Internet.
There is consensus that best practice for ensuring disabled access to a site is to comply at least with a minimum accessibility level for any site defined by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C. However the report shows that one fifth of top companies are failing to achieve even this level.
The survey considered 96 of the FTSE 100 companies (of which there are in fact only 99). The survey took the form of a once-only test on each site, in the last week of July this year. Three companies are not included because, according to the report, they "had sufficiently impenetrable problems that they could not be tested at all". These were the BAE, Dixons and the Gallaher Group web sites.
Laurence Shaw of Business2www told OUT-LAW.COM that his company had noticed the problem with Bunzl.com last Thursday. Business2www is the developer of SiteMorse, software that performs diagnostic testing for web sites.
"It may not be their mistake that is causing the site to be down," said Shaw. "But it makes them difficult to find, difficult to contact and they potentially lose business. It highlights the importance of using software to check that your site is accessible."