US E-Government Website Quality Report
Earlier this year I was invited to speak at the 2012 Government Web and New Media conference in Washington, DC. I was supposed to offer a talk about web governance and provide some context for the (then) forth-coming recommendations for improving web governance in government. I wanted to do something substantive. I’ve worked with the US government a lot in the past and I understand how important it is to get e-government right.
I reached out to ActiveStandards and asked them to scan about 40 websites in the US federal government so that I could have some data to back-up assertions I would make about what’s working and not working with websites in government. ActiveStandards was kind enough to comply.
Then, unfortunately, the conference was postponed.
But, I got the data back and it was interesting. So, ActiveStandards and WelchmanPierpoint decided to co-write a paper summarizing our findings and making recommendations for improvement in the areas of accessibility, search engine optimization, and general website quality. The complimentary paper is available for download and we’ll be reporting on the results and talking with Jeffrey Levy, Director of Web Communications and Co-Chair of the Federal Web Managers Council about trends in government web governance next week at an event in DC. Hope you can join us if you are in town. If not, the event will be taped and available online in November.
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I posted the link to govtech article which links back to your report on several of Linkedin accessibility discussion groups. There have been a number of comments and questions about the accessibility piece of the study that indicate some concern with the data collection method and the conclusions drawn from the results.
While automated testing can be an effective tool to ascertain information about many aspects of accessibility compliance, there are key criteria (AKA accessibility standards) that automated testing cannot evaluate, leading to inaccurate conclusions based on partial results. Therefore, there must be some degree of manual accessibility testing by a qualified accessibility test professional performed on the websites to evaluate compliance against the standards that automated tooling cannot see.
Without manual test data used in the analysis, your conclusion statement on page 3 "Many sites are reasonably compliant with Section
508." may be inaccurate as it only tells part of the story.
Some clarification on the test methodology (including tool definition) and some comments regarding the need for manual testing to fully evaluate websites are in order.
I do support your recommendations regarding the need for policies; however governance and enforcement of the policies are not mentioned. Without these critical elements, there is little chance that the policies will be effective in driving accessibility adoption. Also, given my comments above, the third recommendations should include language on comprehensive accessibility testing. (automated, manual, and with users with disabilities)
Hi Jeff
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I reached out to my colleagues at ActiveStandards to address some of the points that you offered. Our combined response is below.
We are aware that automated testing only represents part of the picture when it comes to accessibility – whether WCAG 2.0 or Section 508. This survey was not intended to be a thorough analysis of Section 508 compliance, it is an analysis of general quality over a sample of pages, on a range of issues including accessibility.
As part of this analysis we have included a number of accessibility ‘checkpoints’ that can be analysed automatically. Some of these relate to Section 508 and some to WCAG 2.0, and some to both. We were particularly interested in performing a gap analysis between current Section 508 and its expected future implementation which will require WCAG 2.0 Level AA compliance.
Regarding manual testing--
When writing this we were well aware that we were only analyzing a portion of Section 508 requirements, which was why we used the phrase “reasonably compliant”. We were attempting to convey the fact that we have identified a degree of compliance in certain areas, but that this was by no means an exhaustive analysis. Our primary aim was not so much to discuss current accessibility status, but more to highlight forthcoming accessibility requirements and any potential shortfall.
Regarding test methodology--
Appendix 1 shows all the digital checkpoints used within the testing, including the ones which relate to Section 508 and/or WCAG 2.0. We would certainly have added comments about the need for manual testing if accessibility analysis was the core focus of this document. However this analysis and the Report was intended to focus on a wider range of areas than just accessibility, and this kind of detail would have muddied the issue.
We are definitely with you on the need for policy within a functioning govenance framework in order for all this to be effective. And we are aware that automated tests cannot provide complete coverage in an area like accessibility, but believe passionately that these kind of tests can be an invaluable tool in any organization's efforts to maintain and manage web accessibility.
Thanks again for the valuable comments. It's always great when there is an informed dialogue.
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