Having been involved in website accessibility for years it does make we question what might be perceived as an over reliance on testing.

Electronic auditing and testing was largely born out of the culture of certain law forms in America suing companies for not having compliant websites. This testing was used in conjunction with manual testing to PROVE that websites were not accessible using certain criteria.

We all seem to live today surrounded by a culture of punitive actions. You break that rule whether it be parking in the wrong place or driving an excluded car into a city center. I get a feeling that these resultant financial penalties actually do nothing to help the cause.

Might education be a better way forward? Tech people how to be good citizens where the overriding consideration might be to out fellow citizens.

The punitive actions in America regarding website accessibility don’t seem to have done much for the cause, just like punitive fines in the uk simply have lined the pockets of lawyers.

Has that process made website accessibility any better. No I would say.

Surely a better process would be to try and educate and encourage website builders and developers to build better websites for all people regardless of ability or dissability.

The work by this project Forest Pathways if nothing else has identified the following:

Many websites are not accessible using numerous data sets to substantiate this claim.

In most organisations there is a reluctance to engage with accessibility because:

  • people don’t understand what accessibility is
  • people don’t have knowledge
  • people don’t have time
  • people don’t care because it personally doesn’t affect them

We believe at Forest Pathways that in order to improve website accessibility for all we need to engage and do the following:

  • make available simple bite size how to resources available from this website
  • make available easy to follow videos that demonstrate how to make your website more accessible
  • collate and curate relevant material to our audience

Phase 2

The people who can make a difference are the front and backend developers. Our research indicates that the developers equally don’t understand website accessibility either.

Going forward we want to:

  • locate these developers 
  • run a campaign to highlight the benefits of accessibility
  • work with them to improve their templates with our Ambassador program

Then when people and organisations buy these templates they would at least start with something that was accessible from the start.

So rather than improve website accessibility one website at a time, let’s try and do it by the thousands.