Letters

If you have come across a site that is inaccessible, and you want to let them know of the importance of accessibility for a web site, and ask them to make efforts to make their site accessible to all, it is a good idea to send the webmaster of the site a message expressing this. Although many sites ignore such letters, there are also many that are receptive to visitor complaints and they may make their site accessible if they receive enough requests.

In fact, many sites claim that they don't make their pages more accessible because they don't think their visitors need them to be, and quote lack of complaints as their reason. Make sure that sites you visit know it's important to be accessible by everyone. Don't let ignorance be their excuse. You may want to encourage them to visit the W3C's Web Accessibility Standards at: https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/ for information on how to make their sites more accessible.

Below are some example letters that have been sent by participants in the campaign, that you can modify for your own use when you notify sites that they're inaccessible and that you want them to fix it. If you have any example letters that you think should be listed here, please let me know.

For more guidance on how to contact websites about accessibility issues, see WAI's Contacting Organizations about Inaccessible Websites.

Letter Courtesy of Ramon Casha

Dear web administrator,

Thank you for the work and time which you have dedicating to provide
your website, which I am sure must be very interesting and
well-designed. However I am blind and could not make use of the
graphical links, since no alternative text was provided. Many people are
unable to view graphics for many reasons ranging from eyesight problems,
to the non-availability of graphical browsers on their computers.
Changing browsers is often not an option for us.

You have obviously dedicated a lot of time and effort into making your
website as accessible as possible, and it's a shame to think that there
are so many users who cannot access your site, especially since it is
relatively easy to make your site more accessible. It involves providing
a text representation of the images, especially those which are
necessary to navigate your site. The code example below indicates how
this is done:

<IMG SRC="back_arrow.gif" ALT="Go to the homepage">

I would recommend reading the W3C's Web Accessibility Standards at:
https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/

Thank you very much for your time, I will be visiting your site again in
the near future.


More Example Letters: