Accessibility is not just about making sites accessible to the
disabled, which is a legal requirement. It's also about ensuring
that the links work, that the download times are acceptable and
that the site does not restrict users who access the site from a
range of devices or with browsers that cannot cope with, for
example, Flash or JavaScript.
Perhaps most important, however, is to keep a site up and
running. So it seems ironic that the site rated top among all FTSE
100 companies' sites has been down for several days. Packaging firm
Bunzl.com had a good site when tested by Business2www – but at the
time of writing, the domain name simply redirects to the site of
Virtual Internet.
There is consensus that best practice for ensuring disabled
access to a site is to comply at least with a minimum accessibility
level for any site defined by the World Wide Web Consortium, or
W3C. However the report shows that one fifth of top companies are
failing to achieve even this level.
The survey considered 96 of the FTSE 100 companies (of which
there are in fact only 99). The survey took the form of a once-only
test on each site, in the last week of July this year. Three
companies are not included because, according to the report, they
"had sufficiently impenetrable problems that they could not be
tested at all". These were the BAE, Dixons and the Gallaher Group
web sites.
Laurence Shaw of Business2www told OUT-LAW.COM that his company
had noticed the problem with Bunzl.com last Thursday. Business2www
is the developer of SiteMorse, software that performs diagnostic
testing for web sites.
"It may not be their mistake that is causing the site to be
down," said Shaw. "But it makes them difficult to find, difficult
to contact and they potentially lose business. It highlights the
importance of using software to check that your site is
accessible."
