Monday, April 26, 2004

Accessibility, usability and 50+ friendliness

Web sites with good accessibility are invariably easy to use and 50+ friendly.

A few weeks ago the Guardian reported about research that showed how bad the UK banks Web sites are with respect to their accessibility.

A quote from the article:

”More of the over 60s are switching to online banking - but if banks really want to tap into this potentially lucrative market, then they need to do a lot to make their sites more accessible. For many disabled and visually impaired people - 90% of them over 65 - are still being excluded from the independence and convenience of online banking”. Only one out of ten banks tested for website accessibility in the third of the "state of the e-nation" quarterly accessibility audits by AbilityNet, the computing and disability charity, reached the minimum standards.

And next month banks and other online operators in the private and public sectors will be under even greater scrutiny when the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) publishes the results of its first "formal" accessibility investigation. The DRC has legal powers to investigate breaches of the Disability"

The full report can be downloaded from this site location.

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