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State of the eNation Reports
On-line newspapers failing disabled people
18 January 2008
The UK’s ten most widely read newspapers are effectively barring millions of disabled people from obtaining up-to-date information by failing to meet minimum accessibility standards on their websites, according to the second AbilityNet “State of the eNation” report published this week.
Not one of the ten on-line newspapers audited and checked for accessibility using a comprehensive series of both manual and automated tools (including the enterprise version of Bobby 'AccessibilityXM', satisfied the criteria required to facilitate access for users with visual impairment, dyslexia or those with a physical disability making mouse use difficult. Thus the selected publications – the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Mirror, the News of the World, the Daily Telegraph, the Sun, the Times, the Daily and Sunday Express and the Daily Mail – are preventing up to 15% of the population from enjoying the benefits of accessing news and current affairs on-line.
The Guardian’s website (www.guardian.co.uk) emerged as the most accessible, but in company with the Daily and Sunday Express site (www.express.co.uk), it could only manage a two-star rating on a five-star scale and still fails to meet a base level of accessibility.
The remaining eight sites were given a single star rating and dubbed “very inaccessible” by AbilityNet, with the Sun (www.thesun.co.uk) and the News of the World (www.newsoftheworld.co.uk) deemed to have “the most serious issues of accessibility of all those tested.”
Much of the Sun’s and the News of the World’s sites’ content and critical functionality, the AbilityNet report notes, depend on pictures which are also links to other pages. The ‘tool tips’ upon which blind visitors and text browser users rely as spoken descriptions of pictures, were virtually absent from both sites. Without ‘tool tips’ both the images and the links are invisible and the end user excluded as a result.
In addition, pictures of text have been used instead of actual text. This not only means that the user cannot modify font size or colour contrast – essential for those with visual impairment or dyslexia – it also prevents screen reader users from reading the content as these images do not carry ‘tool tips’ either.
Other drawbacks common to most of the sites tested include the reliance on mini programs called Javascript that are built into a page and often not recognised (and therefore rendered unreadable) by many older browsers, or some specialist browsers used by those with vision impairment. Although not usually critical to the functionality of the site as a whole, it still excludes many users from this content. The FT site, for instance, depends on Javascript to display both stock information and advertisements. Finally, the text size on most sites has also been ‘hard-coded’ so that it cannot be enlarged – so vital for many visitors who have vision impairment.
Read the full State of the eNation report
With a potential market of 1.6 million registered blind users as well as a further 3.4 million with disabilities1 preventing them from using the standard keyboard, screen and mouse set-up with ease, e-businesses are losing out on some £50 - £60 billion per year2 buying power. As this survey shows, many disabled people are also being excluded from the benefit of up-to-the-minute on-line information and current affairs provided by our top newspapers.
Whilst Internet access can offer life-enhancing and life-changing opportunities; the vision of an inclusive ‘e-society’ depends on website accessibility for everyone, whatever their disability or the technology they employ. For many disabled people, especially those with restricted mobility and/or visual impairment, access to the news on-line is an important way of staying in touch and abreast of the knowledge that most of us take for granted.
“Internet access to information for disabled people isn’t
only a commercial and moral duty of care,” said Shuna Kennedy, AbilityNet’s
CEO. “According to the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) it has
been a legal requirement to have an accessible website since 1999”
she pointed out.
State of the eNation reports
AbilityNet is at the forefront of a number of initiatives both at home and abroad to improve website accessibility for disabled people and provide both private and public sector organisations with the expertise they need to ensure that their websites are meeting guideline levels of compliance (such as those recommended by the W3C/WA1).
This survey of on-line newspapers is the second of a planned series of ‘State of the eNation’ reports designed as an awareness campaign to draw attention to the issue of accessibility and to help disabled people find the best websites for their needs. The top sites selected by search engine ranking in a number of specific industries are being evaluated and the findings published. AbilityNet’s first report focused on the top airline websites, which produced similar results with none meeting basic accessibility standards. Future sectors to be reviewed will include on-line banking services and the retail sector.
“All the newspaper companies involved in the present survey were
contacted a month before and then again immediately prior to the publication
of the results. They were asked to make a public commitment to improving
the accessibility of their sites and, to date, only The Guardian has taken
this important decision – a step which we welcome unequivocally,”
commented Robin Christopherson, AbilityNet’s Web Consultancy Manager,
who is himself blind.
- HumanITy - 2003
- Employers Forum on Disability - 2003
3 November 2003
Issued by the AbilityNet Press Office
01926 429595
Editor’s notes
W3C/WAI
These guidelines, first published in May 1999, provide a framework for accessibility. There are over 65 individual W3C checkpoints arranged in three levels of compliance to test for and only about a third can be assessed for conformity by an automated tool such as Watchfire’s Bobby.
Euroaccessibility project
On 28 April 2003 in Paris, 24 European organisations from 12 countries agreed to establish a certification authority for web accessibility leading to an Accessibility Quality Mark. AbilityNet joined other disability charities, universities and communications companies in cooperation with US-based W3C/WA1, to pursue this objective, which aims to harmonise standards Europe-wide.
For more information:
- Email accessibility@AbilityNet.org.uk
- Phone 0800 269545
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