Comments on: Déjà Vu All Over Again?

By: paul canning

paul canning — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:24:55 +0000

Have blogged a response to this article here
tinyurl.com/deb6es

By: Andrew Hart

Andrew Hart — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:58:01 +0000

I’ve been working with Government clients for years now and the biggest hindrance to implementing accessibility is the laughably weak ‘pressure’ from central Government.

Everyone know that “Existing central government department websites must conform to ‘AA’ by December 2009 and all other government agencies and non- departmental bodies by March 2011″ [http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=191] …but how many times has this deadline changed? I’ve lost count!

Back in May 2002 the Office of the e-Envoy (long since disbanded as a bad joke) issued the “Guidelines for UK Government Websites” along with a mandate of “conform or lose the funding for your website which will be managed centrally by the e-Envoy dept.” This concerned many of my clients and action was urgent.

The Government had no backbone and was soon extending deadlines and watering down penalties for non-conforming websites…and NOTHING has changed since!

The Disability Discrimination Act is law and it’s about time the Government started enforcing it. Sadly this is not going to happen any time soon.

There are some ways to speed up the process:

1) pressure Government through lobbying and legal action
2) if you own or run a website embrace accessibility and reap the rewards (better SEO, greater market reach, public response to ethical trading)
3) if you design websites build accessibility in as STANDARD…not an optional extra

Annual reviews of Government failures are important but are only one part of the picture. Real change comes from getting involved!

By: James Coltham

James Coltham — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:45:17 +0000

We all know that WCAG 1.0 is outdated, especially now that it has been superseded by version 2, so the 8% stat is fairly meaningless (many of the conditions for failure are arbitrary and no longer relevant, as Bim herself alludes to). The RNIB’s own rating system seems far more pertinent – based on real-life accessibility – so let’s have more discussion around that and less of the talk about déjà vu!

I look forward to seeing what results come next year, when measured against WCAG 2.0, but it’s interesting to note that the COI’s Delivering Inclusive Websites guidance does not yet refer to these.

By: Stuart Harrison

Stuart Harrison — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:05:09 +0000

(I’ll try and post my comments in the right article this time!)

Accessibility has to be seen as more than just a binary pass / fail scenario. Just because a few pages fail on a few minor points doesn’t mean the whole site is inaccessible. Sure, point out the problems so they can be fixed, but don’t brand websites with the label ‘inaccessible’ just because of a few issues.

And don’t get me started on suppliers. The main problem is that web teams aren’t consulted before deals are entered into and contracts are signed. As a local authority web person, I’ve found myself on more than one occasion being forced to implement systems that I know are inaccessible, but I’ve got no way of blocking their release.