Email your MP about the DTI failure to answer questions.
I work in NI Government where it's mandatory that all new sites must be AA - this has been the standard since January 2005.
Before a site is allowed to go live they must be at least single A and are asked to address any outstanding AA issues within 4 weeks.
We also have a corporate standard for layout relating to the sizing of corporate logos, placement of common links and search.
All our main sites are content managed which makes it difficult to maintain AA where authors aren't familiar as they should be with accessibility issues. Having said that there are some really excellent examples which myself and my team have been involved with such as www.ofmdfmni.gov.uk, www.dfpni.gov.uk and www.delni.gov.uk. As a whole I'm proud of what we've achieved in the NICS and as we look to consolidating the number of NI Government websites hopefully this will lead to a higher standard in the quality, consistency and presentation of information on sites.
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| Daz wrote: |
| I work in NI Government where it's mandatory that all new sites must be AA - this has been the standard since January 2005. |
Which is the same across the UK public sector, isn't it?
| Quote: |
| Before a site is allowed to go live they must be at least single A and are asked to address any outstanding AA issues within 4 weeks. |
Which is excellent, and demonstrates where the problems stem from in the rest of the UK - there are guidelines and requirements galore but absolutely no enforcement or policing.
The NI model you describe should be applied across the board, and non-compliance should result in the stripping of the .gov.uk domain - it would put the onus squarely on the relevant government body and their suppliers to get it right.
Dan Champion, Champion IS, Mooch Marketing, Revish
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Dan as far as I'm aware the Cabinet Office guidelines are still only single A. The revised guidelines were to mandate AA but they've been in draft form for over a year now and I've been unable to get an update on when they're likely to be finalised.
Auditing is a resource intensive task. I devised a pre-audit checklist which all developers/customers must satisfy before we will carry out a full scale audit and this covers things like browser/resolution testing, corporate standards, single A checkpoints and a few AA points. If you look at the sites that have gone through this process the most common areas where they fall down are things such as headings nested incorrectly, not using lists properly, poor link text and repetitive page titles (usually with dynamic pages).
Our training centre runs a Writing for the Web course which people seem to benefit from quite a lot, most Departments also have some sort of web publishing policy and also I've done my best to educate some of the owners on issues they need to keep and eye on. As a result some of them push out competency retention documents on a regular basis, basically nagging people on the dos and donts!
What next is more important though. It's ok getting to a point where we are at now but what's the next step? We need partial audits say every 6 months to ensure people understand what is required of them and also to cover any new applications etc. We need to update our accessibility guidance and make it more relevant to todays technology and interpretations. WCAG 2 also is going to have an impact at sometime, again further down the line we need to decide if we are going to adopt principles and set a baseline.
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| Daz wrote: |
| Dan as far as I'm aware the Cabinet Office guidelines are still only single A. The revised guidelines were to mandate AA |
...for local authorities I believe it is one of the mandatory Priority Service Outcomes that requires level AA.
Jack Pickard The Pickards Information Services| Blog | Twit
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Dan Champion wrote DTI update - good money after bad? on his blog yesterday.
| Dan Champion wrote: |
| 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. |
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| Cerbera wrote: |
| The prices seem very steep to me. Then again it is a pretty big website, as are the companies involved. |
Another 100K, ouch - and people say we're expensive!
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Joe Clark mentioned DTI at the end of a recent blog entry, so I decided to check how they were doing.
First thing I noticed is the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) has become the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR).
Second thing I noticed is that much of the website has been recoded:
- Uses a Strict document type (it's XHTML sent as text/html, predictably).
- Uses list markup for lists:
- This includes navigation lists.
- Also the footer, where list items don't include vertical bar characters.
- Also includes lists in the main content, even when the list markers have been hidden. (This means they care about structure and separate it from presentation.)
- This includes navigation lists.
- The search form label is associated with the search form box using the for+id method (explicit association).
- There are a couple of heading elements (but <p><strong>Key links:</strong></p> should clearly be <h3>Key links:</h3>).
- Paragraphs are marked up with <p> (although I spotted <p> </p> which is clearly bogus).
- Links to the current page in the left-hand navigation list are de-linked (but not any others, it seems).
- Shockingly, the layout is of the unlimited-range proportionate fluid type with 0 tables for layout!
| DT--I mean, BERR wrote: |
The improvement work has started:
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I haven't been following it closely. But it [urlk=http://www.berr.gov.uk/administration/accessibility/index.html]seems to have turned out nice[/url] in the end. Really nice, in places. 
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