Will the Scottish Elections 2003 be Fully Inclusive?

Disabled web users may find it extremely difficult or even impossible to access the websites and online manifestos of Scotland's main political parties because such sites fall seriously short of basic accessibility guidelines, a new study has revealed.

The review, carried out by the University of Dundee's Digital Media Access Group and commercial law firm Brodies, examined the sites of each main political party standing in the 2003 Scottish Parliament Elections to find out how accessible they would be to disabled web users. A selection of key accessible web design guidelines were used to gauge how accessible manifesto information would be to people who are blind, visually impaired, deaf, cognitively impaired, motor-impaired or have dyslexia.

The study revealed that most party sites would present serious accessibility problems to some disabled users. Many sites, including those of Scottish Labour and Scottish Conservatives failed to follow basic accessibility guidelines - guidelines which have been in existence as long as the Scottish Parliament itself.

Specific findings included:
- It would take someone unable to use a mouse nearly 30 key presses to be able to access the Scottish Liberal Democrat manifesto, nearly 80 key presses to access the Scottish Labour manifesto, and access to the Peoples' Alliance manifesto would be impossible for someone who could not use a mouse.
- Due to the layout of sites and a frequent lack of text alternatives to graphics, navigating to the manifestos of most parties would be extremely frustrating and time consuming for blind web users who browse using text-to-speech technology.
- The SNP did provide a separate version of their web site and manifesto, which in theory were more accessible than the main versions. However, access from the accessible site to the accessible manifesto was not possible, limiting the use of these versions.
- The Scottish Labour site included a 'Disability Access' statement, indicating that the needs of disabled users had been taken into account during the site design, yet the site fared very poorly when reviewed against accessibility guidelines.
- The Scottish Socialist Party's site was the most accessible, and allowed access to the manifesto without significant difficulty.

The survey was carried out by David Sloan of the Digital Media Access Group, an expert accessibility consultancy and research team based in the University of Dundee's Department of Applied Computing, and Martin Sloan, of Brodies, one of Scotland's leading commercial law firms. A full report is available from the website below.

The study did not attempt to review the sites of political parties in England and Wales, though councillors go to the polls in all regions of the UK tomorrow.

Associated Link: Scottish Elections 2003: Fully Inclusive?

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