"Fancy a little D.I.Y?"
Uh-oh! There are 12 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 12 problems identified on the page you submitted. These issues are broken out by WAI priority in the table below.
0 problems11 problems1 problem- 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:
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).
Deprecated align attribute(s) found
A deprecated attribute is a tag that is no longer supported as part of W3C's latest HTML standard. This means that browsers and assistive technologies are under no obligation to support it in future versions, thus potentially rendering its contents inaccessible. It's worth noting that many elements and attributes are deprecated solely on the grounds that they cause accessibility problems.
Absolute font sizes are used
Specifying the exact size of a font using an absolute measurements (e.g. pixels or points) prevents visually-impaired users from resizing them (particularly in Internet Explorer for Windows). If people can't read a webpage's content, what's the point?
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.
