Category: stats

The United Nations commissioned a report on web accessibility with very disappointing results. Only 3 home pages from 100 web sites achieved Single-A accessibility from the WCAG 1.0 guidelines (the lowest level of web accessibility compliance). The sites were chosen from 20 countries in 5 categories (Travel, Finance, Media, Politics, and Retail).

Also, here’s a blog post about the issue along with a lot of discussion at 456 Berea St: 97% of websites are still inaccessible.

An article from the BBC “Retail websites fail access test” discusses the lack on web accessibility in the largest retail web sites in the United Kingdom.

It was found that 30 of the UK’s most important retail web sites had significant accessibility issues. Here are some findings:

• Only 3 terms and conditions pages achieved basic accessibility standards
• 23 of the 30 web sites used search and navigational features that would not work without Javascript
• 29 of the 30 web sites do not use shortcut links to enable people to navigate the page without using a mouse

Sixty percent of government web sites fail web accessibility tests. And that’s the UK, which is much more aware and active on web accessibility and web standards that most countries, including the U.S.A. Tests were conducted by the University of Southampton.

BBC Article, Government sites fail web tests