To Logo or Not to Logo?

Lawrie Phipps , JISC TechDis, Dr Neil Witt and Dr Anne McDermott , University of Plymouth

As the new disability legislation becomes law in the UK, Academic websites will be coming under close scrutiny from Disability Rights Organisations. Long established tools that have been used to test websites could, if used in the wrong way, be more of a liability than a benefit.

The use of websites as medium for academia is now well established, with a plethora of materials being distributed over Intranets and Extranets. Furthermore, the pervasive Virtual Learning Environment is lending itself to opportunities for interactivity hitherto only possible in face-to-face teaching. But, as more and more material is distributed in this way there is a need for guidelines to ensure access for all.

What guidelines are available for website developers?

In order to make websites as accessible as possible, not only to disabled users, but also to those with slow connections, or different browsers or operating systems, the best guidelines to follow are those offered by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) . These are divided up into three levels: Priority 1, 2 and 3:

• Priority 1 (Level A)
  A web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document.
• Priority 2 (Level AA)
  A web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document.
• Priority 3 (Level AAA)
  A web content developer may address this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document.

There are various tools available to test websites at these different levels but by far the most widespread (currently) is Bobby. Bobby is a tool developed by the Centre for Applied Special Technology (CAST) in the US. It provides users with a certain amount of automated checking, allowing web authors to enter a web site address and returning a report about its accessibility level. However, it also stresses that web authors should complete a series of user checks before they put a Bobby logo on their website. Bobby has now been acquired by Watchfire (a provider of website management software and services) but a free page checker is still available online.

'Bobby (dis)approval'

As the new academic year gets underway and the new DDA/SENDA legislation becomes law,
JISC TechDis has been looking at some of the electronic resources around the sector. Restricting research to 'ac.uk' domains, JISC TechDis found a plethora of logos and statements claiming that the authors of the web pages had met various accessibility requirements. The most common statement was that their pages were 'Bobby compliant'.

After undertaking an audit of UK educational websites that claimed Bobby Approval,
JISC TechDis found that only 50 percent of the websites achieved the minimum level of compliance required for Bobby Priority 1 Approval (the Bobby interpretation of WAI Priority 1). Of those that did meet the automated checking features about 65% met all of the criteria to get WAI Priority 1 approval (JISC TechDis suggests that all sites should aim for Priority 2 as a minimum). This audit shows that half of the website developers have incorrectly claimed Bobby Approval for webpages that are not accessible and a worrying proportion are only checking for the automatically checked accessibility issues

'Bobby Approved' logos (or any other logos that suggest compliance) could be seen as a statement that the website is accessible. But if someone tests the reality behind the logo the inaccuracy can be damaging to the credibility of the website owners. However, if the site is academic in nature and a student with a disability tests the validity of a website's claim, could it be that the very presence of a logo might draw the institution into a dispute on the basis of misrepresentation? Further, it may be that some organisations in seeking to draw attention to the issue of accessibility and web sites will be looking firstly to sites that claim they are accessible in this way.

It is vital that academic institutions recognise that accessibility for electronic information is a major issue and there is no such thing as a 'quick fix'. Tools such as Bobby can be valuable if used correctly but these tools can only be used to an advantage if form they part of an institutional accessibility policy. This policy must be backed up by an understanding of the relevant accessibility issues and how the issues apply to the institution's website.