Help improve Resources for Web Accessibility

The accessibility of websites is an increasingly important issue. The Formal Investigation conducted by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) in 2004 showed the poor state of accessibility of websites in the UK in both the public and private sectors.

More recent activities include the development of a Good Practice Guide on website accessibility by the DRC and the British Standards Institute (BSI) and a European Quality Mark for Accessible websites. Yet web developers and website owners remain somewhat confused about the issues surrounding web accessibility.

The University of York is conducting a survey of web developers and website owners to assess levels of interest and knowledge about accessibility and to gather information about what kinds of support developers and owners currently have and would like to have available in the future. This survey has been designed by the team who conducted the DRC research (Helen Petrie and her team, formerly at City University London). On the basis of the results we will be making recommendations to the European Commission and the W3C on what kinds of resources need to be developed for web developers and website owners.

So if you develop websites or have responsibility for a website, please help in this process but taking one of the online surveys – it takes about 10 minutes to complete and is available at: www.bentoweb.org/surveys. We will also post the results of the surveys on the same website in March 2006.

Associated Link: The survey

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Usability: ‘Lovely software. But I can’t work it’
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