Council web sites failing users

Public sector web sites are struggling to meet usability guidelines, potentially putting them in breach of accessibility laws, according to research published by Socitm.

According to the Better Connected report from the association for IT managers in the public sector, usage figures for public sector web sites are rising - year on year they were seeing about 40 percent more visitors.

However, granting access to the disabled remains an issue. Of the 468 local authority sites inspected, just 62 reached World Wide Web Consortium best practice guidelines for enabling access to the disabled. Socitm added that although this figure had not risen against the previous survey results, the sites in question were achieving a higher level of compliance.

Rankings were based on criteria such as whether the site links to other online services and what features it makes available, and sites were graded into four categories. The worst performing sites were graded as promotional, whilst the best performers were awarded transactional status.

In 2005, 38 of the sites were rated as transactional, but in this year’s survey that number increased to 60. Meanwhile, those sites achieving the lowest category of promotional - those offering very few interactive features - have almost disappeared. Overall, 110 web sites had moved up a category, while 56 had dropped down.

Socitm added that improvements to sites were slowing down, however. 40 percent of sites have stayed at the same level for the last three years, the survey revealed.