Home > News
New No. 10 website - shutting the door on disabled visitors?
22/08/2008
A targeted review of the new No. 10 website has uncovered a number of issues that would present difficulties for visitors with a range of impairments - including those with a vision impairment and those unable to use a mouse.
Issues the review highlighted include:
- Some links open in a new window with no warning which can confuse the inexperienced user or those with a cognitive difficulty.
- The No. 10 TV page includes multiple videos, none of which have text transcripts or captions (subtitles) for the hearing impaired. Moreover, they aren't able to be used from the keyboard (In internet Explorer at least) which is a major flaw for those unable to use a mouse.
- The site is almost unusable for those with a vision impairment when text is set to the 'Largest' setting (in Internet Explorer) - with text in both the navigation and page content becoming overlapped and difficult to read.
- No pages checked had valid HTML code which can cause problems with a range of access technologies - such as screen readers (used by blind visitors) and voice recognition software.
- A 'skip to content' link is available, but as it is permanently hidden, keyboard users are not aware it is there and hence still end up pressing the Tab key numerous times to get through the navigation to select a link in the main part of the page.
- The virtual tour of No. 10 is an embedded interactive 'Flash movie' which has not been coded correctly. With unlabelled buttons, and minimal descriptions of what is being viewed, blind users have no access to this feature.
Channel 4 News ran a story earlier this week that refers to our review - view the Channel 4 article.
Go to Top.