Title: The
Accessibility of South African Websites for the Visually Impaired
Abstract: Organisations are making increasing use of the World
Wide Web for the dissemination of information to actual and potential customers.
However, despite the existence of clear guidelines for web site accessibility,
the visually impaired appear to be excluded from the target markets of most
businesses. This study assesses the rates of website compliance of 70 South
African businesses with the minimum standard prescribed by the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines of the World Wide Web Consortium, and compares the
results with those obtained for an equivalent sample of International websites.
The poor rate of compliance demonstrated by South African sites (4.3%) was
only slightly lower than that of the non-South African sites tested, with
non-profit organisations having the highest levels of accessibility.
Author: Jan M. Nash