Companies fail access test

None of the 15 Indian companies surveyed had websites which met the international accessibility standards.

About 10 per cent of the world population is disabled. Do companies take into account this segment during their website design?

Apparently not, going by the findings of a survey done by Barrier Break Technologies, a company which does business in providing accessibility-related services to companies.

It surveyed the websites of 15 companies listed on NYSE and NASDAQ in December 2007. The aim was to ascertain the extent of web accessibility awareness and compliance in India.

A combination of both automated and manual tests were done by people with different disabilities.

The main standard against which the tests were conducted were the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, published by the World Wide Web Consortium in 1999 as part of its Web Accessibility Initiative.

The norms include things like provision of equivalent alternatives of access to auditory and visual content, non-reliance on colour alone in websites, clear tables and so on.

All the companies failed the test of accessibility.

Says Shilpi Kedia, managing director of the company: "These are what you must, should and can do. The companies have to start thinking of the bigger picture if they want to go ahead, especially since India has ratified the United Nations convention on the Rights of the Disabled."

The websites were put through automated W3C HTML and CSS or (cascading style sheet) online validators. These check the validity of the webpage's code.

Two websites came close to achieving single A "" Satyam and WNS web pages had only one error, the survey said. Wipro showed four errors, Rediff, Patni and MTNL showed six errors and Dr Reddy's showed five errors.

Accessibility of a web site enables it to be accessed by new assistive technologies, by disabled and old people , makes it voice enabled for the visually impaired and so on.

www.barrierbreak.com