The UK's 20 Premier-ship football clubs are all languishing at the bottom of the league when it comes to meeting the needs of their disabled online fans, claims Warwick-based computing and disability charity, AbilityNet. The claim is based on an in-depth audit of the clubs' websites, looking at both usability and accessibility. The fifth in a series of quarterly eNation reports on the top websites in selected industry sectors, the report reveals that, of the 20 clubs checked, using a series of both manual checks and automated tools, only Manchester United's alternative 'accessible' website achieves more than a one star rating. However its two stars still fall short of the three star minimum required to meet the needs of visitors with a vision impairment, dyslexia or physical impairment making mouse use difficult. All the clubs reviewed were invited to make a public commitment to accessibility and to date, Everton, Chelsea and Premium TV, which hosts the sites of ten of the clubs - Aston Villa, Birmingham City, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Crystal Palace, Middlesborough, Newcastle United, Norwich City, Portsmouth and West Bromwich Albion - have pledged to improve standards. The results are broadly in line with findings from earlier AbilityNet surveys into websites operated by leading airlines, newspapers, banks and supermarkets. Robin Christopherson, AbilityNet's web consultancy manager - who is himself blind --said: "It is illegal to bar disabled visitors from online services offered to the general public. "Whilst no organisation would knowingly impose a 'technological lock-out' on their disabled customers, it is clear that there is still much scope for improvement." Typical problems encountered by Christopherson and his team included: l Text size on some sites, particularly for headings and links is 'hard-coded' so that it cannot be easily enlarged - vital for many visitors who have a vision impairment. With some sites offering small text and others carrying a watermark, effective access for this group is made very difficult. l The text labels attached to images upon which blind visitors and text browser users rely for an explanation are often uninformative or completely absent. Without these spoken labels on graphical links, navigation for a blind visitor is pure guesswork. "Imagine trying to drive to your destination where exits at each junction are left blank," said Mr Christopherson. l Pictures of text are often used instead of actual text. This not only means that the user cannot modify the text size or colour contrast - essential for those with a vision impairment or dyslexia - it also prevents screen reader users from reading the content when, as so frequently happens, these images are left unlabelled. l Many of the sites contain adverts and features made up of moving images that will be distracting for visitors with a cognitive impairment and interactive presentations known as Flash Movies, which can present access problems for visitors who cannot use a mouse, are vision impaired or who use speech output or voice recognition software. Often these adverts are inserted using inline frames which are not handled well by some speaking and text only browsers. l The majority of sites use the club strip as a colour scheme - these combinations often do not afford a good text - background contrast making them difficult to interpret for those with colour deficit conditions, vision impairment or dyslexia. l Most of the sites are reliant on mini programs embedded in the page called JavaScript. People using older browsers, those with vision impairments using some special browsers and users whose organisations disable JavaScript for security reasons, will not be able to access the sites fully. On many sites links to the main sections do not appear and the search and shopping basket facilities do not operate fully. The charity organisation says the sites exclude a hugely valuable potential market comprising 1.6 million vision impaired users, 1.5 million people with cognitive difficulties, a further 3.4 million with disabilities preventing them from using the standard keyboard, screen and mouse set-up with ease, some 6 million with dyslexia and many millions with literacy difficulties. The total spending power of this group is now estimated at over £120 billion a year. | 
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