Report on Letters to Webmasters sent

From October 1998 to June 1999 some letters have been sent to webmasters of interesting web sites to inform them about the accessibility problems encountered on their web sites. Some design improvements were suggested and it was referred to the BrailleNet white paper and the WAI web site so that then can check the accessibility of their site and understand what could be changed to improve this accessibility. The following table shows the results of the letter actions.

Site name	Site url	Answer
Bibliothèque Nationale de France	www.bnf.fr	No answer but the site has become more accessible
Les trois Suisses	www.3suisses.fr	No answer, no improvement
Reporters sans frontières	www.rsf.fr	No answer
Futuroscope	www.futuroscope.org	We are aware of the problem but it is difficult to solve. Moreover those users belong to a small category of users and we cannot take everyone into account.
Le livre de jeunesse	www.cplj.fr	They wanted to do their best to make the site accessible, and the site has become more accessible.
5th French Television Channel	www.lacinquieme.fr	Positive answer, but no results yet.
French Parliament	www.assemblee-nat.fr	Positive answer. The site will be more accessible.
Mairie of Villeurbanne	www.mairie-villeurbanne.fr	No answer
The Newspaper Libération	www.liberation.com	They are aware of the problem but...
Autonomic exhibition	www.autonomic-expo.com	An answer but no changes
News agency AFP	www.afp.com	The answer was not clear, no changes.
Poste office	www.laposte.fr	No answer
Site of the Prime Minister	www.premier-ministre.gouv.fr	Positive answer, meeting with the person in charge of the site.
Chilian Newspaper	www.lanacion.com	Positive answer. An evaluation of the accessibility of the site has been sent, waiting for results.
Newspaper Le Monde	www.lemonde.fr	Positive answer. Improvements on the site
Webcity, leisure newspaper for Paris	www.cyberparis.com	No positive answer, no interest
The Quid, encyclopedia	www.quid.fr	no answer
Railway company	www.sncf.fr	no answer
Television Newspaper	www.telerama.fr	No answer
Literary magazine	www.magazine-litteraire.fr	no answer
Newspaper l'est républicain	www.estrepublicain.fr	no answer
French German Office for the Youth	www.ofaj.com	no answer

In summary we can say that for many of these sites the accessibility is not a priority but the commercial benefits. Nevertheless we had some good results with some of them, which lead to a co-operation between Braillenet/INSERM and their webmasters to improve the site accessibility.

Level of accessibility of the sites reviewed in the study

Very accessible ***

Medium Accessible **

Merely accessible *

Not accessible -/P>