16 March 2007
We received a petition asking:
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ensure that any website launched by the government complies with accessibility standards (WCAG AA at least)."
Details of petition:
"In June 2006 the DTI launched their new website. Despite an approximate cost of £200,000, the website failed to meet basic accessibility standards. In short, this meant that the information on the website was inaccessible to some UK citizens - this is absolutely inexcusable. Further work (requiring further taxpayer money) was promised to bring the website up to Level AA of the Web Accessibility Initiative. The purpose of this petition is to ensure that all future government websites meet basic accessibility requirements from launch."
Read the Government’s response
The Government is committed to ensuring that all government websites are accessible and easy to use for people with disabilities.
Action 7 of the Prime Minister’s Digital Strategy is to ‘improve accessibility to technology for the digitally excluded and ease of use for the disabled’.
This strategy is to be implemented by DTI with support from OGC and eGU (now the Cabinet Office Delivery and Transformation Group). A cross-government review of the Digital Strategy is currently under way under the supervision of the DTI).