Declaring conformance on web accessibility - ANEC

5. Results of the selection activity
The selection process highlighted some of the differences between the certification process and self
declaration and these are reported here, followed by an analysis of the results of the automatic and
manual testing.
5.1 Certification schemes
All the third party certification bodies with the exception of Shaw Trust have public registers of
websites that have successfully passed the certification process. Technosite for example, display
the company name and logo, while BIK offers a detailed listing with name date, web developer and
the BITV-test score.(see Fig. 2 and 3)
Figure 2 Certification register: Technosite
Figure 3 Certification register: BIK
5.2 Self-declaration
Tracing websites making an independent declaration of accessibility was much harder than finding
certified sites. Of the various strategies applied most did not produce useful results for selecting
websites for this study. Directories of popular websites such as Alexa were dominated by websites
that were not in the defined categories – for instance national search engines rated very high, or
there was no identifiable evidence of an accessibility statement or logos and links. Simple searches
for WCAG links or logos produced unanalysable results. Searching through W3sites which is a trade
directory for web designers was disappointing because accessibility was not offered as a
searchable category. The best resource for identifying self-declaration of <strong>conformance</strong> to WCAG
was a backlinking search tool which had some in built biases towards websites with an English
language version. In addition, 10 websites were selected from the MeAC listings because they
provided a very positive statement of their accessibility policy.
ANEC Print version 21 May 2011 Page 18 Declaration of <strong>conformance</strong>