The UK government is seeking feedback on digital accessibility in the public sector, ahead of a programme of change set to begin later this year – an effort that has received praise from Lawrence Shaw, CEO of Sitemorse, a leader in digital governance and content quality management.The government will be implementing the EU Directive on the accessibility of public sector websites and mobile apps from September, and is inviting feedback from all interested parties, including both organizations and individuals.
The Directive calls for sites to be made more accessible – they should be “perceivable, operable, understandable and robust,” with the measures described in European standard EN 301 549 V1.1.2 (2015-04) representing a minimum level of delivery (matching the WCAG 2.0 AA rating).
Public sector bodies will have to demonstrate that they are compliant; resolve issues (or explain why this is not possible and provide alternatives); monitor their compliance over time; and be fully compliant by 2021.
Sitemorse already allows digital managers to see where they stand as to their levels of compliance, with targeted recommendations to make major changes fast. This will help them meet the Directive early and help their website users and customers.
Sitemorse provides the only digital governance monitoring service that provides prioritised reports, delivering a top ten pages list that highlights the most urgent issues. These are customised to the individual’s role and responsibilities, and do away with the chore of dealing with endless reporting.
The service also enables ongoing monitoring and highlights accessibility issues – so these can be resolved quickly. Furthermore, reports can be used to demonstrate compliance and a programme of maintenance and improvement.
Additionally, the service helps digital managers to monitor areas such as functionality, site performance, metadata and HTML quality and issues such as broken links and email addresses.
While the leaders for digital governance in local government perform well, no site in the bottom third of the list scored above 6 out of 10 for accessibility and these councils will be most affected by the Directive. Chesterfield Borough Council, for example, scored 0 for functionality and accessibility and will need to address these issues to comply with the Directive.
In the central government INDEX, the performance is generally less good with only 9 out of 203 sites scoring above 6 out of 10. UK Sport, Historic England, The Royal Family and data.gov.uk – “Opening up government” – all scored 0 out of 10 for accessibility.
Sitemorse service client, Clare Cryer – the Web and Intranet Support Officer for Harrogate Borough Council – said, “Sitemorse makes my job easier, and a lot more enjoyable. I just know everything is checked, compliant and correct, every second. I couldn’t do it without them.”
If you would like to discuss digital accessibility, please contact sales@sitemorse.com.