30th October 2007

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Irresponsible and inaccessible web design is causing unnecessary problems to people with disabilities and could be putting businesses at risk, according to new research by University of Ulster academics.  

Dr Kevin Curran, Senior lecturer in Computing Science, says that companies who overlook the needs of disabled people when designing websites may be risking their legal position, public image and ultimately business success. 

“The Disability Discrimination Act now makes it illegal for websites providing a service to be inaccessible to disabled users yet our research has found that most websites are still falling short of successfully implementing the basic guidelines laid down by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

“The Web is increasingly used in many aspects of life such as education, employment, shopping, health care, government and recreation so it is important that websites are accessible and easy to navigate in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities. An accessible Web can also help people with disabilities more actively participate in society,” says Dr Curran.

Dr Curran and colleagues in the School of Computing and Intelligent Systems assessed how a selection of public and private complied with WAI guidelines and found that most websites evaluated were inaccessible to people with disabilities. The notable exception was the Disability Action website www.disabilityaction.org which met all the guidelines. 

“While no organisation sets out to deliberately bar disabled visitors from online services offered to the general public, we found that many are either not aware of the problem, or do not know how to use new technologies to address it. By applying the web content accessibility guidelines to a website, the amount of possible users who can successfully view the content of that site will increase and in many cases, minor modifications to existing sites would make them accessible to people with disabilities.

“Web designers need to realise that many internet users may be operating in contexts very different their own and may not be able to see, hear, move or process some types of information easily or at all. They may have difficulty reading or not be able to use a keyboard or mouse,” says Dr Curran. 

Dr Curran says major corporate players with an online presence who have not sufficiently recognised the importance of customers with disabilities to their business are in danger of losing this important market.   

“An organisation’s image is enhanced because of the goodwill generated by maintaining an accessible website online. This can lead to increased market share and solid profitability. 

“For websites to be accessible to persons with disabilities, any potential barriers caused by inconsiderate website design should be removed. Today many services are only available, or offered at a discounted rate over the internet. If a website does not meet a basic level of accessibility then it will be impossible for the many millions of potential visitors who have a disability, dyslexia or who simply cannot use a mouse very well to use it effectively. 

“Our research found that the shopping sites have the worst conformance to the WAI guidelines. As the websites main aim is to sell a product it has to appeal to the public, unfortunately they are not appealing to the disabled users. Charitable sites and universities’ sites performed slightly better than the governmental ones.” 

Dr Curran says that basic accessibility solutions for websites could include: using the ‘Alt’ tag within HTML to provide the user with alternative text to non-text objects; using clear and concise language throughout a web page; using clear descriptive wording to make sense to the user when inserting hyperlinks; making sure colour is not used to convey information within the site; allowing text to be enlarged without distortion to the layout of the interface.  

Dr Curran’s research findings have been published in an article titled:"Investigating the problems faced by older adults and people with disabilities in online environments" which appears in the Taylor and Francis journal Behaviour and Information Technology, Volume 26 Issue 6, pp: 447-453.

For further information, please contact:

Trina Porter
Telephone: 028 71675511
Email: Trina Porter