New website makes it possible to compare accessibility levels worldwide
May 20, 2019 - By Jessica O'Sullivan-Munck
A newly launched website, https://www.accessibilityworldmap.org/, finally answers the question of which country has the most accessible websites in the world.
Visitors can easily see via an interactive world map the average web accessibility scores of different countries. The project, a world-first in bench-marking digital inclusion globally, gives users access to easily understandable web accessibility data that previously has not been available.
Beyond gaining an overview of the accessibility of websites around the world, users can also access key data for each country such as its web accessibility legislation, and the average web accessibility score for the Education, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retail, and Tourism and Hospitality industries.
By utilizing the site’s comparison function users can compare and benchmark countries and industries to gain a comprehensive overview of their level of digital inclusiveness. A user could for example compare how accessible websites are in Canada and the United States, and drill down further to compare the web accessibility of the Education industry in each country.
To help users work better with web accessibility there is a free toolkit section of the site that houses an Accessibility Statement Generator, available in eight languages, a accessibility page checker, and an Accessibility Checker extension for Google Chrome.
The website was officially launched at an event 'Benchmarking Digital Inclusion to Drive a Better Digital World' in Copenhagen, Denmark, on May 14, 2019. The event was co-hosted by Siteimprove, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, The Confederation of Danish Industry (DI) and The American Chamber of Commerce in Denmark. Speakers from Accenture, Adobe, Microsoft and Salesforce, among others, spoke on the day about the importance of web accessibility and digital inclusion. With 150 people in attendance the event was a great success. Photos from the event are available here.