The research was carried out by Nomensa, the internet research
and design consultancy. It found that half of the sites failed the
most basic of accessibility standards, known as WCAG Level A.
First Choice bottom of Nomensa's table of 10. In between were
lastminute.com, Opodo, Going Places, Butlins, Expedia, Thomson and
Thomas Cook.
Nomensa measured the sites against a series of manual and
automated testing criteria, measuring issues such as scalable
layout, accessible site structure and compatibility with assistive
technologies.
The research also showed that nine of the 10 sites were likely
to display inconsistently on portable devices such as PDA devices
or mobile phones, and internet-ready televisions.
None of the sites produced valid HTML code, which means that
none of the websites tested were correctly written with code that
was accessible. None of them offered skip links. These are internal
page links that provide a way for users to skip over groups of
links and move straight to the page content and are very helpful to
those who use sound to navigate a website. Only four of the sites –
those of Saga Holidays, Haven Holidays, Thomas Cook and
lastminute,com – offered scalable text, which is essential to many
people with low vision. Saga Holidays offered the only site with a
liquid design – meaning it was viewable at any resolution and on
any size of screen.
Nomensa argues that many disabled users will have a poor user
experience that may even exclude them from booking online travel in
the UK. "Accessible web content is essentially good business
practice," it says.
There is a commercial incentive to open travel websites to all
internet users. According to Government figures, UK residents made
over 61 million trips abroad in 2003, spending over £28 billion.
And in the first quarter of 2005, 58% of adults in the UK had
bought goods, tickets or services online. Nomensa points out that
the businesses in its study have a good opportunity to win a bigger
share of this market simply by making sure their websites are
accessible.
There are also legal reasons. The UK's Disability Discrimination
Act requires companies to make their public websites accessible.
Travel sites have already been a target for legal action, though
not in the UK.
Last August, the operators of Ramada.com and Priceline.com
undertook to pay $77,500 and to improve their sites' accessibility
to settle an investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot
Spitzer – albeit the nature of the legal obligation on operators of
such US websites is less clear than the nature of the obligation on
the UK market.
Léonie Watson, Head of Accessibility at Nomensa, said she was
surprised that travel companies in the UK have not made more effort
to engage their online visitors. "Good web accessibility practice
is not exclusively for the disabled," she said. "It caters to
anyone using the web in an easy and simple to use manner. The more
people who can use your site, the more people you can sell your
services to. It is really that simple.”
Editor's note: When this story
first appeared on OUT-LAW, the sites named as best and worst were
incorrectly identified due to an error in a data table. This has
been fixed. However, the conclusion is unchanged: travel sites are
failing to deliver on web accessibility.
