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SOME GOVERNMENT WEBSITES NOT ‘ACCESSIBLE’ SAYS REPORT
A new report launched today by Ennis Information Age Services (EIAS) finds that a number of central Government websites are not easy for everyone to use including people with a disability. In 1999 the Department of the Taoiseach published recommended guidelines for public sector organisations, which referred specifically to the issue of accessibility and making websites easy for everyone to use. Five years later this report by EIAS shows this has not happened. The EIAS Government websites report provides an analysis of the standards of accessibility achieved by 30 Irish central Government state organisation websites. The research conducted for the report used eight criteria, all part of achieving WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) compliance ‘A’, ‘AA’ and ‘AAA’ respectively. Of the 30 sites examined by EIAS only one website used valid HTML which implies that only one can be AA compliant. Only three sites display the WAI logo and two of these do so inappropriately as they were found to be non compliant. However all sites tested indicate an awareness of the guidelines and 24 of the 30 sites achieved a score of 65% or greater. www.eias.ie