You may recall that some months ago Bruce Lawson and Dan Champion brought to our attention the poor state of affairs with a recent web site update for the Department of Trade and Industry - as in, it had poor accessibility despite it being a key requirement in the tendering process. It’s still not resolved (although various letters have gone back and forth from Bruce/Dan and government types suggesting that it is being looked at/addressed) but perhaps you can do your bit to ensure that UK taxpayers’ money is not wasted again in the future on sites that fail to meet the accessibility levels that you should rightly expect them to pass.
Go on, it won’t take you a moment and you’ll be saving Bruce and Dan a lot of bother in the future 
Note: you must be a British citizen or resident to sign the petition.
So says Mike Stenhouse
The government should be setting examples with regards to accessibility…
Added November 30, 2006 at 3:27 pm
So says Adrian Higginbotham
Campainers might also want to engage in such matters in a more direct way by participating in a public consultation which Becta have recently launched on guidance as to what constitutes a ‘reasonable adjustment’ in creating and using accessible software. While the brief is wider than Websites alone much educational content is delivered via the Browser and the principles of adjustment in the development and procurement process are common across communities. You can get involved up to the 12th of December at http://communities.becta.org.uk/digitalresources/reasonableadjustment/
Added November 30, 2006 at 3:37 pm
So says Dan Eastwell
I agree with this initiative, in that all future government websites should all be at least AA accessible. My reservations, though, are that it could prompt a trend whereby the WCAGs become normative, as opposed to guidelines. I dont thing it greatly applies to this drive, but could prompt a worrying precedent whereby at the minimum, projects doen’t get signed off through ‘not having met the guidelines’, but are completely accessible. I’ve outlined my thoughts here http://www.thoughtballoon.co.uk/blog/articles/2006/12/01/should-we-sign-the-accessibility-e-petition
Added December 1, 2006 at 3:10 pm
So says Rosie Sherry
My problem with the petition, similar to Dan, is the focus on passing WCAG standards. This causes the problem of people focusing on passing standards without necessarily being accessible.
The focus of accessibility should be on the user, the petition should therefore focus on the user, and because it doesn’t, I don’t feel it is right to sign it.
Now if it was reworded I may well change my mind.
Added December 5, 2006 at 11:43 am
So says Shaun Anderson
The UK Government should indeed try to at least highlight the need for accessible sites more - and indeed where possible highlight examples of good web design.
Added December 12, 2006 at 5:08 am
So says Garf
I see scenarios arising where a web manager or sponsor will never sign off a project on the basis of some automated accessiblity testing software’s results. That’ll cost the developer money. Also, where you have a team of ‘non technical’ editorial staff adding content, it only takes a font tag here or there within that content to cause a page to fail AA. (Admittedly this isn’t the case with the DTi site) Surely its unenforceable?
Added December 12, 2006 at 12:02 pm
So says benjaminhawkeslewis
Garf,
“I see scenarios arising where a web manager or sponsor will never sign off a project on the basis of some automated accessiblity testing software’s results.”
The petition suggests compliance with WCAG, not with some automated accessibility testing software. Such software can never fully test compliance with WCAG. For example, it cannot distinguish appropriate from inappropriate ALT attribute content.
“where you have a team of ‘non technical’ editorial staff adding content, it only takes a font tag here or there within that content to cause a page to fail AA.”
You shouldn’t have non-technical staff adding raw HTML content. That’s a sure way to guarantee your site’s eventual inaccessibility. You should you use some sort of transformation on the content they add to ensure it is valid and conforms to guidelines. Tag soup-based systems are intrinsically broken.
Added December 18, 2006 at 9:36 am
So says benjaminhawkeslewis
Oh, and incidentally, it would be nice to have some hint about what sort of markdown or markup can be used in these comments.
Added December 18, 2006 at 9:36 am
So says Garf
What I’m hinting at is that the developer may provide the framework for an accessible website, but anybody who ultimately publishes content to it can very easily cause it to fail guidelines, so we need to be clear where responsiblity lies…
“Such software can never fully test compliance with WCAG”
that’s partly my point though…what else is a web manager going to rely on if they can’t assess a webpage themselves? As the developer, you may have to justify yourself against auto test results that you know are flawed
“You shouldn’t have non-technical staff adding raw HTML content. That’s a sure way to guarantee your site’s eventual inaccessibility” I totally agree, and I’ve been advising our clients the same thing. But if the client demands an option to have free reign over their page layout then the client gets.
Added December 20, 2006 at 5:00 pm