What do you do when you come across an inaccessible website?
(I admit that I often yell at the computer.)
What about after that initial outburst of frustration?
(I sometimes send an e-mail encouraging them to fix it. )

WAI encourages you to tell organizations how important it is that their websites are accessible. Especially when you come across accessibility barriers, tell the organization about it!


To help make this easier and hopefully more effective, WAI just published:
Contacting Organizations about Inaccessible Websites. It walks through steps, provides lots of tips, and includes sample e-mails.

Just yelling at your computer isn't going to get the accessibility barriers fixed. Just complaining on a blog or other place where the organization won't see it isn't likely to help.

Instead, consider what approach will get the results you want. An encouraging e-mail is often a good first step. Sometimes organizations are not even aware of accessibility issues, and don't know how web accessibility is vital for equal rights, required by law in some cases, and has strong business benefits. See Contacting Organizations about Inaccessible Websites for more.

WAI would like to hear your ideas for this document and your experiences dealing with inaccessible websites. The WAI Interest Group (WAI IG) hosts a public discussion e-mail list; comments on specific documents are collected through the publicly-archived wai-eo-editors@w3.org list; and we'll watch for comments to this blog post.
(Please send comments by 3 February 2010 for consideration in the next version.)

Thanks! ~Shawn

Contacting Organizations about Inaccessible Websites is edited by Andrew Arch, Shawn Lawton Henry, and Shadi Abou-Zahra; developed by the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) as part of the WAI-AGE Project.



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