§ The Earl of Northeskasked Her Majesty's Government: What action they propose to ensure that central and local government websites comply with their guidelines for interoperability and accessibility; and [HL149]
How they respond to the recent survey from Business2WWW suggesting that all but five of 62 government websites tested failed to comply with government standards on metadata and the e-Government Metadata Framework; and [HL150]
How they respond to the recent survey from Business2WWW suggesting that 58 of 62 government websites tested failed to meet the Priority 1 requirements; and [HL151]
How they respond to the recent survey from Business2WWW suggesting that the websites of the Prime Minister, the Home Office, the Community Legal Service and others were all less than 1 per cent compliant with current guidelines for access to the disabled. [HL152]
§ Lord Bassam of BrightonEvaluating the accessibility of a website is a complex issue and experts in this area, such as the RNIB, City University and AbilityNet advise that it cannot be undertaken by automated testing alone. The e-Envoy has recently had discussions with Business2WWW about how their latest automated testing is undertaken and upon what criteria the reported results are based.
The e-government Metadata Framework was superseded by the e-Government Metadata Standard in 2001 (e-GMS). e-GMS is mandatory for new public sector IT systems and the number of sites meeting the standard will therefore improve as sites are replaced or upgraded.
The e-Envoy encourages compliance through provision of guidance and good practice. Compliance is the responsibility of individual departments and local services and is self-regulatory through the use of National Computing Centre services and the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.