R&D notes

Charitable accessibility 2022, test results

Jonathan Robert Pool

Accessibility scores for home pages of charities

Introduction

The table below compares 38 web pages on accessibility. The pages are the home pages of the charities that received the best scores in a preliminary round of testing. The charity names in the first column are links to the tested pages on the web. The scores in the second column are links to digests that explain in detail how the scores were computed.

The pages were:

  1. Tested by Testaro with procedure tp16
  2. Scored by Testilo with procedure sp16a
  3. Digested by Testilo with procedure dp16a
  4. Compared by Testilo with procedure cp16a

The Testaro procedure performed 1225 tests on each page. Of these, 19 tests were custom tests defined by Testaro, and the others belonged to packages of tests created by others.

Comparison

Accessibility scores of charity web pages
PageScore (lower is better)
Disability Rights Advocates402
Virtual Science Teachers447
Freedom of the Press Foundation498
Long Now Foundation502
Signal Technology Foundation578
Hesperian Health Guides634
Freedom House635
Socially Responsible Agricultural Project709
Internet Archive711
Center for Justice and Accountability770
Center for Responsive Politics829
Global Greengrants Fund832
United Nations Population Fund853
Center for Democracy and Technology879
Earthjustice880
Whole Woman’s Health Alliance888
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy917
Fair Vote941
Wikimedia Foundation972
Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future989
National Coalition Against Censorship1064
Citizens for Global Solutions1074
Sightsavers1075
Cultural Survival1077
FIRE1147
Against Malaria Foundation1191
Evidence Action1193
Friends of the Earth1241
Esperantic Studies Foundation1254
Direct Relief1256
Guttmacher Institute1324
Government Accountability Project1382
Malaria Consortium1385
Population Connection1423
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine1435
Brennan Center for Justice1608
Helen Keller International1700
NARAL Pro-Choice America1703

Discussion

The charities named above, compared with other charities, have home pages that pose relatively minor barriers to users, including users with disabilities, but the test results suggest that in all cases some accessibility deficiencies remain.

Caveats: The tests assign scores even for suspected accessibility issues, so a score of 0 is not to be expected. Moreover, even a large battery of accessibility tests is fallible and subjective. Any scoring formula is, too. The faults reported in the digests merit investigation as potential opportunities for improved accessibility. Some may not actually harm accessibility, and some other accessibility faults are not detectable with these tests. Different reasonable procedures could yield different test results and different scores. Testaro and Testilo can be customized to fit different definitions and weightings of types of accessibility.