At last, after much toil and angst, Socitm’s Better Connected 2007 report is published.
Better Connected 2007: a snapshot of local authority websites
I want to mention one particular result here, since you’re guaranteed to see it mentioned elsewhere.
Dan Champion’s excellent website at Clackmannanshire council failed to achieve a pass at Level Double-A.
Why? Because in the 200 page sample, the automated test indicated 158 HTML validation errors. I checked that result manually shortly after it came in, and found a scattering of validation errors consistent with that number of errors being found over that number of pages.
Does this mean that Socitm or RNIB are saying that the website is inaccessible?
Don’t be daft. Of course not! What it means is that, at the time of testing, the site failed to achieve full compliance with all of the requirements of the WAI WCAG 1.0 guidelines at Level Double-A.
Because that’s what we assess for the Better Connected reports. The UK government specifies Level Double-A as the target for central government and local authority websites, so we test compliance at that level. And these assessments are a snapshot in time - resources simply don’t allow for any more in-depth or complex than that.
I outlined in a previous post here the methodology we use for these assessments, which involves a combination of automated and manual testing. And we include various margins in the automated tests to ensure we’re not failing sites because of a single missing ALT attribute or something equally draconian. For example, if fewer than 5% of all the images found in the sample lack an ALT attribute, the site will be given a provisional or “marginal” pass for that checkpoint, so that it can go forward for manual checking. Similarly, if we record fewer than 50 HTML validation errors, that checkpoint is given a “marginal” pass.
Confession: knowing how knowledgeable and committed to accessibility Dan is, I did, for a few seconds after I saw that result, consider the fact that I could quietly change the number at that point and no-one, except me, would be any the wiser. But how fair would that have been to other equally committed web managers in a similar position who I happen not to know? Quite. So I didn’t.
I’ve focussed on the Clackmannanshire website since it, and Dan, have rather a high profile. But there may be other web teams who find themselves in a similar position.
So, to Dan, and to any other local authority website managers who are disappointed with the results of our assessments for Better Connected 2007 - I’m sorry. But we have to assess on the basis of what we find at the time we carry out these assessments. We don’t set out to fail sites or enjoy failing them, but we do aim to be as fair and impartial as we can in our assessments.
