Published on 2006-12-16 10:12:59
According to this new audit of the United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs commissioned Nomensa on determining how accessible the Internet is for persons with disabilities, only three websites achieved Single A accessibility over 100 homepages evaluated during the audit. In the audit a website was chosen to represent the sectors (Travel, Finance, Media, Politics, and Retail) of the 20 countries, forming a matrix of 100 websites. The homepage of each website was measured against the globally recognised benchmark for web accessibility: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 1.0 (WCAG 1.0). The web is far from being accessible.
The performance across different sectors was varied, with central government, retail and banking offering the strongest (or joint strongest) accessibility performance across all countries.
Levels of web accessibility across the 20 countries were lower than anticipated, given the presence of disability legislation in some countries and the fact that the WCAG have been in existence for over half a decade. Apart from the three sites that achieved Single-A accessibility, there is a global failure to provide the most basic level of web accessibility for people with disabilities.
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