United Nations study says most Web sites are inaccessible to disabled
A new international study commissioned by the United Nations finds the vast majority of top Web sites fail to meet minimum global standards of accessibility for people with visual and other disabilities.
U.K. technology firm Nomensa studied 100 popular sites from 20 countries. Categories included travel, finance, media, government and retail sites.
Among the problems the survey identified is the use of a scripting language called Javascript, which makes it difficult for some screen readers to understand a site's content. Most sites failed to provide adequate text descriptions for graphical elements -- again, a problem for the visually impaired who use screen readers. And they used colors with poor contrast, which is a problem for people with color blindness.
The study examined five U.S. sites, including Walmart.com, which scored highest, and nytimes.com, which was the least disabled-friendly American site.