Govt Websites lack basic accessibility standards – Red Cardinal

From a press release from Red Cardinal and report on their blog, it seems that the Irish Government websites aren’t really that good for accessibility. The exceptions being Dept. of Arts, Sports and Tourism, Dept. Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Dept. of Finance, Dept. of Social and Family Affairs.

Some key findings:

Government Department sites
25% Failed the minimum standard for accessibility
75% Failed both minimum accessibility and basic coding standards

Public body sites
33% Failed the minimum standard for accessibility
100% Failed both minimum accessibility and basic coding standards

Political Party sites
57% Failed the minimum standard for accessibility
100% Failed both minimum accessibility and basic coding standards

Interesting RSS stats:
25% of Government Department websites use RSS
11% of Public Body Websites use RSS
43% of Political Party Websites use RSS

I hear Richard might be on some radio news bulletins in the morning. 🙂

8 Responses to “Govt Websites lack basic accessibility standards – Red Cardinal”

  1. simon says:

    There is a mistake with at least one of those stats. The RSS of parties should be 71%. SInn Fein and the socalists have rss tat they missed

  2. kirstie says:

    Ah I don’t think they’re correct here at all. Cork in particular have a great rep for accessible and standards based websites. And the majority of the universities have now developed excellent offerings.

  3. Kirstie is of course on crack if she can look at the shite that Cork City puts out and call it either accessible or standards-based. Bastard thing doesn’t even render properly in Firefox.

  4. …which didn’t stop them buying winning a Golden Spider.

  5. kirstie says:

    Not on crack nope, just better informed about their web offerings than you. The city council one doesn’t render well in firefox, this is true. But they have a lots of other accessibles sites created using standards, XHTML and CSS:

    http://www.lifetimelab.ie
    http://www.corkcitylibrary.ie/
    http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie/
    http://www.connectcork.ie

    The point is that it was a selective survey. In the past year the universities have really pulled up their socks too, so I’d say there is some improvement and more importantly, a beginning of an awareness out there about how important accessibility and standards based design is.

  6. I smell a connection to the city council’s collection of useless web gits.

    Corkcorp.ie doesn’t work. It didn’t work when they bought themselves an IIA “nomination”, and if they could distinguish their arses from their elbows they’d have fixed it in the intervening two bloody years.

    Even if I did want to buy another computer just to look at this crap, it’s not helping me talk to the fools who deleted us from the electoral register – they list three numbers – two are dead lines and the other’s been engaged for a month. Nor will it help us get recycling bags, since not one of the phone numbers listed on that page works. Clearly either a) the council’s own staff don’t/can’t use the site either or b) they send changes which don’t get made.

    They’re the city council. Nobody fucking cares about ‘Cork Past and Present’ – the city council website doesn’t work. [But obviously I’m stunned by that site’s expert use of top-notch technology, in the form of Dreamweaver templates. Which the council’s web team didn’t make, according to their own source.]

    Careful who you call ill-informed.

  7. kirstie says:

    Careful who I call ill-informed? Careful who you call ‘on crack’ mate. Touche? A little..

    I was merely seeking to point out that the survey was a bit uneven and I gave some examples. I’ve also pointed out twice that the university sector has improved greatly too but you’ve chosen to ignore that. Also the fact that there are now e-government awards means that at least it’s starting to trickle into the public sector consciousness and hopefully that will grow.

    And I couldn’t agree more that public sector sites should be as accessible as possible. But it’s starting to happen and that’s something positive.

  8. Des says:

    The Cork City Council site has decent content but renders brutally in Firefox and IE7.

    The voting site has as a backend a totally out-of-date database (at least I hope it is because I have contacted them twice by paper form and phone to correct the spelling of my name).

    OTOH I have successfully used the numbers given on the site to contact them re voting, refuse, abandoned cars & a dead cat.