[UPDATE After reviewing the data I have changed chart to reflect the high compliance of mhc.thelearningcentre.ie and www.primaryscience.ie as each had only 2 minor encoding issues with ampersands and brackets within text elements.]

After a somewhat disillusioning start to my analysis of the Golden Spiders short-listed websites I’m quite sure that things will be getting better.

The next 4 categories include the Best Web Design Agency group and they, being experts in this field, are more likely to have a higher compliance with coding and accessibility standards.

I wont go into the methodology used, full details of which are included in my first report (Golden Spiders Take #1).

The Golden Spiders Accessibility Results, Categories 5-8

(NB Again you can click on the image for a larger version.)

In categories 5 not one single site passed the coding and accessibility tests performed, while category 6 entertained two sites which had virtually 100% compliance (each had un-encoded ampersands or brackets within text elements).

Category 7 showed some promise. bluecubeinteractive.com/property_news was fully code and accessibility compliant (although the page in question is very, very basic), and I have to tip my hat to Ulster Bank – their site was WCAG 1.0 Priority 3 compliant and the two failed tests were nominal at best (1 hours work and this could be one of the most code-compliant sites in the land).

A note about this methodology

It is worth stating at this time that the tests I perform are in no way meant to be full audits of these websites’ accessibility levels. Such testing requires a more wholesome array of tests which would include subjective evaluation. My methodology is restrained purely to those tests that can be automated and require no subjective input.

Best Web Design Agency category

The Web Design category short-list contains those design agencies who, as experts in their field, should have the highest knowledge of both coding and accessibility disciplines. Well done to Lightbox.ie and Tower.ie who both achieved a very high level of compliance with the coding and accessibility standards. To be fair, a number of the failed tests in this category were marginal and those pages could be easily repaired.

Unfortunately, I was particularly surprised at the results for Magico.ie and Strata3.com. Both pages analysed displayed an extremely high level of coding errors.

One final notable point was the proliferation of dual-case coding. By this I mean the coding of some tags in lower case and others in capital or upper-case. Generally, although not always, this is a sign of ‘cut-and-paste’ re-use of old code.

Overview of categories 5-8

Within the second sample of 34 websites there was an improvement in coding and accessibility standards. ThreeFive sites fully conformed with the accessibility guidelines. A special mention of the Ulster Bank site is also worthy.

This is the latest update to the running totals:

Total Sample: 66 sites;
Valid CSS: 18 (27%);
Valid HTML: 8 (12%);
Valid Section 508: 15 (23%);
Valid WCAG 1.0 Priority 1: 13 (20%);
Valid WCAG 1.0 Priority 2: 3 (5%);
Valid WCAG 1.0 Priority 3: 3 (5%);
Valid TV Core: 22 (33%);
Valid TV HTML: 9 (14%);
Valid TV WCAG 1.0 Priority 1: 24 (36%);
Valid WAVE Overlay: 18 (27%);
Sites with consistent mark-up: 33 (49%);
CSS, HTML, Section 508 & WCAG 1.0 Priority 1 COMPLIANT: 5 (8%).

Further updates will appear shortly. Again, any feedback on this is greatly appreciated.