Much as we try, it's hard not to take certain things for granted, such as the ability to walk to the shops when we want to buy something. A large number of us don't think twice about striding up a few steps to get inside a building or stretching to reach an item on a shelf. But let's stop and think. For a growing number of people, that freedom is just a myth.

Shopping centres, public transport and even the layout of the towns we live in can place obstacles in our paths. Large parts of our environment were designed to suit the 'average' person and, although we now live in more enlightened times, many of those obstacles remain.

Accessibility is often talked about in the context of disability but we think that good design should be suitable for all, whether it's a building or a website. To mark the completion of the final phase of the Disability Discrimination Act, we decided to investigate whether online computer retailers are leading the accessibility issue by example.

With the help of our parent company's sponsored charity, AbilityNet, we asked five people to find a particular type of PC on six popular websites and tell us about the obstacles they were confronted with.

All have some form of registered disability, from dyslexia to severe motor difficulties, mild visual impairment and blindness. Each tester had a different experience of the sites, but some common themes emerged.

We should stress that the opinions cited here reflect the personal experiences of the testers and was not an exhaustive test of each site's capabilities. But we think it gives an interesting insight into how different users deal with retail websites.

In our opinion, some of the most telling comments relate to poor organisation of site content, not to the particular obstacles caused by our testers' disabilities.

Our testers
Terry Robinson, from Glasgow is blind and relies on voice recognition software.
Paul Gillet, from Brighton, has a visual impairment and tweaks his PC to display fonts at 14pt at a resolution of 800 x 600 in high-contrast, black on white style.
John Warriner, from Surrey, has severe motor difficulties that mean he has very limited use of his hands and so mostly relies on voice recognition software.
Rory Field, from Reading, has a visual impairment and uses screen magnification software.
Neil Milliken, from Cambridge, is dyslexic.

The challenge
We asked our testers to spend a maximum of 15 minutes on each site trying to find a PC with at least an 80Gb hard disk, a DVD rewritable drive and a copy of Microsoft Works or Office included - all for less than £1,000.

We asked them to add the item to their shopping basket and complete the payment details screens, stopping only when asked to click the button that would charge them and complete the transaction. If they were unable to locate a computer that met the criteria, or had difficulties in completing the purchasing process, we asked them to find the contact details (email or phone) for help.

Dell.co.uk
Dell's site received mixed reviews from our team. Terry Robinson, who is blind, gave up when he failed to complete the task after 30 minutes, double the allotted time. Blind users need the components of web pages to be backed by something called 'alt-tags', which are textual descriptions of graphics that can be accessed by screen readers.

"There are various unlabelled graphics on the home page. These are interspersed with text links, which may be duplicates. The overall picture is confusing," said Terry.

While he found a system within the price limit, Terry was unable to work out whether it had the required components. "I'm looking at the Dimension TM8400 from £579 but I've seen no reference to hard disks, DVD drives, MS Works or Office," he said.

On average, the impression was of a site with much to offer, perhaps a little too much for clarity's sake. "Initially, the site is quite attractive and easy to navigate, but problems occur when you start to select the options," said John Warriner, who was attempting to access Dell's site using only voice recognition software. "It is necessary to select each basic model and then the many options to ascertain the total price. No running total is provided."

It wasn't all bad news for Dell though. Rory Field, who used screen-magnifying software, accepted that personalising the purchase was worth some extra time. "It can be a little time consuming because they give you so many options to personalise your purchase. I rather liked that feature though," he said.

Neil Milliken, who is dyslexic, found and ordered his system within 12 minutes.

Evesham.com
Paul Gillet, who has a mild form of visual impairment, found the text on this site easy to read. John Warriner wasn't so lucky. The cheapest PC he was able to find at the stated specification was £999, while we found one £200 cheaper. "The site is easy to navigate, although a little confusing in the details of the desktops," said John. He also had difficulty submitting a password in the required field using only voice recognition.

Evesham asks customer to fill out a customisation screen to specify DVD writers and our dyslexic tester, Neil, found the range of options he had to choose from intimidating.

Rory Field criticised a lack of consistency in the size of fonts used. "I picked a range of PCs at random and found a number of computers with specifications listed. The specifications were what I was interested in, but they were in a smaller and different font than the rest of the site, which wasn't as clear," he said.

Evesham is currently promoting its range of products designed to help people with disabilities use technology on its home page. It's just a shame that the E4 Access link has no alt-tag, meaning that some visually impaired users wouldn't know it was there at all.

Meshcomputers.com
Mesh fared well with testers who had only mild visual impairments, and John, who is unable to use his hands, found the site rather engaging.

But for Paul and Terry, whose sight is more seriously impaired, Mesh's site was not so welcoming. "The initial view of this site is off-putting, with small buttons that bring up menus as soon as you place the cursor on them," said Paul.

"The page does not fit onto my screen with 800 x 600 resolution, and the buttons on the right are almost impossible to read. I found the forms just about readable, but drop-down menus may not always be easy for vision-impaired people."

Terry wasn't impressed at all. "I think 'mesh' would be a good description of the home page: many unlabelled graphics and convoluted tables that impart little useful information. There are also several links whose alt-tags say simply 'click here'," he explained

Neil found the site a doddle, though, taking just four minutes to find and buy his PC for £200 less than our target of £1,000.

PC World.co.uk
The majority of testers felt that PC World was the best of the sites on test. Neil, our tester with dyslexia, however, wasn't keen on it at all. He felt that the site did not give enough information in its descriptions of computers.

When we looked, there were no alt-tags on the home page but most of the buttons leading to standard deals or special offers were in text form, rather than flash-looking buttons where the text was actually a graphic image.

Among our other testers, those with visual impairments appreciated the site's use of text rather than images in headings.

Although Rory was impressed overall, he felt he was missing out on the full range of products. "I'm not sure that I was able to locate the list of all the computers available," he said.

However, it was John's comments that left us most concerned. The others found PCs available well below the specified limit - Terry located a £399 PC plus a £75 software package. John, meanwhile, found a PC that matched the specifications all right, but it cost £820.

There were few criticisms of accessibility for PC World's site, but for two testers to find such different deals indicates that perhaps PC World could tackle the issues regarding categorisation.

Time Computers
Time also received some warm reviews but managed to shoot itself in the foot right at the last minute. Having found a bargain PC that undercut our price limit by almost £500, Terry tried to place the item in his basket but couldn't find the 'buy' button.

All our testers with visual impairments complained about this element. "This is the only difficulty that I had: when checking out," said Rory.

John had some problems with his voice recognition system. "It was difficult to select items by voice control as there were too many products with similar names and the site kept trying to offer me what it decided was the best buy," he said.

John added another criticism about the use of pop-up windows. "It would be helpful if Time made it clear that pop-up windows have to be allowed on your PC," he said. With vital alt-tags missing and the payment window appearing as a pop-up, it's a case of close but no cigar for Time in our test.

Tiny.com
Tiny is owned by the same company as Time, so we were expecting some similarities. Unfortunately, the similarity it shares is a certain shyness when it comes to allowing customers to buy anything. "I could not select 'buy' by voice," said John.

"There were alt-tags on everything that I wanted to know about. The main difficulty for me was actually buying the product," said Rory. "I was very impressed with the site and the general functions. But I couldn't buy the product."

Tiny also proved a little over-zealous in its desire to stay in touch through all possible channels. "I was amused that, in addition to a home telephone number, it requires an office number and a mobile number and would not proceed without this information. But any old number was accepted," said John.

Neil was less impressed. "I don't like the way it insists that you submit three phone numbers," he said. It's good to talk but, with privacy issues more prominent in people's minds, Tiny should make it optional to enter so many telephone numbers.

The companies respond
We asked the six companies to react to our testers' comments, also requesting that they avoid vague platitudes of 'commitment to improvements' and tell us about specifics.

Mesh described it as "invaluable feedback from a truly real-world test". Thanks for the compliment, Mesh, but what is the company going to do? It will apparently "redouble its efforts to strike a balance between content, ease and speed of use".

We think it needs to do something very simple: add alt-tags so that visually impaired users can take advantage of its offers. The Disability Discrimination Act says that companies must make "reasonable efforts" to ensure that all users can benefit from its services. If it wants to keep its slick look with graphic buttons instead of text, we don't think that's unreasonable.

PC World said that it was already aware of the need to improve its use of alt-tags and noted the comments made by Neil, our tester with dyslexia. That his points related to the information on offer rather than its presentation should give PC World plenty to think about.

Dell responded in very specific terms, maintaining that it had already invested in an automatic website testing application called Watchfire to examine its sites worldwide. The company said it would soon add another tool to the program, which will assess 90 separate accessibility issues, enabling the company to spot problems. It is due to come online "soon", according to Dell.

Evesham was short and sweet, saying that it is working on a new version of the site that will be better for all. It should be online by Christmas.

Time and Tiny.com responded as one, promising to make it far clearer to add an item to an online shopping basket.

Room for improvement
We had hoped to give a Best On Test award to one of the sites, but none have done quite enough to meet the needs of all users in our opinion. AbilityNet has long argued that improving accessibility is simple business planning for retailers; we are all living longer and so become prone to ailments that can make using a PC or website tricky.

The message seems to be getting through but it's early days. We said at the beginning that the IT industry should lead by example, and that is not yet happening. We challenge the technology retail industry to improve. We'll be back to check on its progress next year and, hopefully, give out that Best On Test medal.