Citizens Online are a national charity that was set up to tackle the issues of digital exclusion, to make sure that the Internet is available to everybody and to help individuals and communities understand and gain the benefits of being online.
This week, Citizens Online has released new digital accessibility report. The report summarises the state of play regarding digital accessibility, looking at policy and standards as well as demographic and technological trends.
Digital Accessibility is defined as the ability for all individuals to easily use information technology products and services regardless of any impairment. In other words, it means that disabled people can perceive, navigate, interact with and contribute to the Web, apps, software programs and documents such as e-books and PDFs.
The full report and all of its findings can be found here: digital accessibility report. However, the four main findings of the report were:
- Progress is being made
- The majority of websites nonetheless fail to meet minimum requirements for accessibility
- Standards, guidelines, technologies and policies are well-established and available for use in North America and the EU
- The main barriers remaining are education and encouragement of developers and users, and enforcement of law and policy – currently very low.