After my investigation into what websites used valid markup I thought it would be interesting to check how accessible some of the sites are based on the W3C WAI Guidelines. In the UK it is, in theory, against the law to not have an accessible website as it discriminates against the Disabled.

Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) does not refer explicitly to website accessibility, but makes it illegal to discriminate against people with disabilities. The DDA applies to anyone providing a service; public, private and voluntary sectors. The Code of Practice: Rights of Access – Goods, Facilities, Services and Premises document published by the government’s Disability Rights Commission to accompany the Act does refer explicitly to websites as one of the “services to the public” which should be considered covered by the Act.

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accessibility

While I do not think any Webmasters have been prosecuted for this I do think it is important that certain websites conform to the W3C WAI Guidelines. These would include websites for Universities and the Government.

As a quick, and not very scientific, investigation I have decided to check the Top 20 Universities to see if they conform to the W3C WAI Guidelines. As I am not an Accessibility specialist I am keeping it quite simple, I will be checking the home page of each University and running the automated checks from Watchfire WebXact. Just for reference I will also include the results from the W3C Markup validation from my previous tests.

1. Oxford: Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict : Meets Priority 1 and 3. Contains 1 error with 8 instances in Priority 2
2. Cambridge: Valid XHTML1.0 Strict: Meets Priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3.
3. Imperial College: XHTML1.0 Transitional 590 errors. Fails Priority 1,2 and 3
4. London School of Economics: HTML 4.01 Transitional with 79 errors: Meets Priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3
5. St Andrews: Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional: Meets Priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3.
6. University College London: XHTML 1.0 Transitional with 53 errors: Meets Priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3.
7. Warwick: HTML 4.01 Transitional with 4 errors: Meets Priority 2. Fails 1 and 3. There was only 1 Alternative Text Error in Priority 1 though, and 2 in Priority 3.
8. Bristol: Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional: Meets Priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3
9. Durham: HTML 4.01 Strict with 4 errors. Fails Priority 1, 2 and 3. There was only 1 Alternative Text error in Priority 1, and 1 Link Phrase for Priority 2.
10. King’s College London: XHTML 1.0 Transitional with 1 error. Meets priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3.
11. Bath: Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Meets Priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3.
12. Loughborough: Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional. Meets Priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3.
13. Edinburgh: HTML 4.01 Transitional with 17 errors. Fails Priority 1, 2 and 3. There was one Alternative Text error in Priority 1.
14. Southampton: Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict. Passes Priority 1 and 2. Fails Priority 3. 1 error in Priority 3 requiring more whitespace between adjacent links.
15. Aston: HTML 4.01 Transitional with 8 errors. Passes Priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3.
16. York: XHTML 1.0 Transitional with 1 error. Passes Priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3.
17. Exeter: Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Passes Priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3.
18. School of Oriental and African Studies: XHTML 1.0 Transitional with 91 errors. Passes Priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3.
19. Nottingham: XHTML 1.0 Transitional failed validation as the document could not be checked. Passes Priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3.
20. East Anglia. XHTML 1.0 Transitional with 1 error. Passes Priority 1. Fails Priority 2 and 3.

Well I won’t lie, I carried out these tests to try and prove that the majority of the top Universities failed the basic requirements for web accessibility. While 12 of the top 20 Universities fail to use valid HTML/XHTML markup only 4 of the top 20 Universities fail to meet the 1st priority defined in the W3C WAI Guidelines.

While the results were not as damning as I may of hoped it is still very poor that 20% of the top 20 Universities fail to meet the basic requirements*. It is also poor that 18(90%) of the Universities fail to go beyond the minimum requirement for web accessibility. After all these are supposed to be the cream of the crop, Universities should be leaders when it comes down to the standards we expect/hope people will conform too.

Out of all the Universities it would appear that the University of Southampton is the only one to excel at their accessibility and quality of markup. As a quick further investigation I quickly validated another 5 random pages on the Southampton University Website. Only one page I checked had a small markup error (The International Undergrad Scholarship page), and this page page also created a “Create link phrase” error for Priority 2. The Hartley News Alumni page actually passed all 3 of the priorities.

*While Warwick did actually meet Priority 2, W3C say Priority 1 is the basic requirement and Web content must satisfy this checkpoint.

*Ok so either Live Writer is useless or I am a moron and can’t do posts with tables very well. I have quickly done screen shots of the info and posted that, if I get some time later I will redo it all*

So my last post was a bit of a rant about my Blog not validating and that I have decided to check some other sites around the Internet to see how popular developing websites with valid markup actually is.

My first lot of checks were Blogs from around the Internet, most of them are listed in Technorti’s Popular Blogs list however I have added several other ones that either I read frequently or I perceive to be quite big.

Every singe Blog that I checked that was in the Popular Technorati list failed the Validation test. I suppose blogs can argue that at least they are viewable properly through the RSS feeds.

The next list are websites mainly from the Alexa Top 500 Sites, however I have thrown a few in of my own.

And againt he majority of sites fail the validation. 2 sites that did pass that were interesting were www.msn.com and www.mininova.org. I can not believe Microsoft uses better markup than Google, and glad to see mininova one of the biggest bit torrent sites is leading the way in terms of valid markup.

Next are sites that promote accessibility and usability.

Interestingly Browsealoud advertise they conform to the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines priority 1, 2, and 3 and say their pages have Valid HTML. Unless some glitch happened when I checked this claim is incorrect at the time of writing.

Next I checked some popular Newspapers and News sites.

Not a single site I checked passed the validation, with the BBC.co.uk having a staggering 1272 errors on the home page! It is also written in HTML 4.01 Transitional which is not very Web 2.0 of the BBC is it?

Next up I checked the Top 20 Universities based on the list at the Times Good University Guide

12 of the top 20 Universities have errors in their markup, quite shocking really considering our Universities are so big on accessibility etc. If we take a look at the worst offender Imperial College London with 590 errors They use Javascript Menues to navigate the site, though they do use NnScript to provide text links if you do not have Javascript. According the accessibility page the website conforms with WAI priority 1 and 2 checkpoints however I ran a check using WebXACT and the website fails all 3 Checkpoints with 2 errors in Priority 1, 3 in Priority 2 and 2 in Priority 3, with a further 44 warnings.

Finally I checked some Government and Organization sites.

Again majority of the sites failed. I am glad the Job Centre failed as from what I recall it is the worst and most non user friendly website ever. This also failed all 3 WAI priorities based on the check at WebXACT, I also could not see any accessibility information on the main page.

So in conclusion it would seem not many companies/organizations are too bothered about the W3C standards. I am not entirely sure how accessible all the above sites are, I do realise that there is a lot more to it than just validating your markup, however it was interesting to see how rare valid websites were.

Well seeing as I have Live Writer working ok I thought I’d try out the Insert Map function and inform you all where our lovely offices are based!

So yes you will be able to find us at

Dolphin Promotions Ltd
Unit 6
Metropolitan Business Park
Metropolitan Drive
Blackpool
Lancashire
United Kingdom
FY3 9LT

Tel: 0845 869 58 50

Fax: 0870 471 49 93