Here's One Solution

About My Vote accessibility issues still not fixed

So its a week since I wrote to the About My Vote website about the accessibility of their forms and I haven’t heard any reply. I sent them another email today.

Hello,

I sent you an email last week regarding the accessibility of this website, but have recieved no reply. I see today that the problem still hasn’t been fixed.

The issue is to do with the forms on the website. The labels for each field are currently not associated correctly with the corresponding fields. This can make the website difficult to use for people with disabilities such as poor eyesight.

Under UK law, all websites which provide a service should be made accessible. You can read more about this on the COI website (http://coi.gov.uk).

Fixing this problem would be a fairly trivial code change and would make the website more usable for a particularly disenfranchised section of society.

You can associate the form elements and labels using the “for” attribute. This should be added to the “label” element and should be have the same value as the “id” attribute on the corresponding “input” or “select” element.

Once again, if you would like to discuss this problem and it’s solution please get in touch.

Best regards
David Owens

Always give constructive accessibility feedback

It’s very often all too easy to point out other people accessibility problems without doing anything constructive. If you spot an problem on somebody’s website don’t just bitch on Twitter, help them to fix it.

Here is the feedback I sent to the Electoral Commision’s About my vote website today. With hindsight, I could maybe have used simpler language but this is at least a step in the right direction.

Hello,

I noticed today that the labels on your forms are not properly associated with the corresponding inputs in the HTML. This can make it much harder for people with a range of disabilities to interact with the forms.

You can associate the form elements and labels using the “for” attribute. This should be added to the “label” element and should be have the same value as the “id” attribute on the corresponding “input” or “select” element.

If you would like to discuss this problem and it’s solution please get in touch, although your usual web team should be able to easily fix this.

Best Regards
David Owens