Election 2003: Fully Inclusive?

Dundee University's Digital Media Access Group have recently released a report on the online manifesto's of Scottish political parties during the May 2003 elections for the Scottish parliament. The report looked at how accessible the manifesto information was for disabled people.

The report praised the Scottish Socialist Party for providing the most accessible website.

"Many sites, including those of Scottish Labour and Scottish Conservatives, failed to comply with basic guidelines for web accessibility - guidelines that were published the day before the first Scottish Parliament election in 1999."

...

"The picture is not, however, completely bleak. The Manifesto of the Scottish Socialist Party was relatively straightforward to access, even when using Home Page Reader and Lynx, and the SSP's web site was particularly commendable in that it validated to an accepted HTML standard: XHTML 1.0 Transitional. The simple layout and design of the SSP site helped to ensure improved access to the Manifesto. This greatly increases the chance that the site will be readable in the widest range of browsers and assistive technologies."