Members are being invited to participate in the group response being organised by Socitm Insight to the current CoI consultation on website accessibility. The consultation concerns the CoI paper Delivering Inclusive Websites which has created headlines for its proposal that all government websites should meet Level AA of the W3C guidelines by December 2008 – or risk losing their .gov.uk designation.
As Better connected 2007 shows, just two of the 468 local authority sites tested for accessibility late last year achieved level AA and only 64 level A. Significant efforts by local authorities to improve accessibility, which have taken them ahead of other parts of the public sector and the private sector, have made little impact when measured by W3C standards – according to Better connected testing, compliance has stayed the same levels for the last three years. Papers can be found at Cabinet Office - Consultation on Delivering Inclusive Websites. Members should respond to insight@socitm.gov.uk by 1200 on Monday 12 November.