"Fancy a little D.I.Y?"
Uh-oh! There are 4 problems!
The verdict is in and unfortunately the page you tested does not adhere to the WAI accessibility guidelines we evaluated it against.
There were 4 problems identified on the page you submitted. These issues are broken out by WAI priority in the table below.
0 problems2 problems2 problems- Priority 1 issues must be fixed to provide the most basic level of accessibility.
- Priority 2 issues should be fixed to provide the minimum level of accessibility recommended by the EU.
- Priority 3 issues may be fixed to maximise accessibility.
So what's wrong?
Here's a taster of the problems we found:
The "txtPostCode" form element doesn't feature a <label>
The <label> tag allows you to associate a form label with any kind of form <input> element: e.g. text boxes, multi-line text areas, checkboxes or radio buttons. This means that screen readers don't need to guess the title of different fields and controls.
A dropdown menu <option> must be selected by default
If a dropdown menu doesn't display a selected <option> by default, some old browsers and assistive technologies won't navigate to it (set focus on it).
Text input fields don't have a default value
If text fields don't feature placeholder characters by default, some old browsers and assistive technologies won't navigate (set focus) to them.
Can you be sued?
New York State's Attorney General announced settlements with two major travel websites in 2004. In both instances the companies had failed to implement guidelines published by the W3C that could have ensured online accessibility for people with disabilities.
In the UK the RNIB say that they've considered taking up a number of legal cases against organisations with regard to their websites - and the DRC promise to be "vigorous in the use of our enforcement powers" when sites ignore their duty to provide a basic level of accessiblity.
It's also worth noting that the page you tested is likely to be worse than indicated. Tools like ours can only ever give you a rough idea of the problem, because only a small subset of accessiblity guidelines are amenable to automated testing. Many guidelines require manual inspection, so it's extremely likely that the page you tested has a number of further - as yet undetected - issues.
So what can you do?
Contact us now to speak to an Etre accessibility expert, or check a different page.
