I am doing a report on the user ability of my hometown’s website, Cleveland, Ohio. I already knew that this website was not very user friendly based on the congestion of the home page, the lacking of a footer on the home page, and the random videos and advertisements that would show up when moving around the site.
I ran this website through WAVE in order to receive a full accessibility report on the website, and I was not surprised by what I found. The website has many many user ability errors.
To be exact… 47 Errors, 49 Alerts, 17 Features, 120 Structural Elements, 9 HTML5 and ARIA, and 87 Contrast Errors. Most of these errors and alerts were due to missing alternate text, or redundant titles and links. The report also mentioned that the home page skipped a heading level completely.
47 Errors and 87 Contrast Errors just on the main home page of the site. I think it is time for this website to get a user-ability update!
What I think is most interesting about this site is that it isn’t even immediately clear *what* it is. The website for the city government is http://www.city.cleveland.oh.us/, but if you looking around on Cleveland.com, it is a mix of journalism and general city info. It isn’t even clear who is responsible for it unless you do some digging. It also has a number of errors, as you suggest, in terms of accessibility. I think this is an interesting choice because it’s increasingly common to see multi-purpose commercial sites like this one.