Web sites of official organizations should be accessible to reduce
the digital divide and improve the ability of any citizen to participate
to the social and political life of a country. However the current status
of web sites is far from satisfying. Despite the existence of standards
and regulations, many organizations still host web sites that are not
accessible.
To support this claim the paper presents a survey of some of the
major accessibility defects present in web sites of official governmental
agencies (Italian regions, Austrian and German Bundesl ̈nder).
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The paper discusses then the role of corporate accessibility policies
(and associated concepts of accessibility levels, corporate guidelines,
and implementation plan) and suggests that they could be used to
bridge the gap between what is currently done and what should be
done in order to improve the accessibility of web sites.
