Nearly 800 government sites fail disabled visitors

A release from eGov monitor Weekly today announced that 78% of UK government websites do not conform to accepted standards for disabled users.

The report released by the Office of the e-Envoy found around 800 websites need to be rebuilt to comply with accessibility laws requiring government services to cater for disabled citizens. The eGov monitor release says the report "draws upon the findings by the National Audit Office investigation which examined the accessibility of 65 central government websites and concluded that nearly all were potentially excluding users".

The cost of work to fix the website problems has not been made public but is expected to run into millions of pounds. eGov monitor Weekly forecasts that to rectify the problems, government departments may need to spend at least 10 to 15 percent of their total annual budget for websites.

Usability specialist Nancy Perlman from Synchordia said of the news, "usable and accessible design need to become fundamental to website development, rather than a feature to be added if there is time and money in the budget.

"The difficulty is cultural. Organisations both public and private will have to change the way they go about their business. It will take a massive shift of mindset within both government and industry to turn theory into practice".