I'm not sure I like the fact that they've taken the hyphen out of e-Accessibility, or for that matter the fact that they've e-ed the word in the first place (there are too many goddamned e- prefixes), but the e-Government Unit has done well to put this report together. (On a separate note, there seems to be an online war being waged over the plural of prefix. I'd like to think it's prefices, but I think prefixes has the edge.)
I've skimmed the report, and it seems to strike a good balance between automated testing and manual validation. As the RNIB once told me, a site can pass all automated tests but be hugely inaccessible. Likewise, a site's failure against automated tests does not make it inaccessible, although certain tests are unquestionable. SiteMorse has dined-out on automated testing for some time now, which has helped raise the profile of accessibility, but has missed an important part of the puzzle.
I was immensely proud that the Department of Health site was one of only three sites referenced as displaying evidence of good practice, demonstrating at least ten of the twelve features cited. At the time, I believe we pushed the boundaries of accessibility, particularly in the context of a CMS implementation, and this citing is a great achievement.
The government (both in the UK and across Europe) has a long way to go to be where it should be in this field. I'm sure accessibility is often seen as a 'nice to have', an area from which features and functionality can be chopped when budgets get tight.
This is an area which would benefit hugely from the use of a common platform. By building DotP, all of the sites that came on board (albeit not that many) benefited from a highly accessible platform. While this doesn't guarantee an accessible website (good writing and appropriate alt texting can't be enforced by technology), it gets you 90% of the way there.
On a related note, for the government to have 3,500 accessible websites would not make it e-accessible. If each site works in a different way, has different navigational techniques, highly different visual indicators and conflicting nomenclature, then where's the fun in that for the user? On this, I will write a separate post when I have the time discussing what the government can learn from MS Office.
