19 October 2007
It has been announced that the UK Government has given itself a deadline of the end of 2008 to achieve Double-A status of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) on all government websites, this includes any website that ends in .gov.uk.
They have bravely stated that any website that hasn’t achieve Double-A status by this point will have their domain withdrawn. Some critics have said that this unobtainable target will see the creation of future sites such as homeoffice.tv, mod.cn and basildon.eu.
A Southampton University study in 2006 identified that 61% of Government and local council websites do not comply with the WCAG and it reasonable to expect that many more Government websites do not achieve the standard of Double-A.
So the question is what happens if they haven’t achieved these standards by 2009? Realistically, sources are saying, not a lot. The section on Delivering Inclusive Websites, available on the Cabinet Office site states:
Continuing standalone sites must achieve this level of accessibility by December 2008. Websites which fail to meet the mandated level of conformance shall be subject to the withdrawal process for .gov.uk domain names, as set out in Naming and Registering Websites (TG101).
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