Presidential Web sites fail accessibility tests

From the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD)'s Justice for All blog:

According to assessments by The International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet (ICDRI), the campaign Web sites for all Presidential have not made their Web sites accessible to and usable by people with disabilities. All the presidential candidates’ Web sites were reviewed, including for John McCain, Barack Obama, Bob Barr, Alan Keyes and Ralph Nader. The accessibility assessments evaluated how easy it is for persons with disabilities and older Americans to make contributions, access information about the candidates’ positions, and engage as volunteers in the national campaigns.

ICDRI conducted free electronic reviews of John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s Web sites and sent these to the campaign managers notifying them of multiple inaccessibility concerns. The assessments found that Obama’s Web site is
missing labels in the Form Fields, which can confuse users of assistive technology and prevents persons with disabilities from knowing what to type into the input fields. Similarly, McCain’s Web site has missing Alt Attribute tags, meaning that users of assistive technology will not be able to tell what message the image or object is trying to convey. ICDRI’s Web site has copies of the reports for all five candidates. See at http://www.icdri.org/WebAccess/Pres08/PResidentialPR08.htm