The 2005 Jodi Mattes Accessibility Awards for website accessibility in museums, libraries and archives were announced in London on 15 May, coinciding with the publication by MLA of a new national report assessing accessibility standards across the sector.

The winners of the 2005 awards are:

Excellence Award 2005 - www.webwords.org, from Library and Information Services, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. This website provides audio extracts of some 500 audio books, allowing visually impaired people – and every user - to choose their preferred narrator.

The judges said: “It allows users glimpses into a book, much like browsing printed books does. Web words has the enormous advantage that it can be used by other libraries.”

Award for Excellence with Low Budgets 2005 - www.pewsey-heritage-centre.org.uk, from Hampshire County Council (commended for innovation on a low budget). The first local authority website, and one of less than a handful of museum websites, to provide video clips with BSL (British Sign Language) and to allow BSL users to absorb the wealth of information available on the website.

www.revealweb.org.uk (commended for widening access to information). The Revealweb library catalogue, a voluntary sector initiative, brings together over 100,000 materials for the first time in accessible formats. It can be used by the public and library staff alike, and makes finding out about reading materials considerably easier for visually impaired people.

Www.imagine.org, from Tyne and Wear Museums (commended for technical excellence). A large museum website which demonstrates visually attractive websites can meet exacting web accessibility standards. It is one in approximately 300 websites in the sector which meets WAI guidelines Level AAA.

The awards were presented at a ceremony in London, at which MLA also launched a new report revealing that the sector’s compliance with web accessibility standards is above the national average. The level of conformance to the basic accessibility guidelines, WAI Level A, is over twice that found in the Disability Rights Commission study last year – but there is still room for improvement.

The report, produced by City University, is based on an audit of a representative sample of 300 museum, library and archive websites in England. Amongst its key findings are:

*42% of the home pages of the museum, library and archive websites meet basic WAI guidelines (Level A). This compares to the national average of 19% of websites across the country that meet this standard as found in the 2004 Disability Rights Commission audit.

*Approximately 3% of museum, library and archive websites meet Level AA guidelines when assessed by automated testing tools – the standard required for public sector websites by e-government policies. (This is twice the percentage of websites meeting the standard as found in the 2004 Disability Rights Commission audit).

*The 11 most common problem types accounted for 68% of all instances of problems encountered, suggesting that it is relatively easy to improve the accessibility of websites.

*A user panel of blind, partially sighted and dyslexic people could successfully complete only 75.6% of the basic tasks they were asked to undertake on the websites – such as looking at access information. The panel gave the websites a mean rating of 3.8 on a scale of 1 (very difficult) and 7 (very easy) when asked to rate the ease of use of the websites.

*22% of problems experienced by the user panel were not identified by automated testing of the Web Accessibility Content Guidelines (WCAG1) checkpoints. This makes a compelling case for user involvement in web accessibility testing.

Presenting the awards and the new report, Chris Batt, MLA Chief Executive, said: “Our sector is doing relatively well in developing innovative, accessible websites. Across the board, museums, libraries and archives are above the national average – and the winners of this year’s Jodi Mattes awards are outstanding examples of what can be achieved. But there’s still enormous room for improvement. Web accessibility is not an optional extra: it is an essential element of effective online communications. I hope that web managers throughout our sector will implement the recommendations outlined in this new report.”

Professor Helen Petrie of City University, who produced the report, said “The results of our audit are particularly interesting because they clearly show a sector that is paying a lot of attention to accessibility.

“The audit has also highlighted the importance of involving users in the web development and evaluation process – the group of websites that achieved the highest technical conformance to the guidelines (archives) was not the group that was easiest for disabled people to use, either in terms of the success rate of completing tasks or in their ratings of the ease of use and feeling of being “lost” on a site."

"Much more work is needed to understand the relationship between technical accessibility, as measured by the conformance to the guidelines and how to create a good user experience for disabled users.”

The report was welcomed by Michael Burton, Commissioner for the Disability Rights Commission, who said: “I congratulate MLA on this initiative. Museums, libraries and archives are the custodians of invaluable material which enriches the lives of British citizens. However, the nature of this material means that, historically, much of it has been inaccessible to many people with impairments.

“Growing public awareness of mobility issues has led to greatly improved physical access to museums, libraries and archives over the years, but it is equally important to address the barriers confronting people with sensory and cognitive impairments. Such institutions are investing heavily in providing ‘customers’ with electronic access to the content in their charge. The opportunity to ensure that people with impairments derive full benefit from this investment will be squandered if it is not identified as a key objective throughout planning and implementation.

“MLA’s report has corroborated this fact, and the measures being taken by the MLA to improve awareness and practice are timely and very welcome.”