Sitemorse published the first INDEX, an independent audit of the quality of Public and Private Sector websites, over 10 years ago. Today we publish 13 public INDEXes each quarter and these can be viewed on our website at https://sitemorse.com/index/

 For this article, we have focused on 5 UK Sectors: UK & IE Universities, UK Central Government, UK Local Government, AIM and UK London-listed PLCs, to compare progress being made with website accessibility.

 Public sector organisations have a legal requirement for their websites to be compliant with European Union Directive 2016/2102/EU by 22 September 2020.

Non-public sector organisations also need to make their websites accessible under the Equalities Act 2000. 

We’ve already seen that in the US that lawsuits alleging web sites discriminating against people with disabilities are increasingly common and there is no reason that the UK won’t face similar lawsuits.

Comparing accessibility scores across these 5 sectors, UK Local Government is the only sector that has any organisations scoring 10 (out of 10) for accessibility.

An organisation that scores 7 or above (out of 10) is regarded as being able to demonstrate they are working towards accessibility.

The table below show website accessibility scores by sector:

	7 or above	Between 4 and 6	Less than 3
UK Local Government	17%	51%	32%
UK Central Government	2%	45%	54%
UK & IE Universities	1%	31%	68%
AIM	2%	34%	64%
UK London-listed PLCs	1%	22%	77%

 

The Q2 2020 INDEX results will be published in May along with our State of the Sector Reports – details will be published on the Sitemorse Blog: https://sitemorse.com/blog/