If people cannot access online services due to accessibility issues, then it would be fairly safe to say that egovernment is not succeeding – it’s probably failing.
Richard Hearne has done a fascinating analysis of over 40 Irish government and political party websites with a view to assessing their accessibility and the results are quite worrying:
Government Department sites
25% Failed the minimum standard for accessibility 75% Failed both minimum accessibility and basic coding standards
Public body sites
33% Failed the minimum standard for accessibility 100% Failed both minimum accessibility and basic coding standards
Political Party sites
57% Failed the minimum standard for accessibility 100% Failed both minimum accessibility and basic coding standards
Four Government Departments passed with flying colours:
Dept of Arts, Sports and Tourism
Dept Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Dept of Finance
Dept of Social and Family Affairs
You can read the full report on Richard’s site
From Darragh:
Michele, I’m delighted to see you have bought focus to this topic. Making accessible sites isn’t that impossible. I invite anyone to contact me via my own blog if you have any questions at http://www.14u.ie/darraghsblog/
From michele:
Darragh
It’s something that ANY public service website should be very worried about.
Did you get a chance to look at the webmaster forum registration form since I changed the captcha to use something more accessible?
Michele
From Darragh:
I totally agree. Actually. I think it should be at the forfront of any designers mind to ensure their site is as accessible as it is visually attractive. At the end of the day, making a site accessible by including some very easy attributes like alt tags to images not only helps to ensure your page is easy to read but it also makes it easier for search engines to accurately index so everyone wins.