Introduction

The European Commission Communication on e-accessibility aims to move forward recommendations to address accessibility and inclusion and to achieve ‘an “Information Society for All”, promoting an inclusive digital society that provides opportunities for all and minimizes the risk of exclusion’ (European Commission, 2005a). The measures recommended by the Commission include Design For All methods in the design of products and services, including the design and evaluation of websites and drawing on recommendations made by the World Wide Web Consortium/Web Accessibility Initiative (W3C/WAI). As a result of these activities, a range of projects have been funded to address the issues raised (see for example, Klironomos et al., 2006).

The Design for All approach refers to the way content and structure are applied to web-based resources and services so that they can be developed and delivered in a way that reaches as many people as possible. This is in alignment with various e-inclusion activities under way within Europe, such as the e-Europe accessibility action plan (European Commission, 2005a) to address the i2010 strategy for creating a ‘European society for growth and employment’ (European Commission, 2005b). The i2010 strategy, for example, places a particular emphasis on accessibility requirements for public procurement of ICT, accessibility certification, and web accessibility assessment methods and tools.

A new technological solution to assessing the accessibility of websites over time is being developed by the European Internet Accessibility Observatory (EIAO) project team. EIAO is funded by the European Commission and runs from 2004 to 2007 (with a proposed extension within the existing budget until 2008). It involves partners from six countries across Europe. The aim of the project is to develop an online service, via a user interface, which will provide regular (e.g. monthly) updates of the general accessibility of websites by country, sector (for example, the library sector) and on an individual basis. The ‘Observatory’ is different from other automated checkers (such as LIFT and Cynthia Says), because it aims to aggregate individual tests for large-scale benchmarking and to evaluate the development of the results from one period to the next to indicate where improvements have been made and/or to alert to possible problems which have arisen.