Almost every government website in Europe fails to meet
basic standards for accessibility to the disabled.
A report by the UK Cabinet Office’s e-Government Unit found that
97% of official government sites could not be used by disabled
people, mainly because they ignored well-known techniques for
delivering more accessible data.
This comes despite governments heavily promoting the use of
on-line services, and promising that they can make it easier for
the disabled to access basic services.
To improve the situation, the report suggested that governments
may have to be ordered to pay penalties and compensation to those
citizens unable to use the sites. It is estimated that 39m people
in Europe have some form of disability.
Published to coincide with the UK's EU presidency, the report
surveyed 440 public service websites across Europe.
But the survey found that only 3% of the sites surveyed passed
basic tests on accessibility set down by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C), the web’s main standards body.
These standards include navigational features to make it easier
for the disabled to use websites, and the ability to easily use
special software packages designed to convert data into a more
accessible format.
The Royal National Institute for the Blind and the Royal
National Institute for Deaf People collaborated on the survey.