Web Accessibility

The right to access web site information by people with sensory impairments or physical disabilities is enshrined in UK law by the Disability Discrimination Act 1997 (DDA).

It is in your interests to comply with this legislation. Wensley House Limited develop and publish web sites that meet the current requirements.

Details of the Disability Discrimination Act

Part III of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) makes it unlawful for a service provider to treat disabled people less favourably for a reason related to their disability. Service providers must also consider making reasonable adjustments to the way that they deliver their services where disabled people find these impossible or unreasonably difficult to access.

There are provisions in the DDA (section 19(3)) that state that ‘access to and use of means of communication’ and ‘access to and use of information services’ are both examples of services which would be covered by Part III.

However, it would be for a court to decide whether it would have been reasonable for a particular service provider to make a particular adjustment to enable access for a disabled person, taking into consideration all the circumstances of the case.

On 26 February 2002, the Disability Rights Commission published a new, revised Code of Practice on rights of access to goods, facilities, services and premises for disabled people. This statutory Code, agreed by Parliament, provides detailed advice on the way the law should work. It also provides practical examples and tips. The status of the Code is that it must be referred to for guidance in court when deciding on Part III DDA cases.

The Code of Practice makes express reference to websites in:

Chapter 2. What does the Act say about providing services - paragraphs 2.14 and 2.17 and
Chapter 5. Reasonable adjustments in practice - Provision for people with a hearing disability and for people with a visual impairment - paragraphs 5.23 and 5.26.

Recent disability figures for the UK suggest that there are:

over 8.54 million people registered with one form of disability or another;
of these over 2 million have a visual impairment;
eight million people suffer from some form of hearing loss;
one million people have a form of learning difficulty;
over seven million people have literacy problems.

Potentially a significant proportion of your customer base may appreciate improved accessibility to your web site information. You could benefit too.

A useful link concerning web accessibility is W3C Consortium Web accessibility guidelines 1.0

A website can be rated at one of three Web Content Accessibility Guidelines conformance levels - A (Priority 1 items), AA (Priority 1 and 2 items) and AAA (Priority 1, 2 and 3 items).

All UK government websites are expected to achieve, as a minimum, and adhere to the single ‘A’ (Priority 1 items) level.