They don’t particularly care about the accessibility of the site either as they know they can throw another £xxx,xxx of taxpayers’ money at it if anyone notices!

Obviously it’s a case of “Do what I say!” not “Do what I do!”

WordPress is FREE. WordPress is generally accessible out of the box and is endlessly flexible.

But that’d be waaay to sensible wouldn’t it?

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So now what? Please send mail to……… Who? Do I send it again? Maybe I could go hang around outside his weekly surgery or maybe knock on his front door. Good job I’m not “disabled” isn’t it.

Hmmmmm methinks I might drop a line to our local Radio Station, after all, there are elections round here next week.

It’s worth noting that the guidelines set a minimum target of WAI-A, so it seems a bit harsh to criticise John Redwood’s site for failing priority 2, given that this site might well satisfy the government’s own guidelines. That said, having visited it, I find that Redwood’s accessible version is missing alt tags (priority 1 checkpoint), probably because the CMS doesn’t support them since these are in ‘uploaded images’ according to the file path. So it doesn’t satisfy the government guidelines either. I haven’t had time to check whether this is an isolated problem or whether there are other accessibility problems.

We might have more luck getting MPs to commit to the standard that the government has already mandated, than we would in getting them to adopt the whole of the WAI guidelines for now. We can work on improving the government’s accessibility targets once we’ve got a commitment to a basic level of accessibility.

Since the £10k was only voted in a few weeks ago, I would be extremely surprised if any MPs have launched websites using it yet. Indeed, the sites you link to appear mostly to be party political, which is against the rules for the publicly funded sites. That makes this the ideal time to contact MPs to tell them about accessibility. They’re about to spend £10k of public money on webdesign each. Let’s make it effective.

I put John Redwood’s site in the congrats but no bouquet as it does at least make a nod toward accessibility whereas the others, bar one, don’t. I worded it badly. Blame it on “rant” mode, apologies Mr Redwood. Alt text in this case probably should be missing. The images bring nothing of any value to the information that I could see but I haven’t checked everything. The news item “John Redwood Responds to Jack Straw’s Speech on “Britishness”" is accompanied by a picture of the pigeons in Trafalgar Square.

But lets face it, none of the sites are good and there is no excuse. Section 3 of the DDA came into force in 1999 and the code of practice for it on 27th May 2002. It’s not as if the regs have only recently been brought in, they’ve had 5 years to sort it out but it’s clear that few of them seem to have the first clue. The thought of them spending a further £10k each, a total of what, over 6.5 million pounds on second sites of the same quality has me spitting blood.

I was rather hoping that emailing this to Richard Benyon might make him sit up and take notice but having failed to get it to deliver I’ve sent the link the BBC Radio Berkshire to see if they can get anywhere. I know they have a slot with both Richard Benyon and Martin Salter on every couple of weeks.

http://www.writetothem.com/

For what it is worth, I did a small survey of MP websites a couple of years ago to support an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons regarding website accessibility. it is quite old, but you may find it interesting to read the press release.

http://www.net-progress.co.uk/press/press_release_140305.htm

I didn’t follow it up in any way, but a number of MPs did express concern and promised to look into the accessibility of their own websites. It would be interesting to see how many followed through, and how many were only paying lip service…

OH DEAR! (heavily sanitised version of what I’d actually like to say)

I think I’m going to have to do a separate post for this lot.

“Fails - Markup Validation “Sorry! This document can not be checked.”
Fails - to reach even the absolute minimum Web Accessibility Initiative levels
Fails - to provide adequate keyboard navigation for those who cannot use a mouse or trackball.
Fails - to provide alternatives for those without javascript enabled
Fails - to operate correctly in browsers other than Internet Explorer.”

What’s you MP going to do about this - apart from pass it onto his web developer who then just shakes his head and says “Ahhh, just more sour grapes from my competition”.

Why not instead explain to your MP what is actually wrong with the site, in terms he can understand. That understanding he can use to approach his web developer. In terms of the level of this message, it went way over his head, and you gave him absolutely no room to understand what you were on about.

So the home page didn’t validate - is that such a big deal? Was there actually a validation error in there that compromised the real accessibility of the site? Why not explain those barriers and how they are a barrier to disabled people? You’ll get a lot further with kindness and a willingness to share knowledge than just technobabble griping.

When you talk about the minimum standards of Accessibility, why point to an automated tool? What’s that going to do to explain to your MP why he needs to make changes to his site. Automated tools are an aid to manual testing, not a replacement. Without knowledge and understanding, the results are meaningless, and you haven’t provided that knowledge and understanding.

Failed to provide adequate keyboard navigation - how so? Every part of the page was accessible via the keyboard. Even the navigation was at the end, so that the content was the first thing that was found. That sounds like good thinking to me. Tiny improvements are possible with a few skiplinks - but the tone of your letter makes it sound like the site is in dire staits in accessibility terms.

Failed to provide alternatives when javascript was disabled. So what? Assistive technology works fine with JavaScript. What’s an MP, with a typical MPs knowledge going to do with that piece of information?

Fails to operate in browsers other than Internet Explorer - how does this prevent disabled people from using the site? Is there something about Internet Explorer that prevents disabled people from using it?

I feel this letter is a failure to empower your MP to do what you expect of him. And so, instead of looking like a passionate advocacy of accessibility, its just an attack an MP can do nothing to resolve.