Legal and Cases
The UK-government-funded Disability Rights Commission reported in April 2004 that it is “only a matter of time” before companies that ignore online accessibility issues will face legal action from disabled users.
What does the law say?
The law governing online accessibility in the UK is contained within Part III of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which came into force in 1999. It applies to all service providers, whether public or private sector, even if their internet services are not for profit. In addition, the Code of Practice for part III of the Act was published in 2002. It states that online accessibility is now a legal requirement.
The law states that all service providers must take reasonable steps to change any practice, policy or procedure which makes it ‘impossible or unreasonably difficult’ for disabled persons to make use of a service, including those accessed by the internet. The law in relation to online accessibility has yet to be tested by the UK courts. However, similar cases have reached the courts under disability discrimination law in countries outside of the UK. In the Australian case of Maguire v The Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games the court found that the Committee had been in breach of the Australian Disability Discrimination Act 1992 by failing to provide a website that Mr Maguire could use.
The Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) recently provided legal representation for two individuals in separate cases relating to “unreasonable difficulties” and “less favourable treatment” with regard to the provision of online services under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The identities of the organisations involved are not known, since the primary concern of the RNIB was to raise awareness of the issues involved rather than to lay blame at anyone’s door. Both cases were settled before reaching the courts.
It remains to be seen what the UK courts will make of such an action as and when one comes before them, however, it is likely that they will take into consideration the ruling in the Maguire case. Since the law in this area has been in place since 1995 the chances of the legislation remaining untested for much longer are fairly slim, particularly when the increased profile of the DDA in recent times is taken into consideration.
What about other guidelines?
There are no absolute guidelines that are available to facilitate a measure of whether a website is sufficiently accessible. A widely acknowledged international standards setting body (W3C) does exist. This organisation launched the first comprehensive set of guidelines in May 1999 which automated online assessment tools such as “Bobby” apply to measure compliance. However, tools such as “Bobby” are unable to assess many of the subjective areas (such as use of simple language) and we believe that these should be seen as a rather crude indication of accessibility as opposed to a reliable assessment mechanism.
The guidelines suggest three priority levels to which websites should aspire. The first “Level A” sets out the minimum basic accessibility requirements. The second “AA” suggests the achievement of certain other goals and the third “AAA” is meant to demonstrate a real commitment to accessibility excellence. It is widely thought, however, that “AAA” level is either unachievable with current technology or compromises other requirements of an online presence such as brand impact and design. For these reasons it is thought that in the event that the legislation is tested by the UK courts it is likely they will cite level “AA” as the benchmark for accessibility.