The findings are from a survey of the sites of FTSE 100
companies, carried out by digital design company Nomensa.
Disabled access is about making web sites usable by those with
disabilities such as sensory, cognitive or mobility problems. A
visually impaired internet user can use a screen reader to
translate the contents of web pages for speech synthesisers or
Braille displays; but the user will struggle to understand web
pages if, for example, images are displayed on the page without a
text alternative (which can be provided in HTML by an ALT tag).
Nomensa found no sites that achieved a higher rating than the
minimum accessibility level defined by the World Wide Web
Consortium, or W3C, known as Level A.
According to Nomensa, only 41% of sites provided alternative
text for all images, while only 56% of the alternative text used
was actually correct. Around 62% of sites did not allow the font
size to be rescaled, which is important for visually impaired
users.
A massive 92% of the corporate web sites failed to use access
keys properly, if at all, denying users the chance to navigate by
means of keyboard shortcuts rather than a mouse, while 99% of web
sites did not use valid HTML code in constructing their sites, with
the result that many of their web pages are displayed incorrectly
in some way – a problem exacerbated when screen readers are
employed by disabled users.
Only 7% of the FTSE 100 sites showed a good site structure and
layout, according to Nomensa, but on the positive side, 76% of web
sites had sufficiently descriptive page titles to satisfy the
survey.
The most accessible company web sites, according to the survey,
include the Gallaher Group, Prudential, Centrica and HBOS. Bottom
of the league were the BOC Group, WM Morrison, Whitbread and
Wolseley.
Web Accessibility: Best Practice and the
Law
London, 6 July 2004: This half-day course from OUT-LAW and
usability and accessibility experts User Vision will give you a
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requirements for making your web site accessible.
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