Web sites of leading UK companies fail on accessibility

The findings are from a survey by digital design company Nomensa.

Disabled access is about making web sites usable by those with disabilities such as sensory 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).

There is consensus that the best practice is to comply at least with a minimum accessibility level defined by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C. It is widely believed that this minimum standard – known as Level One or Level A – is the standard required to fulfil a legal obligation in the UK's Disability Discrimination Act of 1995. The Act states that it is unlawful for "a provider of services" to discriminate against a disabled person in failing to comply with its provisions.

The survey, conducted in the last quarter of 2003, found that 79% of sites surveyed did not provide alternative text for all images and 56% did not use appropriate alternative text. Seventy-seven percent of sites did not allow the font size to be rescaled, which is important for visually impaired users.

A massive 99% of sites did not use valid HTML code to construct 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.

Conformance with the W3C standard was achieved by only 11% of sites, proving, said the report, that

"Many of the FTSE 100 have a long way to go in providing a public-facing web site that supports a diverse range of people with some form of disability."

Nomensa warned:

"If the guidelines are not used as a starting point from which to implement accessibility, there can be little expectation that a web accessibility and usability strategy will be successful. Sites without a flourishing strategy of this kind not only stand to endanger customer levels, they run the more serious risk of falling foul of the anticipated measures for the Disability Discrimination Act."

Only 10% of the FTSE 100 sites showed a good site structure and layout but on the positive side, almost half of the sites included clear, descriptive links. Forty-nine percent of sites had sufficiently descriptive page titles to satisfy the survey but only one site included access keys – allowing users to navigate by means of keyboard shortcuts rather than a mouse.

The report said:

"Along with valid code, the inclusion of access keys ranks as the least successful area within the review and the results indicate that more understanding of such techniques is extremely desirable."

With an average "score" of 3.76 out of 15, the FTSE 100 companies compare unfavourably with an earlier survey by Nomensa of the top 100 University web sites. The average University score was 9 – a total achieved by only 6 companies in the present study.

The top-rated site was Barclays, followed by Exel Group, HSBC Goup and Lloyds TSB. Bottom of the survey was Severn Trent, along with Hanson and Capita Group.

A copy of the report can be obtained through www.nomensa.com