Internet Newsletter for Lawyers |
|---|
David Gilroy and I have carried out our own survey of firms' and chambers' sites relating to perhaps the most important feature of accessibility as described above - the ability to resize text using normal browser controls.
David looked at the sites of 24 of the larger "Legal 500" sites (see www.legal500.com) and found that 9 were capable of resizing, and 15 were not - this gives only 38% in the "yes" category.
I looked at 50 firms from my own list of firms, which includes small and medium sized firms as well as large ones (see www.venables.co.uk/firms.htm), covering firms beginning with "N", "O" and the first few in "P"; I found that 32 were capable of resizing and 18 were not. This gives a "yes" score of 64% - much better than the Legal 500 sites.
This indicates one of the ironies of this particular topic; in the main, large firms have highly designed, relatively recent websites, which have generally gone for a "fixed font" approach so that the overall effect of the page is completely under the designer's control. Most of the design tools (like Dreamweaver) are capable of producing resizable text but they have not been used to do this, with designers preferring the "perfect page" approach. Many of the smaller firms, however, have simpler, cheaper and older sites where resizable text came with the territory (it is a basic html feature) rather than having to be considered as a requirement in its own right.
I also looked at 24 chambers' websites - all the ones beginning with "N" and "O" (www.venables.co.uk/bar.htm) and found that 14 achieved "yes" status, a score of 58%.
Does this mean that barristers are concerned with accessibility issues? Well no, it just means that the majority of their sites were designed two or three years ago, often at minimal cost, where, again, resizable text comes without any effort. Almost without exception, the chambers with smart new sites were the ones with the "no" rating.
The moral of all this? As David says in the article, accessibility now has to be considered as part of good design, rather than being inimical to it.
The sites which fail this test are liable to challenge either in the courts (probably unlikely) or (at the very least) in the court of public opinion.
Back to Contents.