EWORX Carrying out WCAG 2.0 Testing of European Websites
EWORX is undertaking the testing of 103 European Websites to determine their conformity with WCAG 2.0 Level A. This work is part of a larger Study entitled: Web accessibility in European countries: Level of Compliance with Latest International Accessibility Specifications, notably WCAG 2.0, and Approaches or Plans to Implement those Specifications. The study is being led by Empirica and is funded by DG Information Society.
The Study will provide an overview on the current situation of web accessibility in European Countries (Members of the EU or Non-Members, like Norway and Iceland and Candidate Countries), regarding:
- The level of compliance with international web accessibility specifications taking into account the latest specifications, notably WCAG 2.0; and
- Approaches and plans for migrating towards such latest international specifications.
Additionally, the Study will also identify and describe good practices in the field of web accessibility, and based on recommend approaches for implementing WCAG 2.0.
Given that no automated tools currently exist for testing WCAG2.0 Conformity - EWORX has developed an approach which will facilitate the manual assessment of websites in order to determine their overall WCAG2.0 Conformance.
The results of the Study will be publicly available towards the end of 2009.
‘Web accessibility’ refers to the ways in which web pages are designed and implemented, so that they can be navigated and their content accessed by people with sensory and/or motor disabilities, e.g. blind and partially-sighted web users.