Shops, banks and other businesses are turning away six
million potential customers because their websites prevent disabled
visitors from accessing them fully, according to BCS charity
AbilityNet, which advises on IT to support disabled people at work
and at home.
"When we look for information, services or goods online we are
not seeking a life-changing experience but speed and efficiency,"
said Robin Christopherson, web consultancy manager at
AbilityNet.
"Accessible sites are easier to use for everyone. Research by
the Disability Rights Commission shows that able-bodied users find
sites designed for access by disabled people are 35% faster and
easier to use. Some retailers offering different versions of their
sites for disabled and non-disabled people report big demand for
the more accessible versions from all types of customers."
Christopherson, who is blind, has led AbilityNet's regular
studies of websites of companies ranging from banks to supermarkets
and airlines, and the results have been consistently disappointing.
The latest survey, of 10 telecoms services, gave Onetel and
Kingston Communications four stars out of five - only the second
time in eight surveys that any sites have gained four stars.
Indeed, AbilityNet's results support a Disability Rights
Commission study of 1,000 UK sites which found 81% failing basic
accessibility tests.
Yet meeting the needs of visitors with various impairments can
be quite simple, Christopherson said. It boils down largely to
thinking about users rather than clever design.
Sites with moving images such as Flash movies can lose potential
business from those who cannot use a mouse, have a cognitive
problem such as epilepsy, or are visually impaired and use speech
output, Christopherson said. He said research shows that web users
look at text more than graphics in any case.
Text size on some sites is hard-coded and cannot be easily
enlarged. Some sites carry a watermark. Both features largely rule
out 1.6 million visually impaired customers.
Visually impaired people depend on speech output to read text
labels attached to images, but these labels are often uninformative
or absent. "Without these spoken labels on graphical links,
navigation for a blind visitor is guesswork," Christopherson
said.
Pictures of text are often used instead of text. This means
visually impaired or dyslexic users cannot modify the size or
contrast, and, again, if the content is not labelled it cannot be
read by a screen reader.
Companies cannot afford to continue with inaccessible web
design, Christopherson said. "Inaccessible sites exclude a
potential UK market of 1.6 million vision impaired users, 1.5
million with cognitive difficulties, 3.4 million with disabilities
preventing them from using the standard PC set-up easily, and
millions with dyslexia or literacy difficulties, not to mention
increasing numbers of elderly users. Their total spending power is
estimated at £120bn a year. Companies ignore this market at their
peril." Web content accessibility guidelines:
www.w3.org