WWW2006 calls on Government to improve its web sites
Over half of all UK government and local authority websites have errors on their home pages and are problematic for disabled access, a survey in the run up to a major World Wide Web conference reveals.
In advance of WWW2006, which will be held in Edinburgh in May, research carried out by academics at the University of Southampton has revealed that 60 per cent of UK Government websites contain HTML errors. A further 61 per cent do not fully comply with guidelines from the World Wide Web Consortium (Web Content Accessibility Guide - WCAG), which could prevent some individuals from being able to access them.
WWW2006 has called on webmasters from UK local authority and central government to attend the conference in order to increase their understanding of the latest Web standards and encourage them to adopt them.
According to Adam Field from the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) who conducted the survey, a website may look fine and be error-free but this does not mean that it will work with all browsers and for all users and may not always be accessible for visually impaired people. The aim is for websites to function with any browser and any size screen, which can happen if site developers follow the proper guidelines.
The good news for the UK Government is that 25 per cent of all home pages are error-free and fully compliant with WCAG.
'There is a big push within Government to improve web accessibility,' commented Mr Field. 'Although 61 per cent of sites do not comply with WCAG, the 39 per cent which do is encouraging.'
The conference, organized by the University of Southampton in association with the British Computer Society and other international organisations, will bring together key players from the international web community. Some of the events from which webmasters may benefit are:
* Professional Development Tutorial: Current Best Practices in Web Development and Design * Tutorial: Internationalizing XHTML, HTML and CSS Web Content * Web Consortium Standards Briefing: Web Accessibility Guidelines * Workshop: 3rd International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility
Speakers at the conference, which is expected to attract up to 2,000 delegates, include key players from the world web technology and communications sectors including Sir Tim Berners Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium; David Brown, chairman of Motorola; Mike Harris, executive vice chairman and founder, Egg PLC; and Gillian Kent, director, MSN.co.uk.