Accessibility Archive
October 18, 2007
FOI enquiry - withdrawal of .gov.uk domains
As part of the preparation for my talk at Techshare earlier this month I made an FOI enquiry to the COI on 15th September about the conditions of use for .gov.uk domains.
I have a question about the conditions of use for .gov.uk names, which appear on the Cabinet Office at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/government_it/web_guidelines/domain_names.aspx
These conditions state in section 4 that websites which do not comply with current UK disability legislation will have their domain names withdrawn. Other circumstances when .gov.uk domain names may be withdrawn are also detailed.
Could you please tell me:
- How many .gov.uk domains have been withdrawn during the lifetime of these conditions for failure to comply with disability legislation.
- How many .gov.uk domains have been withdrawn for other reasons listed in the conditions.
To give a little more context, Section 4a of the conditions of use state:
The applications (Web, email, etc) using a .gov.uk domain name must comply with current UK legislation and support channels that provide accessibility for disabled people, members of ethnic minorities and those at risk of social/digital exclusion. Legislation includes Copyright, Data Protection Act and Disability Discrimination Act. Abuse of will result in the name being withdrawn.
Today I received this response from the COI:
Firstly, it is important to understand the legislative context and the guidance for compliance with it. In your letter you state in relation to the conditions of use of a .gov.uk domain name that, 'websites which do not comply with current UK disability legislation will have their domain names withdrawn.' This isn't the case for a number of reasons. Firstly, we are not just looking at whether a website complies with disability legislation, we are also looking at whether a website meets the minimum standards for accessibility. The guidelines state that websites should 'comply with the accessibility recommendation for public sector sites, that is, W3C WAI Level AA.'
Secondly, it should be stressed that disability legislation is in place to protect the rights of the individual, not to detail the specific requirements on websites (both within and outside the .gov.uk namespace). Even if websites meet the recommended minimum standard, this is no guarantee that the user experience for people with disabilities will be problem free. This fact was highlighted in the formal investigation carried out by the Disability Rights Commission and re-iterated in the 2005 survey of public service eAccessibility commissioned by the Cabinet Office.
Thirdly, the guidelines go on to say that, 'Failure to comply with this may result in the name being withdrawn.' This implies that websites will be considered for withdrawal if they fail to meet the minimum standard, not automatically withdrawn.
Having said that, the Government has been working with industry, academia and the third sector to build a robust approach to delivering inclusive websites. To ensure that government pays due regard to current disability legislation (the Public Sector Disability Equality Duty) and in order to meet European objectives for inclusive e-government (Riga Ministerial Declaration 2006), COI has updated Chapter 2.4 of the Guidelines for UK Government Websites and proposes that all government websites must meet Level Double-A of the W3C guidelines by December 2008. The updated guidance has recently been sent out for formal consultation and is attached for your information.
In answer to your question,
- No website domain names have been withdrawn for failure to comply with disability legislation; and
- No website domain names have been withdrawn for the other reasons set out in the conditions of use.
However, the government has taken a proactive approach to reducing the overall number of websites it owns and in the future we can expect to see increased focus on raising the standards for government websites, including inclusivity and accessibility. This is part of the Transformational Government Strategy to converge websites around audience channels including Directgov and BusinessLink. This will be reflected in the updated policy on naming and registering websites, which will go for formal consultation later this month.
The most telling part of the response for me is that the conditions of use for .gov.uk domains have never been enforced. Given that section 4a explicitly states that sites not complying with current legislation will have their name withdrawn, one can only conclude that the agency responsible for upholding the conditions considers every website ever to be published under a .gov.uk domain to be compliant with current UK legislation around accessibility. (Or am I being unduly harsh and literal?) More support for the view that the proposal in Delivering Inclusive Websites to use WCAG as a measure and domain withdrawal as a consequence is a waste of time and needs to be replaced with a more positive and realistic scheme?
Perhaps more revealing of the government's future strategy is the final paragraph, which refers to the reduction in the number of government websites and an increased focus on raising standards. It's likely that the recently issued consultation around web accessibility is a thinly disguised ploy to encourage as many .gov.uk sites as possible to move into the loving arms of DirectGov, or at least onto the technical platform it now shares with several other large, high profile departmental sites. If it happened it wouldn't be a bad thing.
Comment on FOI enquiry - withdrawal of .gov.uk domains (5)
October 05, 2007
Techshare presentation
Today I had the pleasure of presenting at Techshare 
. I saw some great talks, made a lot of new friends, saw a lot of old friends and my presentation seemed to go down well.
My presentation, "Influencing government web accessibility policy: advocacy vs. militancy", is now on the site and available to download with speaker notes:
Comment on Techshare presentation (4)
New UK government web accessibility consultation
On Tuesday the COI (Central Office of Information) released a consultation document titled "Delivering inclusive websites: user-centred accessibility". The document isn't yet available online, but I'm told it should be on the Cabinet Office site from some time next week.
The main thrust of the document is that all existing UK government websites should be accessible to WCAG level AA by end December 2008, while all new sites should be conformant before being launched. The main difference between this policy target and the endless procession of missed targets we've seen over the past few years is the explicit threat of the withdrawal of the .gov.uk domain for sites which fail to meet the standard.
The COI (and the Cabinet Office before them) already have this power under the Code of Practice for .gov.uk domains (see Where are the gatekeepers, March 2006) but as far as I know have never exercised it. Whether the threat is real this time remains to be seen.
But it is only a consultation document at this stage, and it's a prime opportunity to lobby the government to adopt a robust stance over non-compliance. If anyone wants a copy of the document please email me and I'll be happy to pass it on.
Here's the text that accompanied the document:
The Central Office of Information (COI) would like to invite you provide feedback on the attached document, Delivering Inclusive Websites (TG102), by end of business November 13, 2007.
This guidance is an update of Chapter 2.4 of the Guidelines for UK Government Websites http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/e-government/webguidelines/
In order to meet European objectives for inclusive e-government and so that the UK public sector meets its obligations with regards to disability legislation, we have stipulated that all government websites must meet Level Double-A of the W3C guidelines by December 2008. Failure to satisfy this requirement will result in initiation of the process to withdraw the .gov.uk domain name used by the website.
Government websites are strongly recommended to develop an accessibility policy to aid the planning and procurement of inclusive websites. This includes building a business case, analysing user needs, developing an accessibility test plan and procuring accessible content authoring tools. The guidance covers some of the design solutions to common problems faced by users but is mainly aimed at strategic managers and project managers to assist with planning and procurement.
Please send comments to webguidelines@coi.gsi.gov.uk
Comment on New UK government web accessibility consultation (5)
August 13, 2007
Speaking at Techshare 2007
I was extremely chuffed today to receive confirmation that I'll be speaking at this year's Techshare conference in October in London. The Techshare conference is organised by the RNIB and "highlights the role of technology in the everyday life of people with disabilities, looking not just at the web but also software, mobiles, standards, compliance and much more." Lots more info at the Techshare site .
There was a danger, I feared, that the paper I proposed might prove to be a bit contentious - "Government web accessibility policy - advocacy vs. militancy" - but fortunately the committee deemed it appropriate, so roll on 5th October.
Real World Accessibility London
We had a re-run of our Real World Accessibility event last week, this time at the Barbican in London. The day went off extremely well, and the feedback has been excellent.
The presentations are available to download from the Public Sector Forums site . Also worth a mention are Pat Lauke's photos of the event .
For those of you who attended here are links to some of the resources that were mentioned during the day's proceedings, if I've missed anything please let me know and I'll add them:
- User-defined accesskeys
- Expanded links for screenreader users (view source for details)
- CastingWords podcast transcription
- Browsercam and fundable to make it more affordable
- Colour contrast analyser Firefox extension at Juicy Studio
In a slight departure from the Birmingham event we set aside 30 minutes for exhibitor presentations, and an hour before lunch to discuss the possibility of forming a public sector web management group.
This latter idea has been met with a generally positive response, and a forum's been setup at pswmg.org.uk to facilitate discussions at this very early stage. If you're involved in the web in the UK public sector in any way at all please drop by, register and let us know what you think.
July 02, 2007
Real World Accessibility
After a successful outing in Birmingham in May, we're bringing this one day accessibility workshop to London on 8th August. The main thrust of the day is to get away from a dry, box-ticking approach to web accessibility, and closer to what you really need to think about and do to produce accessible sites.
The same cast of speakers - Bruce Lawson , Ann McMeekin , Pat Lauke , Grant Broome, Ian Lloyd and myself - will each present a 40 minute session, and sit as a panel for open questions. If Birmingham was anything to go by it should be another great day.
The event is being organised by my company, Champion IS, in association with Public Sector Forums. Despite their monicker, and unlike last time around, this event is open to all and sundry, not just public sector delegates.
Full details of the day are available on the CIS website , with online booking via the PSF site .
Comment on Real World Accessibility (1)
May 20, 2007
Review: RiverDocs Converter
- Published by RiverDocs Limited
- Price: £399
- Available from: http://www.riverdocs.com/
- Version reviewed: 1.1
Disclosure: This is a paid review. RiverDocs Limited have had no influence on the tone or content of this review.
Summary
An essential tool for any organisation which publishes Microsoft Word or PDF files online, RiverDocs Converter is vastly superior to any other conversion software currently available. There's now no reason for publishers not to offer accessible, high quality HTML versions of documents previously published only in proprietary formats. The parser even compensates for poorly authored source documents, previously a significant barrier to producing accessible, semantic HTML versions of Word and PDF documents.
It's not a magic bullet though - every conversion requires human-checking, and documents with any degree of complexity require a degree of input from an experienced web editor - but despite a slightly weak editor it's still well worth the price and will only get better in future versions given the publisher's focus on research and development.
Introduction
RiverDocs Converter is a software package for the Microsoft Windows operating system which claims to convert documents designed for print into structured, accessible HTML documents for online delivery. In short this means it'll take PDFs and Microsoft Word files and attempt to convert them into a format more suitable for delivery and consumption over the web.
PDF and MS Word are beloved of government and corporations who often need to publish large documents quickly, but these formats are primarily designed for printing, not for delivery online, and have serious accessibility issues associated with them. So the potential benefits from effective conversion software are enormous - being able to offer HTML versions of these documents cost effectively is something that hasn't been possible before.
Installation
Installation was straightforward, taking a couple of minutes on my workhorse desktop PC.
The software does require the latest version of the Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework, if this isn't already installed and available you will be prompted to download and install it.
Getting started
Starting the software for the first time you are presented with a quick guide to converting your first document, and the clean, functional RiverDocs interface.
Test 1 - my first conversion
To test the software for the first time I used a PDF document regarding chimney stack removal I found on Cambridge City Council's website at:
It's a 4 page document containing a cover sheet, and a mix of different levels of heading, bullets and images. The PDF document was not tagged.
Opening the file displays it in the main RiverDocs window:
Clicking the Convert button started the conversion, which took less than a second using the default settings. The interface changes to a split-screen affair, with the original document in the left pane, and the converted document in the right pane:
To give an idea of the quality of conversion and mark-up the software can produce automatically I wanted to save the document immediately. Admittedly this is not intended real-world usage of the product, but does provide an idea of quality of the baseline conversion prior to manual editing.
Big River had provided me with a one page crib-sheet covering the major interface elements, so I knew that the Save function was for saving a RiverDocs project, and the Publish function was for saving the converted document as HTML, CSS and images.
Clicking the Publish button presents the Publish dialogue box:
In addition to publishing as HTML, the software also supports output in CHM (Microsoft Compiled HTML Help) format.
To keep things tidy I wanted to publish this version into a new folder, but this is not a standard Windows file dialogue box, and doesn't provide the facility to create a new folder, so I had to switch out to Windows Explorer to do this before publishing the document in RiverDocs.
But, it turns out the file name entered into this dialogue box is actually used as a folder name, which will be created for you and into which the document is published. These sorts of interface issues are symptomatic of the software's relative youth, and will no doubt be ironed out as the product matures.
The publishing of this document took less than a second, here are the results:
The default settings produce HTML documents with an XHTML 1.0 Transitional doctype, generating a separate HTML file for each page of the source PDF, an index HTML document containing a generated table of contents, a single CSS file and an images folder containing converted images. The CSS is valid, and attempts to mimic the style of the original document as closely as possible.
As a comparison I ran the same file through Abbyy's PDF Transformer, another PDF to HTML conversion tool. The results were much vastly less impressive:
The Abbyy software makes no attempt to produce structured HTML, instead presenting every single line in the document as a paragraph and styling them to appear as closely as possible to the original PDF.
In general the quality of the default output from RiverDocs is extremely impressive. In this case there were just two validation problems: an unclosed list item in the generated table of contents, and missing alt attributes for the images on the final page. Since the default output is "section based" the parser moved the words "GUIDANCE NOTES" onto a page by itself despite displaying it as part of the title page in the preview pane, which was the only deviation from the page layout of the original.
But this isn't a fair test of the software which wasn't designed to be operated in this manner. While the results are good, they aren't good enough to publish without manual editing, so let's try again, only this time using some good old human judgement.
Test 2 - getting serious
For the second test I wanted to take the same document but publish it to a single HTML document of the highest quality as close to the original format as possible. The process is the same - open the file to be converted, and click Convert.
Metadata
Before getting stuck into the document itself I wanted to specify some metadata for it. Fortunately RiverDocs make this very easy to do (just click the Metadata button), and provides a default set of Dublin Core elements for completion:
It appears that additional user-defined elements can be created, so publishers in UK government for example can easily add eGMS metadata to converted documents:
Unfortunately these additional elements didn't make it to my published document, a bug I've reported to Big River.
Options
RiverDocs offers a number of options to customise the output
of the converted document. The most important are:
- Publish mode Can be single file, section based (default) and page based. Section based splits the document into section based on a heading level specified by the user.
- HTML Tidy configuration RiverDocs uses the HTML Tidy library to identify and report issues with converted documents. This can be set to A, AA or AA (Strict). It's not clear from the documentation what the difference between AA and AA (Strict) is.
- CSS Options Although the software makes a fair attempt to reproduce the style of the original document, it's likely that most publishers will want to use established in-house styles for publishing to the web. RiverDocs has full support for external stylesheets, allowing the specification of a local file (which will allow you to preview and edit the document with your styles applied) and a relative path to be used when the document is published. The option to use a remote stylesheet would be a welcome addition.
- HTML Navigation Finally, the navigation elements which allow the user to move from page to page or section to section of the published document can be renamed, or disabled.
The editor
For many users the area of the application where most time will be spent is the HTML editor, where the converted output can be modified and fine-tuned. In most cases this will be to either match the original document or to conform to a house web publishing style.
The editor always presents the output document in a page-by-page format, regardless of the publish mode that's currently set. It would be nice to be able to preview the single page and section-based options.
The editor can be used visually in preview mode, or in source mode which provides a simple text editor view of the document page you're working on. As I wanted a single file output and had set the options accordingly there was something of a disconnection between working on a separate HTML file for each page, and the intended output. As far as I can see there is no way to preview the single file output prior to publishing.
The toolbar provides standard editing tools you'd expect to find available on a simple HTML editor. These generally work as expected, although there are some quirks - for example undo will only remember changes you've made until you switch to source mode: so if you make change, switch to source mode and back to visual mode you'll need to correct any errors manually in source mode.
Once you've got used to the way the editor functions it's a reasonably comfortable working environment, but don't expect it have the functionality of DreamWeaver. I can foresee many users doing the initial conversion in RiverDocs and taking the published output into the editor of their choice to complete the process: indeed if I was using RiverDocs on a daily basis to convert a large number of files this is the way I'd work - the software's value lies in its conversion capabilities, not its editing capabilities.
One of the most common problems that will arise from automatic conversion is that of images and appropriate alt attributes. Editing images is easy - select the image in the editor, and click the image icon:
The id is a temporary value used by the software during conversion and editing, and is removed on publishing.
Screen capture
One very nice feature of RiverDocs is the screen capture tool. On the final page of the original PDF is a diagram showing a cross-section of a wall, with some labels indicating particular features of the diagram. Since the PDF was generated from Adobe Pagemaker, the diagram consists of an image object and a series of text objects for the labels. In the automatic conversion RiverDocs quite rightly converted these separately, which can be seen on the last page of the output of test 1.
In my final version I want the image and labels as a single image, and this is where the screen capture tool comes in:
It operates like any screen capture tool you've used before - highlight the area to be captured and click an icon. In RiverDocs the highlighted area will be inserted into your HTML document as an image.
You've got issues
The software
provides assistance to help you identify and correct
potential issues with the converted document. The Issues
icon gives a quick idea of the number of issues identified
by the software at any stage after automatic conversion.
Clicking the icon opens a third pane with details of the
issues:
The potential issues highlighted include missing alt attributes on images. I was disappointed to note that alt text from objects in tagged PDFs wasn't carried across to the converted HTML document. Otherwise the guidance provided by the issues is sound, based as it is on HTML Tidy - those of you familiar with the Tidy extension for Firefox will know what to expect.
For non-expert users this provides an extremely useful indication of where there are potential problems in the converted document, and the separation of current page issues and whole document issues guides such users through the document with ease. Personally I was more comfortable editing the document first before using the issues tool - picking up the issues I could see, modifying structure, adding or correcting alt attributes, generally tidying the document up - but that's probably no more than a reflection of my workflow habits.
Test 2 results
Here's the output:
It took 10 minutes from opening the original PDF to publishing this version - very impressive results in such a short space of time.
Test 3 - getting more complex
To really test the software we need something a little more complex than a single-column, text and images document. On the Clackmannanshire Council website I found a 24 page consultation document laid out in 2 columns, which included multiple levels of headings and a data table:
The untouched output from RiverDocs shows its limitations, but is still an impressive result:
It took me about 30 minutes to tidy the document up in RiverDocs, but I was still left with a lot of redundant classes with names like "font19" and all those named anchors generated for the table of contents. Cleaning up the mark-up in RiverDocs proved to be a bit of a chore, so I tried again, this time dumping the output immediately into DreamWeaver.
15 minutes later I had this clean, structured version of the PDF:
My conclusion - if your document is anything more complex than single-column text then forego the RiverDocs editor for your favourite HTML editor.
Test 5 - Microsoft Word
So what about Microsoft Word conversion? Well, this review was produced in a simple Word document, so I ran it through the RiverDocs Converter for publishing online. Here is the untouched conversion:
This was a 12 page Word document, and conversion took noticeably longer than PDF conversion, at about 20 seconds. The only real issues with the conversion were the failure to convert Word bullets to HTML lists and the failure to pick up alternative text on images. Other than this the structure was accurately represented and the images correctly positioned.
The converter doesn't appear to parse the styles used in Word documents - I converted a test document which was styled throughout as paragraphs, but with headings made bold with larger font sizes. RiverDocs therefore accommodates poorly authored, unstructured source documents, by analysing the font size and weight and assigning heading levels accordingly. This is a great feature given the preponderance of incorrectly produced Word documents in many organisations.
Annoyances
Given the immaturity of the package there are some inevitable annoyances with the interface and output:
- Table of contents There appears to be no way to disable the table of contents for a document you wish to publish as a single page. This means superfluous named anchors are scattered throughout the output HTML, and removing them within RiverDocs is only
possible in source mode. In a long document this can quickly become tedious. It would also be an improvement if the TOC used ids rather than named anchors.
- Keystrokes in source mode Some of the standard Windows keystrokes have been hijacked in source mode - for example Ctrl+A should highlight the entire text, but instead pops-up an "insert anchor" dialogue - worse still cancelling that dialogue inserts a single "a" character into the source.
- Give me vanilla output I'd love to see the option to output plain, vanilla HTML with no ids, named anchors, classes or other generated content. In many organisations the HTML output will be dropped into a template where headings, paragraphs and other elements are already styled by a surrounding div or the document body itself. (Note: I did manage to suppress the proliferation of classes like "font19" by specifying a blank CSS file in the output options.)
- Mark-up issues The mark-up is sometimes sub-optimal, for example:
<p class="font9"><span class="font9"><strong>NOTE: Some chimneys act as a buttress and provide support to long walls.</strong></span> <strong>Please check with Building Control or a structural engineer</strong><span class="font9"><strong>, before</strong></span> <span class="font9"><strong>proceeding, to determine if this is the case.</strong></span></p>
None of these are major problems though, and I would expect the interface to improve as the software is developed further. The key feature of the product is the conversion algorithm, which is extremely impressive.
Conclusions
RiverDocs is an impressive product and an essential tool for any organisation which has a need to publish more than a small number of PDF and Word documents online. Simple documents take no time at all to convert and tidy using the RiverDocs editor, while I found more complex documents are best converted in RiverDocs and then edited in a more powerful and functional dedicated HTML editor such as DreamWeaver.
The true value of RiverDocs lies in its ability to turn unstructured, multi-column PDF documents into structured HTML documents, whilst maintaining the correct reading order. Critically, the intelligent parsing engine compensates for low-quality source documents, previously a real barrier to producing HTML versions of PDF and Word documents.
Future versions of RiverDocs are very likely to offer significant improvements, both in terms of quality of conversion and the application interface. Apart from being a single-product company, concentrating solely on the development of the RiverDocs Converter, they also fund applied research at Queens University Belfast as well as other universities engaged in the fields of accessibility, artificial intelligence and character recognition.
About the reviewer
Dan Champion has worked in the web industry since 1995 through his company Champion Internet Solutions Limited, with clients in the private and public sectors. Between 1999 and 2007 he was responsible for Clackmannanshire Council's multi-award winning websites.
He is a regular speaker on the subjects of web accessibility, web standards and web strategy at conferences and workshops throughout the UK, has written on the subjects of e-government and web accessibility for the Guardian, and featured on national BBC Radio in various guises.
April 26, 2007
DTI update - good money after bad?
Loyal readers will remember that in May last year I started to post about the DTI's new yet inaccessible website, developed at a cost of £200,000 of taxpayers' money. If this is news to you please start with the summary I posted in August when the story ran in Private Eye, and at my co-conspirator Bruce Lawson's website, where he has a special category just for the DTI.
In February the DTI posted an accessibility update to their website, detailing a three-step improvement plan, to be completed in early summer 2007.
Being a curious bloke (so I've been told) I was keen to learn more about this plan, and in particular how much more of our money it was going to take to clean up the mess produced by the previous contractors. So I sent the DTI this FOI enquiry on 22nd March:
Hello.
I'd be grateful if you could provide details of the work described on this page related to the accessibility of the DTI website:
http://www.dti.gov.uk/administration/help/Accessibility/page8487.html
Specifically:
- The cost of emplying Nomensa to audit the website.
- The cost of step one of the remedial work to be undertaken, described as "Make the necessary accessibility improvements to the core DTI website. This will consist of both technical and content work streams. They will address the underlying design, code and content issues that have been identified as requiring attention to meet the appropriate standards."
- The name of the contracted company undertaking the work in step one.
- The budgeted cost of completing the entire process described on the page referred to above.
Please contact me if you require any clarification of this request.
Kind regards,
Dan Champion
The DTI responded on 23rd April:
FOI REQUEST 07/0139 - DTI WEBSITE
I am writing in response to your email of 22 March 2007 in which you requested information relating to the DTI website.
- The total budget for the website accessibility audit was £10,000. This cost covered:
- An accessibility audit of the DTI website templates;
- Guidance on creating and maintaining accessible pdf documents;
- Presentation of the results at DTI;
- Copies of the reports;
- A workshop on issues raised by the audit
- Central Office of Information procurement and project management costs.
- On the website Step One is described as "consist[ing] of both technical and content work streams". The technical workstream has two elements:
- Building the website templates. Cost: £59,837
- Upgrading the Content Management System software. This work, unrelated to the accessibility issue, was due and it was prudent to combine it with the template work. Cost: £45,666
The content workstream is being developed; cost is not yet confirmed.
- The company contracted to undertake the technical workstream in Step One is Fujitsu.
- The budgeted costs for the technical workstream is £59,837, with a further £45,666 for the CMS software upgrade. The content workstream for Step One is being developed; cost is not yet confirmed. Steps Two and Three of the accessibility project will follow the content workstream.
To summarise:
- The DTI is spending £60,000 on building templates for a website launched under a year ago at a cost of £200,000.
- The £60,000 is part of the money to be spent ensuring that the DTI website meets the standards the department specified in the original requirements for their site, despite the suppliers of that site being made fully aware of those requirements and failing to deliver them.
- The DTI is employing Fujitsu, the very same company that received the lion's share of the £200,000 spent on the original site, to meet the standards they were contracted to deliver in the first place.
- The £60,000 covers only one half of the first step in a three-step process.
- Costs for the other two-and-a-half steps are not yet confirmed.
- The DTI claim the improvement work will be completed by early summer 2007.
I have two perspectives on this. On the one hand, this is positive action, and with Nomensa's help the DTI will most likely emerge with an accessible, usable website. Hoorah. On the other hand, it is a marvellous example of how not to procure, develop and deliver an accessible website. The cost of the remedial work looks likely to approach if not exceed the cost of the original development. A perfect illustration of why you build accessibility in from the very start. No doubt more to come about the DTI in the near future.
Comment on DTI update - good money after bad? (10)
March 02, 2007
Better Connected & web accessibility
SOCITM's Better Connected 2007 is published next week. Almost a year ago to the day I posted somewhat critically about the report's use of SiteMorse, and its reliance on automated testing for some of its findings. This year I've become rather more personally interested in the report - I was disappointed to learn earlier this week that ClacksWeb is not one of the 2 sites which were found to conform with WCAG level AA.
I'll cut to the chase. BC's assessment of the accessibility of local authority websites is fundamentally flawed. Admittedly this is a reflection of the use of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 as the instrument of measurement, but it's flawed all the same.
The single most important aspect of that flaw is this: syntactically valid HTML is not a primary indicator of web accessibility, and by the same token syntactically invalid HTML does not categorically indicate an inaccessible website.
Valid HTML is at best a proxy indicator of web accessibility - that is an indicator that doesn't have a causal link with the outcome (in this case an accessible website), but rather is something that is likely to be found where the outcome exists. Simply put, web developers who appreciate the issues around accessibility are more likely to be informed professionals who also appreciate the benefits of adopting and adhering to web standards. However, just as with SiteMorse's much maligned league tables, using HTML validity as an initial filter to identify "more accessible" sites is wholly invalid.
For the purposes of Better Connected an arbitrary threshold of 50 errors across 200 tested pages was used. Any sites reporting less than 50 errors went forward to be considered for WCAG AA conformance, those reporting more than 50 errors did not. Leaving aside this arbitrary limit, this also shows a gross failure of logic - to conform to level AA of WCAG a site must surely report zero errors across its 200 pages? A single error breaches checkpoint 3.2 of the guidelines, rendering it unable to conform to level AA.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are 8 years old this year. In web terms they are at the very least pensionable, and quite probably pushing up the daisies. And remember they are guidelines, and as time passes it becomes more important that those using them as guidance recognise this.
Education is the key to improving the state of web accessibility, whether we're talking about government or any other sector. Web developers and managers, content editors, suppliers of applications that produce web-based output - all of these people require a sound understanding of the accessibility issues in their respective areas of operation to achieve and sustain an accessible online presence, and that understanding can only come through learning.
A good start would be to make the findings of the automated tests for BC available to the local authorities themselves. I was disappointed to discover 158 validation errors had been found on ClacksWeb - was it a single error across 158 pages, or one really bad page? The two scenarios have quite different implications for me as a manager, but to date I've been unable to elicit the details, and the errors aren't apparent on the site any longer.
Little fault, if any, should be attributed to the RNIB for this state of affairs - there is no practical way 468 websites can be adequately tested for accessibility on an annual basis without a significant financial and resource commitment.
The solution, however unpalatable it might be to the bean counters who seem to have a desperate need to rank and score us all, is to abandon the concept of ranking 468 websites for accessibility, and to stop testing them against an 8 year-old set of guidelines. Instead SOCITM should much more wisely employ the expertise of the highly skilled and knowledgeable staff at the RNIB to identify, highlight and promote best practice in web accessibility, both in the local government sector and beyond. I'm certain the WAC staff could come up with some fantastic educational resources if they were given free rein with SOCITM's financial contribution for BC. The current state of affairs is like asking the Michelin Guide to judge restaurants on the quality of their cutlery.
The question that I keeping coming back to is this - what does the Better Connected reporting of web accessibility achieve? Last year it painted a fairly depressing picture, and this year that picture is almost identical. If SOCITM wants to be an agent for change it needs to do more than just reporting a problem exists, and start putting its members' best interests first by helping them to address the problem.
Comment on Better Connected & web accessibility (9)
February 08, 2007
USAJOBS vs Section 508
It's never truly comforting, but the aphorism "there's always someone worse off than you" can at least make you take a more circumspect view of your own place in the world, if only for a short time. In the past I've been critical of the UK government for producing inaccessible websites, both because it's the wrong thing to do, and because it fails to meet the government's own standards. But this morning I came across USAJOBS , "the official job site of the United States Federal Government". For once the UK government almost shines in comparison.
Can someone please tell me if I'm missing something here? It's like going back in time. I can hear Prince singing 1999 in the background, Boo.com are burning their way through $100 million, IT contractors the world over are filling their pockets as business panics about the millennium bug. And USAJOBS is being built. At least that's what it looks like to me.
Just how can the Federal Government, responsible for Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act , procure and promote such a poor service? I'm not going to list the problems the site has, just go and have a quick look yourself. Treat it like one of those puzzles where they give you a target score for making words out of a bundle of letters. Your target is 6,744.
In my opinion this type of failure does more damage to the accessibility cause than anything else. USAJOBS should be an exemplar of accessible design. How can we expect businesses and web developers to take accessibility seriously when there is such a fundamental lack of adherence to standards by the very body that sets those standards?
Comment on USAJOBS vs Section 508 (2)
November 21, 2006
Petition the PM
Ian Fenn (I'm assuming of Chopstix fame) has setup an e-petition at the 10 Downing Street site asking the PM to ensure that websites launched by government comply with WCAG.
Let's face it, Tony needs some good news before he buggers off on the lecture circuit, so it's definitely worth a shot, if only to highlight the continuing non-compliance of the DTI and other high profile government sites.
There are 517 open petitions at the site at the time of writing, and we only need 81 signatures to make the first page, and 9123 to displace the top petition, so get over there now and sign it, you know it makes sense.
Comment on Petition the PM (2)
October 24, 2006
Web Accessibility Google
Google have launched customised search engines via Google Co-op, a new (beta of course) corner of the Google empire.
It's a potentially powerful tool. Here's a quick web acessibility search engine I setup to test it:
It's restricting searches to just 4 domains, and yet produces pretty decent results for any accessibility issue you care to throw at it. With a bit of time, care and attention it's going to be possible to create fantastically targetted search engines. Even better there's a community element, since anyone can suggest sites to add to the search engine, and if the engine owner deems them suitable they can be easily added.
Throw some accessibility-related terms at it and see how it fares. And if you've got suggestions for sites to add to the list just follow the 'Volunteer to contribute to this search engine' link (if you've got a Google account) and do your stuff.
You can also access this engine at its homepage.
Comment on Web Accessibility Google (7)
September 19, 2006
DTI Internal Review
I've finally had a response from the DTI on the internal review I requested into their decision not to honour the follow-up FOI request I made in July. In short, the Chief Operating Officer at the DTI has decided that the department were justified in declining to answer the questions set out in that request. Can't say I'm surprised.
If I wanted to pursue the matter the next course of action would be to appeal to the Information Commissioner's Office. I'm not satisfied with the DTI's answer, which (apart from being poorly written) consists of little more than platitudes and half-arsed excuses, but for now I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and sit back and wait to see the fruits of their labour.
Here's the full text of the response I received by email, retyped by my own fair hand since the PDF attachment it was contained in consisted of a scanned letter. Good job I'm not blind.
Dear Mr Champion,
Thank you for your email of 26 July 2006 requesting an internal review of the Department's decision to decline your request of 25 June made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In line with Departmental policy this matter was passed to me for consideration as Director-General with responsibility for the website policy area.
I have now had the opportunity of reviewing this matter. After giving full consideration to your request and the information provided by the E-Communications team I am content that the s12 and s5(1) justification for declining was valid in this instance. Having reached that conclusion, I set out later in this letter the steps we will take that may help with your enquiry.
The nine requests totalled 51 separate questions, 27 questions were asked in the first tranche of requests (which we answered in full) and 24 were asked in the second tranche of requests. In calculating the cost of answering these questions the following elements were taken into consideration:
- undertaking a number of searches to determine, locate, retrieve and extract any relevant infromation from a variety of document that spanned a four year period. This included email correspondence, project plans, project governance documentation, project meeting notes, invitation to Tender documents, tender board papers, proposals, contracts, customer briefs, service request documentation, invoices and user acceptance testing strategies and scripts.
The volume of questions, combined with the breadth of information held, would have taken us over the £600 threshold.
Having considered your request for review, I have also considered the other action we can take. We are preparing statements that we can publish on the website explaining the current position on accessibility and the background to the procurement. That may help you to refine your request to bring it below the financial threshold. The statement will explain that we are carrying out an audit and we would aim to be in a position subsequently to explain the action we are taking on accessibility.
I recognise that the position on accessibility of the site is unsatisfactory - it is unfortunate that this was the outcome of the procurement. There was undoubtedly a failure to ensure that it was compliant with the accessibility guidelines. The development of the site was a long and complicated process that took place over several years and involved numbers of different people in DTI and its suppliers. We certainly aim to learn lessons from it but a detailed investigation of it would be time-consuming and probably would not provide complete answers to the questions you have raised. Our focus at present is on the action required to bring the site to an appropriate standard of accessibility.
Hilary Douglas, Chief Operating Officer
The DTI site's accessibility page does now have a notice which includes this passage:
An accessibility audit is being carried out by a specialist independent agency. The audit will identify where the site fails to comply with relevant accessibility standards. The recommendations will be used to draft an implementation plan.
If there's anyone willing to submit an FOI enquiry asking which specialist independent agency they've employed I'd be very interested to hear the answer.
Comment on DTI Internal Review (9)
August 28, 2006
United Nations E-Accessibility Day
3rd December 2006 will be the International Day of Disabled Persons,and this year's theme is accessibility to information technologies
.
Read all about it at the UN Enable site . There are few details of what will be happening on the day, but one would imagine that there will be a series of co-ordinated events much like World Usability Day (which is 14th November this year).
August 17, 2006
Private Eye for the DTI
A warm welcome to anyone who has been led here by that esteemed publication Private Eye. Just so you don't have to rake around the less interesting corners of the site, you can find the bits about the DTI here:
- 17th May 2006 - DTI achieves new low
- 18th June 2006 - The DTI responds
- 27th June 2006 - More questions for the DTI
- 21st July 2006 - DTI update - FOI shenanigans
My co-conspirator Bruce Lawson has a handy category just for the DTI on his site, clever bloke, which will complete the picture.
For visitors who don't subscribe to the Eye (shame on you) Bruce has a transcript of the Eye piece on his site.
Current position
At the moment I'm waiting for a response to the internal review I requested after the department dodged our follow-up enquiry. They've told me:
The Department is carrying out an Internal Review into the decision not to disclose the information you request. The review will be undertaken by the Director General within the DTI who is responsible for the policy area within which your original request falls.
The target for conducting an internal review is 20 working days from receipt of your letter. We will write to you again following the review.
I made my request for an internal review on 26th July, so should have a response by 23rd August, which will be published here. If the result of the review is unsatisfactory the final course of action is an appeal to the Information Commissioner's Office.
The tip of the iceberg?
It's probably worth pointing out that the DTI is by no means the only government department to procure and publish such a low quality website, and in doing so ignore the government's own guidelines on web development. There's a fundamental flaw in the current e-government setup at Whitehall, where the eGovernment Unit issues some very good (if now dated) guidance on producing accessible, usable websites, based on best practice, which is subsequently ignored by departments. There's no threat of sanctions from the government itself, so the only risks the departments are taking by ignoring the guidance are of legal action (miniscule) and bad publicity (hello!).
Comment on Private Eye for the DTI (3)
August 02, 2006
RNIB Web Access Centre Courses
Whether web accessibility is a scary, monsters-under-the-bed-just-don't-want-to-look thing for you, or you've already got an inkling of what it's all about and want to learn more, it seems the fine folks at the RNIB Web Access Centre can help.
They've announced two new courses, the first for people who need to understand the big issues; why accessibility is vital and what happens when sites aren't accessible
, the second is a more technical course for people who need to understand the detail of how it's done, includes examples, so that delegates are equipped to rip out the bad practice and bolt in the best, on their return to work
.
So if London's an option for you, and you can stretch to the very reasonable £195 for each full-day course, there are few better people to learn about web accessibility from. They know their stuff inside out, and are very nice people to boot. And no, I don't get commission.
Full details from the Web Access Centre Blog (beta) .
Comment on RNIB Web Access Centre Courses (4)
July 31, 2006
Redesign: Rucksack Readers
I've had a web design business since 1995, and although over the past few years I've gradually run it down and let clients go, largely to spend more time doing other things, there's one client I've kept on and have no plans of letting go.
Rucksack Readers was founded in 2000 by a good friend of ours, Jetta Megarry, and it's been great to watch the development of and be involved with a successful, growing business. The company produces guide books for long distance walks, treks and now the seven summits (the highest mountain in each continent). Their books are second to none in their sector - superior design and killer content combine to make them essential for those actually undertaking the routes covered in the books, and the photography is enough to make them ideal coffee table reading or gifts.
Anyway, today the Rucksack Readers website was relaunched, following a standards-based, accessible redesign which has taken shape over the last month. I was responsible for everything at the web end - the scripts, the CMS, and the front-end code and CSS. The site is visually designed by Ian Clydesdale at Workhorse Design , who also does the design for the books, with Jetta producing the content. It's been a real team effort, and hopefully the results will speak for themselves.
Comment on Redesign: Rucksack Readers (6)
July 26, 2006
Google Accessible Search in a pickle
Like many others I was very interested to see Google's foray into the accessibility arena this week in the shape of Google Accessible Search , "Accessible Web Search for the Visually Impaired". A nice idea, and great to see accessibility on their agenda, but from a few quick tests my confidence levels in its utility is a tad shaky.
Search regular old Google for Pickled Eggs and at number 5 you'll find a recipe for this delicacy on The Accidental Smallholder , my other personal site.
Take Google Accessible Search, enter the same query, Pickled Eggs , and we're there again, only at number 44.
Now, I know that The Accidental Smallholder has its accessibility problems, but that recipe page is valid XHTML, has total separation of content from style, contains one image with appropriate alt text, and uses semantic markup. The top five accessible results are a mixture of table-based layout, tag soup, doctype-less frontpage monstrosities and pages from about.com, and I fail to see in what way they are more accessible than my pickled eggs recipe. Harrumph.
The Accessible Search FAQ makes all the right noises, with statements like:
In its current version, Google Accessible Search looks at a number of signals by examining the HTML markup found on a web page. It tends to favor pages that degrade gracefully --- pages with few visual distractions and pages that are likely to render well with images turned off.
...but it clearly needs some fine-tuning, otherwise how are the visually impaired ever going to enjoy my superior pickled eggs?
Comment on Google Accessible Search in a pickle (5)
July 21, 2006
DTI update - FOI shenanigans
I've been on my hols this week, and on my return I discovered, as predicted, that the DTI had replied to the follow-up Freedom of Information (FOI) enquiry Bruce Lawson and I submitted to them on 26th June. Unfortunately the DTI has rather neatly, but not necessarily fairly, side-stepped the entire issue, and used a technicality to avoid fulfilling our enquiry.
Here's the email from the DTI in full, I'll leave you to have a quick read and draw your own conclusions before reading mine:
Dear Mr Champion
Thank you for your request for information on the accessibility of the Department of Trade and Industry's website which we received on 26/06/06. I regret that we cannot provide this information, as the cost of administering your request would exceed the limit prescribed under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. This is £600, which represents the estimated cost of spending 24 hours in determining whether the Department holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information. Where the cost of compliance with a request would exceed the appropriate limit, we are not obliged to comply with that request.
We have received nine separate FOI requests regarding the accessibility of the DTI website. All nine requests appear to have been generated by contributors to the blether.com website and discussion forum:
http://www.blether.com/archives/2006/06/the_dti_respond.php
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/index.php/2006/stupid-government-websites/Regulation 5(1) of the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 provides that, where two or more requests for the same or similar information are made to a public authority by different persons who appear to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign, those requests may be aggregated for the purposes of estimating whether compliance with the requests would exceed the appropriate limit.
We have aggregated the nine requests received on this subject, and estimate that the cost of compliance with them would exceed the appropriate limit. We are therefore not obliged to provide the information requested.
However, the DTI is aware of the accessibility issues with the new website. An accessibility audit is planned and the recommendations from the audit will identify accessibility improvements.
If you have any queries about this letter, please contact the DTI Response Centre quoting the FOI reference number above.
Appeals procedure
If you are unhappy with the way the Department of Trade and Industry has handled your request you may ask for an internal review. If you wish to complain, you should contact us at:
Department of Trade and Industry
Response Centre
1 Victoria Street
London SW1H 0ET
dti.enquiries@dti.gsi.gov.ukIf you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AFRegards
DTI Response Centre
Tel: 020 7215 5000
For those of you not familiar with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), public authorities subject to its provisions are not obliged to respond to requests where the estimated cost of determining what information the authority holds, locating the information, retrieving it, and, if necessary, editing or redacting it
exceeds £600, calculated at a notional rate of £25 per hour.
In addition, under section 12(4)(b) of the Act, authorities can aggregate multiple enquiries for information from different individuals where it appears to the authority that the requests have been made in concert or as part of a campaign.
In short, the DTI is refusing to answer legitimate questions about the processes it followed in procuring certain services, and about processes it may or may not have in place for future procurement.
The FOIA is regulated by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The ICO issues guidance to public authorities about their responsibilities under the legislation, and to the public about their rights. The ICO offers this guidance (PDF) to authorities refusing requests due to excessive costs:
- Confirm or deny whether the information is held (unless to do so would constitute disclosure of exempt information)
- Where the cost exceeds the appropriate limit, state what this cost is.
- Provide advice and assistance if possible. We would encourage public authorities to advise what steps could be taken by the applicant to make the request fall within the appropriate limit (e.g narrowing the scope of the request), or
- Provide what information could be produced within the appropriate limit.
- Outline your authority's appeals procedure (or clearly state that no procedure exits if this is the case).
- Provide details of the right to appeal to the Information Commissioner.
In this case the DTI has chosen to ignore the first four of these guidelines, merely providing information about appeals procedures. (Ignoring guidelines is clearly something of a habit for the DTI.) They also seem to have missed the point entirely by stating that:
...the DTI is aware of the accessibility issues with the new website. An accessibility audit is planned and the recommendations from the audit will identify accessibility improvements.
It would be a tad distressing if they weren't aware of the issues by now, but of course what we're trying to discover is how they missed the issues in the first place, and what they are doing to prevent it happening again.
The upshot is that I will be requesting an internal review from the DTI, and if I find that unsatisfactory I'll be perfectly happy to appeal to the ICO.
If anyone reading this made an FOI enquiry about the DTI site please get in touch, since we might as well make it a real campaign if the DTI are going to treat it as one. And if you didn't, and you feel strongly about this, please take Bruce's advice and write to your MP.
Comment on DTI update - FOI shenanigans (4)
June 29, 2006
PAS 78 set free
PAS 78, a guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites, is now available free of charge from the Disability Rights Commission website .
This is excellent news - if you're the slightest bit responsible for procuring or specifying websites do yourself and your organisation a favour and go grab a copy now. It'll help you tell the difference between the snake-oil salesmen and bona-fide top-notch web development companies, which can only be a good thing.
Comment on PAS 78 set free (3)
June 28, 2006
supply2.gov.uk - DTI fail again
Launched yesterday by Jim Fitzpatrick, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Trade & Industry, supply2.gov.uk is described in its launch statement thusly:
There are now more than 7500 Government contracts advertised on a new business portal which removes the barriers faced by many small businesses to access public sector contracts.
Sadly it doesn't remove any barriers if you browse without javascript enabled, or using a device which doesn't support javascript. And they aren't shy about telling you that you need javascript:
Unfortunately the link to the instruction page is broken.
The site's accessibility statement includes the most confused definition of WCAG conformance I've ever seen:
Additionally the site meets with Bobby (opens in a new window) approved Conformance Level AA in association with the Web Content Guidelines (opens in a new window).
And of course it fails to meet the claimed level of conformance, for various reasons including requiring scripting to be available, for using deprecated markup in a few places, non-contiguous headings, lack of labels for form elements, misuse of the apostrophe, and best of all for introducing a brand new HTML element to the world, <h7> (it's right there on the home page).
This is actually a real shame, because the site is quite nicely built in general, but falls down on the detail. There's also evidence of a rush job in the markup, where the (js dependent) search form is commented out, and a beta statement still resides. I'll email them with these observations, and hopefully in due course it will be made more accessible and we can celebrate a decent DTI website for a change.
Comment on supply2.gov.uk - DTI fail again (4)
Blaze Aware - fire safety for sighted people
The Scottish Executive launched Blaze Aware yesterday, a new website aimed at raising childrens' awareness of fire safety precautions. According to the press release from the Exec:
The Blaze Aware website is designed to be a fun, creative and interactive way of getting the message across.
Shame it wasn't designed to be accessible. There are countless problems with this site, including it being unusable without images (no alt attributes on many images), heavily dependent on javascript for navigation and functionality, barely keyboard navigable (although to be fair there are some bits of Flash with good keyboard support), it contains audio with no textual equivalent, has a table-based layout from the dark ages, there's not a single heading used across the site, pages without titles, and so on.
I love the "low graphics" version, which basically turns off the 460k background image. Except of course it defaults to the high graphics version, so your browser's probably downloaded and cached the image by the time you turn it off. Seems like the DTI have some competition after all.
It's hosted by a company called Civic , who proclaim themselves to be expert in web and digital communication
. It's not clear if they were responsible for the development. [Edit: I've been contacted by someone at Civic who has stated that they were not responsible for the design and development of the site.] Bizarrely it's hosted on a subdomain, aphrodite.civiccomputing.com - visit the root for a giggle, but be prepared to disconnect immediately!
Oh, and it cost £36,000. I'll be making enquiries...
Comment on Blaze Aware - fire safety for sighted people (8)
June 27, 2006
Da Vinci Code Trail - not big or clever
Imagine for a moment that you can't use a mouse or other pointing device. Maybe you're a screenreader user. The reason is immaterial, but you're dependent on your keyboard or voice recognition software to use your computer. You're also a big fan of the Da Vinci Code (the book that is - the chances of someone being a fan of the film and a keyboard user are too tiny to contemplate).
When Sony Ericsson and O2 announce "The Da Vinci Trail", an entire site of phone offers, content and secrets from The Da Vinci Code
, you're pretty damned excited. Apparently you can get free downloads, win a car, and best of all take on the challenge of The Da Vinci Code Trail for your chance to win The Da Vinci Code experience of a lifetime
. And to top it all, the Da Vinci Code Trail website is Segala certified - see the press release on the Segala site (if you didn't receive the same unsolicited email I did from them) for the full details.
Ah, life is sweet. You visit the site, select the html version over the Flash version (feeling a little like a second class citizen, but that's okay, at least the content is accessible), download some stuff, enter a competition to win a car (even though the markup on the competition entry form is still horribly broken, 48 hours after I reported it), and prepare for the big one, the Da Vinci Code Trail itself.
As you may have already guessed, that's when it all goes pear-shaped. See, the good folk at Sony Ericsson and O2 have seen fit to provide a pretty accessible alternative to some of the content on the site, like the downloads and the car comp (about 8 pages in total), but the Trail itself is a multi-stage Flash game, wholly unusable with anything other than a mouse, for anyone other than a sighted user.
I contacted Segala about this bizarre situation - after all the whole campaign is called "The Da Vinci Code Trail", and all that free audio book, download and win a car competition stuff is only secondary to the main competition - and this is the reason they gave for the Segala certification not including the Trail itself:
The Flash game on the site is actually hosted on Sony Ericsson's domain and was developed independently.
Normally I wouldn't bat an eyelid at this sort of setup, but in this case Segala, O2 and Sony Ericsson are shouting about this half-arsed effort at accessibility as:
a great example of how organisations who are now starting to take accessibility more seriously are not building sites that might just look good and have some really great interactive features but that don't comply with accessibility requirements.
No-one should be under the impression that the discriminatory Da Vinci Code Trail website is acceptable, and it certainly isn't anything to shout about.
Comment on Da Vinci Code Trail - not big or clever (7)
More questions for the DTI
Being unhappy with the DTI's response to our recent enquiries regarding the development of their new website, Bruce Lawson and I have put our heads together and asked them some further questions. You can see the full list on Bruce's site .
When we get answers, probably on or around 21st July, we'll post them here and at Bruce's place, where you'll be able to comment.
June 21, 2006
Next stop - East Midlands Conference Centre
If you work in the public sector and are interested in web accessibility and broader web development issues for government sites, you might be interested in this event:
Currently in production and back by popular demand is a forum to showcase the leading edge of public sector website development highlighting innovation, usability and compatibility. Government Websites 2.0 - The Next Generation
Not sure about "leading edge", but you'll get to hear me bang on about accessibility for half an hour or so, and participate in the panel, discussing the question "What is the purpose and function of a local authority website?". If anyone knows the answer please email me, otherwise I'll just have to talk bollocks and hope no-one notices...
Comment on Next stop - East Midlands Conference Centre (3)
June 18, 2006
The DTI Responds
Last month I posted about the disquiet I felt about the DTI's new website . Subsequently I emailed an enquiry to the department, requesting 6 pieces of information about the development of the website. My main concerns were that the site was inaccessible, ignored almost wholesale the government's own guidelines on the development of websites, and subsequently was an example of the mis-use of public funds.
Exactly 20 working days later on Friday June 16th (boy do they know their rights under the FOI legislation) I received a reply. It makes for interesting reading, but for me raises more questions than it answers.
The Q&A
For the record here are the 6 things I asked for and the responses I received, verbatim (with my added links):
- The total budget and actual spend for development of the new website.
- There was a budget of approximately £200000 for the development of the new website. The spend on website development is estimated at £175000 which includes costs from Fresh01 and the Department's main IT supplier, Fujitsu .
- Whether the website was developed by a team at the DTI or by a private company. If the latter please provide the name of the company.
- The website was designed under contract by Fresh 01 . The design was then implemented by the Department's main IT supplier, Fujitsu , into a Content Management System .
- A copy of the requirements document for the production of the new website.
- A copy of the requirements document is attached. This formed part of the 'Invitation to Tender for rebuild of the website, brief for customer research, design & information architecture, and usability testing phases'. [Download the document - dti.pdf (118kb, PDF format); dti.doc (87kb, MS Word format)]
- A copy of any tender documentation related to the production of the new website.
- Unfortunately the DTI considered their answer to the previous question to also answer this, despite the mention of a more comprehensive 'Invitation to Tender' document. I'll attempt to secure a copy of this in my next information request.
- The basis for this statement on the DTI website: "This website meets the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) AA-level standard."
- The statement relating to accessibility was an error. It was removed from the website on 19 May 2006 when we reviewed the site in the light of questions raised.
- Details of what quality assurance procedures were followed to ensure the new website met the requirements of the department and satisfied the relevant legal requirements for websites.
- Two main rounds of User Assurance Testing were carried out on each template of the Content Management System, using test scripts. There was no formal User Assurance Testing for accessibility.
Accessibility
Let's take a look at the accessibility issues. The requirements document, echoing the government's own standards, specifies that:
10. Companies should note that the final website must comply with the Government Website Guidelines: http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/oee/oee.nsf/sections/webguidelines-handbook-top/$file/handbookindex.htm and Level AA of the Web Accessibility Initiative (http://www.w3.org/WAI)."
It also states that one of the key objectives of the DTI website rebuild is:
To be a leading example of usable, accessible web design"
Finally, in Annex I, the objectives of the Usability Testing Phase are stated in these terms:
We need to ensure that we provide high quality, usable templates for incorporation into the Percussion CMS. To do this we need a robust programme of usability testing carried out during the design and build phase. This is important in ensuring that the site meets accessibility guidelines for the disabled and other groups, but it is also intended to improve the experience for all users. We need to ensure that users can find what they need to quickly and easily on the site.
We will expect the successful tenderer for this phase of the project to work closely with Percussion and also the company responsible for developing the templates. The results of usability tests will fee