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A podcast for those who design, develop and run websites.

Boagworld is the blog of web strategist Paul Boag who lives in the heart of rural Dorset (hence the cows). He produces a weekly podcast with UX consultant Marcus Lillington on building and running websites. They also run the web design agency Headscape.

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Web Accessibility Report

Posted in Accessibility on: Thursday, October 14, 2004 by Paul Boag

Life continues to be maniacally busy with a trip to the states and more work than you can shake a stick at (what a ridiculous phrase). However probably the biggest project for me of late has been the launch of a report into accessibility in Higher Education.

You may remember that a while back I published an article on Higher Education and Web Accessibility. Well this combined with a report I found on Accessibility on Council Web Sites made me decide to undertake a little research project of my own.

In short I reviewed over 400 UK university and college web sites and checked their homepages to see what level of they achieved. More than 39% of Universities and 54% of colleges failed to meet even the most basic level of accessibility laid out under the WAI guidelines. In reality this figure was probably even higher because I only checked the homepages using an automated tool called Bobby which does not check for the more "subjective" guidelines.

Considering educational institutions are obliged under both the Disability Discrimination Act and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act to ensure that they do not discriminate against a disabled person in relation to the services they provide, it is amazing that so few have probably addressed the accessibility of their web sites.

If you have a few minutes check out the site at www.headscapeHE.co.uk. Even if you are not involved in Higher it is worth visiting the site to see how I have solved the problem of making it accessible while still ensuring it is visually appealing.

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Additional Information

Produced by Headscape

Boagworld is produced by the web design agency Headscape founded by Marcus, Paul and Chris Scott. Headscape also has a number of other talented guys who blog. Check them out.

  • Craig Rowe is one of our amazing developers and writes some superb posts on everything from .net to AIR apps.

  • Ed Merritt is a Headscape designer who's blog contains examples of his work and a number of free Wordpress themes.

  • Dave McDermid is a Headscape developer who has an excellent blog. He blogs on everything from AJAX to security.

  • Rob Borley is one of our project managers and blogs regularly on client and project management issues.

  • Leigh Howells is our multimedia design guru (whatever one of those is). He blogs on a mixture of design and music.

Paul elsewhere

Paul just can't shut up. He publishes regular audioboos, has a personal blog and is addicted to twitter. He also writes and speaks regularly. Check out the most recent below: