{"id":2645,"date":"2013-06-06T08:00:45","date_gmt":"2013-06-06T08:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2645"},"modified":"2013-06-05T23:13:18","modified_gmt":"2013-06-05T23:13:18","slug":"w4a-accessibility-of-the-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2645","title":{"rendered":"W4A : Accessibility of the web"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the last of four posts<\/a> sharing some of the things I saw while at the International World Wide Web Conference<\/a> for w4a<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Several presentations looked at how accessible the web is. <\/p>\n

Web Accessibility Snapshot<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2006, an audit was performed by Nomensa for the United Nations<\/a>. They reviewed 100 popular websites for conformance to accessibility guidelines. <\/p>\n

The results weren’t positive: 97% of sites didn’t meet WCAG level 1. <\/p>\n

Obviously, conformance to guidelines doesn’t mean a site is accessible, but it’s an important factor. It’s not sufficient, but it is required. Conformance to guidelines can’t prove that a website is accessible, however there are some guidelines that we can be certain would break accessibility if not followed. So they are at least a useful starting point. <\/p>\n

However, 2006 is a long time ago now, and the Internet has changed a lot since. One project, from colleagues of mine at IBM, is creating a more up to date picture of the state of the web<\/a>. They analysed a thousand of the most popular websites (according to Alexa<\/a>) as well as a random sampling of a thousand other sites. <\/p>\n

(Interestingly, they found no statistically significant difference between conformance in the most popular websites and the randomly selected ones). <\/p>\n

Their intention is to perform this regularly, creating a Web Accessibility Snapshot, with regular updates on the status of accessibility of the web. It looks like it could become a valuable source of information. <\/p>\n