In order to support local authorities in achieving compliance, Socitm and Sitemorse have entered into a partnership to deliver automated assessments.

Sitemorse has led the way in benchmarking digital across public sectors, being the most recognised continual assessment of digital capability (not just in Local Government, but across Central Government, NHS, Higher Education and other organisations in the UK and worldwide). Sitemorse has been used in various guises within Better Connected stretching back some 15 years. 

Socitm’s Director of Policy & Research, Martin Ferguson commented, “The pragmatic approach that Sitemorse applies to standards management, its establishment as the technical leader in digital automation and the sheer scale of data (going back 15 years) makes Sitemorse our ideal partner.” 

Sitemorse has completed millions of webpage assessments, and in every case where a site is certified as 'passed' via manual checking it has been found to fail A and or A / AA of the WCAG standards when assessed by Sitemorse automation. Automation offers scale and efficiency along with consistency. Perhaps more importantly, in over 90% of cases, sites passing the Sitemorse Automated Accessibility assessment have also scored well on manual reviews. In order to ensure consistent approach, each website will be assessed using the same series of checkpoints, these being applied against 125 pages (the pages visitors see when first entering the site) along with the first 10 PDF documents. 

Lawrence Shaw, CEO at Sitemorse commented, “Our partnership with Socitm brings together two extremely complementary names - Sitemorse has grown up alongside Socitm, and it’s wonderful to be able to share our technology, data and offer support. This will bring about innovative ideas and solutions to drive down digital cost and improve efficiencies.”