Ireland’s Monitoring Report for the EU Web Accessibility Directive – 2023 Monitoring Period

This report presents the monitoring results from the National Disability Authority of Ireland for the 2023 monitoring period.   NDA conducted 231 Simplified Reviews, 21 In-depth Reviews on websites and 11 mobile app reviews for the 2023 monitoring period. The report also contains comparative data for specific groupings of public bodies monitored, including the higher education, Local Authority and transport sectors.

Overall, the current monitoring report shows some progress albeit by a minority of public bodies for whom monitoring data is available for both the 2022 and 2023 monitoring periods.  Larger websites such as HSE.ie (Ireland's public health and social care service) and GOV.ie (central portal for government services and information) have significantly reduced the number of errors on their websites and are actively working on addressing outstanding issues.  A small number of Local Authority websites significantly reduced the number of errors on their websites in 2023, but overall the performance of the majority of Local Authority websites remains static.

The WCAG 2.1 AA Success Criterion with the largest number of errors detected by In-depth Reviews for the 2023 monitoring period are “Name, role value” (30% of errors), colour contrast (28%) and “Non-text content” (7%).  A key difference between Simplified and In-depth Reviews is in the number of tests conducted manually and conducted using assistive technology by expert reviewers.   The high number and proportion of “Name role value” errors detected is concerning as these errors typically are found on interactive elements of a website.

A majority of websites (85%) and all mobile apps monitored did not contain an Accessibility Statement in line with the requirements of the Directive. An Accessibility Statement is required information containing a declaration of the website or app’s compliance with the standard, information on how a persons may provide feedback or make a complaint.

PDF errors accounted for the highest total number of errors on 137 of the 231 sites subject to Simplified Review in 2023.  This represents an increase from 68 sites in 2022 (n=230).  Furthermore, from 2022 to 2023 there was no improvement in the number of errors detected on 170 PDFs belonging to17 government departments on GOV.ie.

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