April 2005 - Welcome to our “election special”
newsletter |
| As the nation is (ahem) gripped in a fever of
election excitement, we though that this month’s newsletter
should reflect this. So we have done a survey on the major parties
websites to see what sort of shape they are in at this important
time. And we’ve looked at a few websites that have caught
our politically orientated eyes this month. |
| If you’d rather not receive this in future
please reply with the subject “unsubscribe”. |
But first… |
| The parliamentary session is now
closed. That means that Early Day Motion (E.D.M) 461 has now
run its course. 55 MP’s signed the E.D.M. We’re
hopeful that it has made some MP’s more aware of accessibility
issues, and certainly a number of MPs have taken positive steps
to improve accessibility on their own websites. |
| We’d like to thank everyone
who took the time and trouble to write to their MP asking them
to support the E.D.M, or who promoted it through their website
or blog or covered it in the press. |
Party website survey |
| Taken as a group, the party’s websites do
better than the average website found on the internet, most
prominently in the area of accessibility. That said, a number
of parties appear to have removed statements that declare the
level of standards compliance they aspire to. This is disappointing,
as a number at least “aimed” for Priority 2 Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) prior to election being
called. Whilst no in-depth analysis was taken of Priority 2
checkpoints, its clear that all the websites fail at least one
of those checkpoints. |
| None of the websites examined provide quite the
all round performance that would qualify for a net-progress
award. |
Scottish National Party (SNP) |
Quality: 72
Presence: 52
Accessibility: 100
Overall: 72 |
| The SNP website achieves a Good rating for quality,
and a Fair rating for presence, as well as passing Priority
1 accessibility checkpoints. There’s still some scope
for improvement as; the site has a high proportion of deep pages,
which can disorientate users, plus it may also go some way in
explaining a relatively poor level of search engine saturation.
|
Liberal Democrat Party |
Quality: 57
Presence: 72
Accessibility: 100
Overall: 71 |
| The Lib Dems website achieves a Fair rating for
website quality, an Excellent rating for presence, and the home
page passes Priority 1 checkpoints. The site has a relatively
high number of slow pages, which can affect the quality of visitor
experience. About 9% of the pages are also missing page titles,
which can be a problem for users orientating themselves within
the website. The website performs excellently in the search
engines for the party name, leader and one policy-related term,
and performs modestly for two further policy-related terms. |
Uk Independence Party |
Quality: 68
Presence: 49
Accessibility: 100
Overall: 69
|
| The UK Independence Party website achieves
a good rating for quality, a fair rating for presence and
the home page passes Priority 1 checkpoints. As with the SNP
website, only a significant proportion of deep pages negatively
impact upon website quality. Search engine performance is
limited to a strong performance for the party name and leader.
This is also the only website to offer alternative style sheets
to users who need different colour contrasts to read the website. |
Labour party |
Quality: 59
Presence: 58
Accessibility: 100
Overall: 67 |
| The Labour Party website achieves
a Fair rating for quality, a Good rating for presence and the
home page passes Priority 1 checkpoints. Slow pages are the
biggest factor effecting quality, although the website also
picks up a small penalty for opening new browser windows without
warning users. The site has a very high number of incoming links
and scores well for search engine saturation. Search engine
performance is limited to the party name and leader. |
Conservative Party |
Quality: 52
Presence: 74
Accessibility: 71
Overall: 62 |
| The Conservative Party website achieves
a Fair rating for quality, an Excellent rating for presence
and fails to meet all Priority 1 checkpoints. The two elements
effecting quality are high numbers of slow pages and deep pages.
Presence is excellent, with high levels of incoming links and
search engine saturation. Search engine performance is overall
very good, with an excellent performance for the party name,
leader and one policy-related term, plus a solid performance
for two additional policy-related terms. The home page failed
to meet all Priority 1 checkpoints because the animated logo
could not be stopped. Whilst the content of the animation could
be found elsewhere on the website, the animation itself could
be such a distraction that the rest of the page becomes unreadable
for people with cognitive disabilities. |
Green Party |
Quality: 41
Presence: 50
Accessibility: 100
Overall: 56 |
| The Green Party website achieves
an Average rating for quality, a Fair rating for presence and
the home page passes Priority 1 checkpoints. A very high proportion
of both slow and deep pages particularly effects Website quality.
The site did excellently well for search engine saturation and
incoming links. Additionally, search engine performance for
party name, party spokesperson and slogan were excellent, and
they also enjoyed a fair presence for generic terms. |
Plaid Cymru |
Quality: 55
Presence: 50
Accessibility: 63
Overall: 56 |
| The Plaid Cymru website achieves
a Fair rating for both quality and presence but the home page
fails to meet all Priority 1 checkpoints. Website quality is
undermined by a high proportion of deep pages. Additionally,
the website is penalised for failing to have a privacy policy
on the home page, which can undermine the confidence of visitors
to the website. The website is also penalised for failure to
implement frames correctly, which in this instance, leads to
fragmented pages appearing in search engine results. Whilst
the website does well for search engine saturation and incoming
links, presence is restricted by only performing in the search
engines for the party name and member of Parliament. Accessibility
is compromised by failure to provide alt tags for all images,
and not giving each frame a title. |
| |
Election websites |
Who should you vote for? |
| We rather liked this website. There
is a questionnaire to fill in to help you work out which party
most closely reflects your political views. What we particularly
liked though, was the data showing the difference between who
people think best reflect their views before completing the
test, and the actual results. |
| http://www.whoshouldyouvotefor.com/ |
| |
Not apathetic |
| If its all to much, you can read
about the views of people not planning on voting. |
| http://www.notapathetic.com/ |
| |
| Newsnight’s Musical Manifestos |
| OK, we know the Newsnight website
hasn’t just turned up for the election, but how could
we not mention Musical Manifestos? For those of you who have
failed to be engaged in the debate over Europe, the positions
of the major parties have been set to music and video, and condensed
into two, all singing, all dancing minutes. |
| Musical
Manifestos |
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| That’s all for this month’s net-update.
If there’s a specific issue you’d like to see covered
next month, please let us know. |
| Ends |
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