Q4 2021 London Listed PLCs INDEX Published

20 Dec 2021 | Index | Accessibility | Public sector

Adam Turner
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At Sitemorse we published our 2021 Q4 London-listed PLCs INDEX this week. The INDEX has been published quarterly since 2010 and ranks the websites of over 430 companies according to their digital compliance score and is based on a combination of online performance measures including adherence to accessibility standards, privacy regulation and level of content failure.

Our Q4 2021 INDEX was compiled following over 270 million tests checks and measures across over 840,000 URLs.

Congratulations go to Marston’s for retaining first place. Also, congratulations are due to Ruffer for being the most improved, rising a very impressive 235 places.

Those companies scoring highly provide confidence to investors and the public that they not only take their compliance responsibilities seriously but that they also have the systems and processes in place to adhere to the increasingly demanding regulatory environment.

Comparing results with last quarter, 29 companies improved their accessibility score from the last quarter, while 32 saw their score decline.

This quarter’s results sees only 1 company, Masrtons PLC, passing the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level A and AA tests on 100% of their web pages with 16 companies failing the level A and AA tests on every page.

Indeed over 97% of web pages failed the level A tests and nearly 65% failed the level AA tests. More than 3,500 PDFs were accessed with only 13% passing all 28 of our WCAG accessibility tests.

If we focus on accessibility Harrogate Borough Council and North Devon Council should both be congratulated for leading this sector on accessibility, top scoring with a perfect score of 10 (out of 10).

If we focus purely on Accessibility, Marston’s should again be congratulated for continuing to lead the sector on accessibility, top scoring with a perfect score of 10 (out of 10). Summarising accessibility scores we see that:

  • Only 2 companies scored 7 or higher.
  • 84% scored 4 or less.
  • With 46% actually scoring zero

In the event of 2 organisations being tied then the organisation who scored higher in the previous quarter’s INDEX is ranked higher.

Making a website accessible comes 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 the similar lawsuits.

The Top Ten London-listed PLCs’ Websites

  1. Marston's PLC
  2. Berkeley Group Holdings PLC
  3. Quilter PLC
  4. Harworth Group PLC
  5. Civitas Social Housing PLC
  6. Spirent Communications PLC
  7. Anglo-Eastern Plantations PLC
  8. M&G Credit Income Investment Trust PLC
  9. 4imprint
  10. Edinburgh Partners LTD

Five Most Improved

  • Ruffer
  • EVRAZ
  • PZ Cussons PLC
  • Investec PLC
  • Liontrust Asset Management PLC

The full 2021 Q4 London-listed PLCs results can be found here: Sitemorse 2021 Q4 London-listed PLCs INDEX Results