Councils must make methodical, regular tests on websites to ensure they are accessible to all, according to a Socitm report.
A world denied, which supplements the Society of Information Technology Management's (Socitm's) March 2008 Better Connected survey, states that the vast majority of people involved in managing council websites are committed to making them accessible to disabled people, but with varying degrees of success.
"In order to produce fair and accurate results, we must use testing that is consistent and transparent," states the report.
The report claims that only thorough testing will ensure that accessibility mistakes, such as a lack of alternative text for images, are routinely picked up so that sites remain technically accessible.
Socitm research claims that only eight percent of local government websites are fully accessible to people with disabilities, adding that many are inaccessible, obscuring potentially useful information.
The report includes the following recommendations for good practice in local government:
- A commitment to accessible websites
- All procurements should have accessibility criteria built into the specification
- Every member of the team must understand the reasons, the techniques and impacts of accessible websites
- All those who provide content should have access to training in the basic techniques for achieving accessibility
- The central web team should have quality-assurance procedures to check that the site remains accessible
- Automated testing tools can take much of the hard work out of quality assurance, but it is critical not to assume they are sufficient alone
- Find out first-hand from people with disabilities how they experience the use of an individual website
In a foreword to the document, accessibility expert Julia Howell wrote: "I've been involved in campaigning to raise awareness of the importance of accessible web design practice in local and central government since the Cabinet Office published the Modernising Government white paper in 1999."
"Almost a decade later, surveys such as the Better Connected reports would suggest that the picture is bleak and getting bleaker," Howell added.
