May 2005 |
Survey of Life Sciences Sector websites |
| Next month, we will be publishing our survey on
the Life Sciences sector, where we have inspected the quality
of 17 publicly listed pharmaceutical and biotech company websites. |
| The survey covers the following the important
areas of website performance: |
- website quality
- website presence
- website accessibility
|
| If you would like to receive an email notification
when this survey becomes available to download, please
complete the contact form. |
| |
RNIB Simply the Best Awards 2005 |
| The RNIB set up the Simply the best
awards to recognise companies and organisations that have made
a significant contribution to improving accessibility for adults
and children with sight problems. |
| net-progress have been short-listed
in the Membership Category (Websites) of the RNIB Simply the
Best Awards 2005. |
| Further details are a bit sketchy
at the moment, but check the website for updates; we’ll
let you know anything as soon as we find out ourselves. In any
event, the winners are announced in June, so the next net-update
will include all that information. |
| |
PAS 78: Guide to good practice in designing accessible
websites |
| The first steps towards the development of a British
Standard for web accessibility have been taken by the British
Standards Institution, with the release of a 'Publicly Available
Specification' (PAS) for consultation. |
| PAS 78 will describe the standards that websites
should conform to. It will also tackle many of the myths and
confusions surrounding web accessibility. For example, the role
of automated tools, how to validate web code, quality assurance
and benchmarking, and how and when to involve disabled people
in the design lifecycle. |
| PAS 78 will be developed by a Steering Group of
accessibility experts, selected to represent the range of viewpoints
involved, and then reviewed by a very broad-based Review Panel.
It is due to be published this Autumn. |
| |
Site Inspection |
| As summer is finally on its way – possibly
– we thought we’d take a look at three great British
institutions that epitomise everything about this time of year.
Strawberries and cream anyone? |
BBC Proms |
Quality: 78
Presence: 65
Accessibility: 100
Overall: 79 |
| The quality of the BBC’s Proms section of
the website is in excellent order. We did find a few minor problems,
but nothing that should interfere with the visitor experience.
Presence is also impressive, with the site performing very well
for three search phrases, and well for the other two, as well
as having high levels of incoming links. The famed “betsie”
text-only paged was tested for accessibility, which passed Priority
1 accessibility checkpoints. |
| The website qualifies for the net-progress
Gold Standard Award. |
England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) |
Quality: 73
Presence: 59
Accessibility: 100
Overall: 75 |
| The ECB sire scores well for quality, but there
were more broken links found than on the BBC Proms website,
hence the difference in score. Presence was also good, though
curiously the website didn’t do that well in the search
engines for the full name of the organisation. The website again
provided a “text-only” version, which passed Priority
1 accessibility checkpoints. |
Wimbledon |
Quality: 59
Presence: 48
Accessibility: 100
Overall: 64
|
| The Wimbledon website scored well for quality,
though some way behind the other two websites due to a higher
proportion of slow pages. In fact, 85% of the pages were considered
to be slow, so it could be quite a frustrating website to
visit for those without broadband. Presence was quite good,
though it was excellent levels of incoming links that propped
up an average search engine performance. The Home page passed
Priority 1 accessibility checkpoints. |
| |
| 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 |
| |
| Read other editions
of net-update |
| |
Subscribe to net-update |
|
| |
