Why be accessible? (by Paul Collins)

Disabilities

There are two million people with sight problems in Great Britain. It is also believed that 1 in 6 adults have a significant hearing impairment.

These are not the only disabilities that the web needs to cater for though. People with mobility, cognitive and learning problems are also affected, (for instance, people with Dyslexia). These statistics alone are enough justification that we are eliminating a wide part of our audience by not making our sites accessible to them. Disabled people generally depend on the internet more for their day to day activities such as shopping, paying bills etc. They access web pages by using different types of software, including screen reading software, screen magnifiers, braille readers and text browsers.

Business advantage

By building an accessible website, you open yourself up to a whole new audience; including another 6,000,000 people in Great Britain alone. It also means you can target this group of individuals with specific products.

By using coding standards, you ensure far easier maintenance when it comes to updating your website. You also ensure your website will be accessible to people on a wider range of Platforms and Browsers.

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

The WAI, a group created by the World Wide Web Consortium, have set out the guidelines for building accessible websites.
You can view Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 here. There is also a checklist for these guidelines which can be found here.

30 July 2004

The working draft for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 has now been published. Whilst it has not been finalised, it is certainly worth taking note of. An interesting point to note is that some of the guidelines that were previously level 2 are now being incorporated into level 1.

The RNIB (Royal National Institute of the Blind) also have a great guide to understanding accessibility.

The EuroAccessibility Consortium

On April 28th 2003, the EuroAccessibility Consortium was formed to harmonise the way accessibility standards are applied to websites throughout the European Union. The initiative could lead to a European-wide E-accessibility mark. This would be similar to the see it right logo the RNIB currently has in use for UK sites.

Click here for a list of sites that meet the "see it right" campaign guidelines:

Lawsuits

As a matter of opinion, it is probably important to keep in mind that making your website accessible because of fear of lawsuits is not highly commendable, so use these examples sparingly when talking to clients:

Although no-one has been successfully sued in the UK for not making their site accessible, Disabled groups are currently planning several actions. Companies are therefore having to make their sites accessible, which can be extremely costly. As Accessibility is becoming more of an issue, many companies are building sites that accommodate for the disabled from the beginning at a much smaller cost.

The Discrimination Act

The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) was introduced to UK law in 1995.

Section 21 of the Disability Discrimination Act came into force on 1 October 1999. The RNIB claims that since then it has been a demand for web companies to make reasonable changes to their sites to improve accessibility.

Since October 1st, it has become UK law to ensure that your website is accessible to disabled people. Section 21 of the DDA act of 1995 states that you must provide access to goods, facilities and services for the disabled.

The RNIB has a comprehensive article on the Disability Discrimination Act and how it applies to the web. They also have an overview of the Disability Discrimination Act.

Lawsuits in the UK

Although no-one has been sued in the UK, the RNIB is currently assisting in the first UK court actions against companies whose web sites do not comply with the Disability Discrimination Act. Currently, they have taken action against two companies, of which they cannot reveal the names of due to confidentiality clauses. The Disability Rights Commission have also reviewed 1,000 web sites across the public and private sectors and compiling a list of who they will take action against. They assure us that these two companies will not be the only ones.

Article on Outlaw.com about RNIB taking action against Web companies.

Bruce Lindsay Maguire v Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games

A benchmark case as it is the only case so far where someone has successfully sued a company for not making its website accessible. In June 1999 Bruce Maguire lodged a complaint with the Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) under the Australian Disability Discrimination Act of 1992. His complaint was that the SOCOG website was inaccessible to a blind person.

On 24 August 2000, the HREOC released its decision and supported Maguire’s complaint, ordering certain access provisions to be in place on the olympics.com.au site by 15 September 2000. SOCOG ignored the ruling and was subsequently fined AUD $20,000.

click here for the full story on the SOCOG lawsuit

click here for the HREOC official documentation relating to the SOCOG lawsuit

National Federation of the Blind sues AOL

Probably the most well documented case in the US and a benchmark case for the NFB; on Thursday, November 4, 1999 The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against America Online, Inc. AOL fought the charge at first, but in the end gave into public pressure and the lawsuit was dropped by NFB in Spring of 2000.

Since then, AOL has now published a policy on accessibility, formed an Accessibility Advisory Committee (which meets regularly and on which the National Federation of the Blind is represented), hired a blind person to direct its accessibility efforts, formalized its relationship with leading vendors of screen-access software for the blind, and released three versions of the AOL client software that have demonstrated steady improvement in compatibility with screen-access technology.

May 2003 - An update on the AOL lawsuit by Curtis Chong, president of the NFB's Computer Science division

National Federation of the Blind official documentation of the AOL lawsuit