site access
| Web sites that don’t offer a text only version are ignoring a potential market of over eight million people with an estimated spending power of £45 billion.
For the sake of a few inexpensive and easy to implement tweaks, web sites are not only ignoring a sizeable market, but also potentially breaking the law. The Disability Discrimination Act states that it is unlawful for anyone providing goods, facilities or services to discriminate against disabled people by: Its scope, it is now being argued, extends to web sites. No cases have reached court yet. But it is believed the Disability Rights Commission, which enforces the Disability Discrimination Act are presently preparing test cases against a number of web service companies who have repeatedly ignored requests to make their sites accessible. Until now the Commission’s approach has been one of public education rather than adversarial. However, if successful the test cases will be a loud wakeup call to UK businesses. In Australia, compensation of A$20,000 has just been awarded to a visually impaired person who alleged that the official Sydney Olympics web site was inaccessible and thus infringing the Australian Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act 1992. Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines also exist for designers to encourage good practice, and - based on these - the court ruled that accessibility had not been integrated from the outset. The defence argued that it would involve unjustifiable hardship to introduce accessibility, but they lost on the basis that these costs would be modest and would take a small team only four weeks. This case is particularly relevant in the UK due to the similarities between the UK and Commonwealth disability rights legislation. Based on this, a British court can issue an order to stop the defender ever discriminating again, and damages will be awarded to the pursuer. The irony is that much of what contrives to thwart the visually impaired, who include the colour-blind, can be easily avoided with a bit of forethought and common sense. And as most sites are built in Dreamweaver, it is a straightforward operation to create an alternative text-only template. For those who want to do something about web site accessibility, it couldn't be easier by visiting the related links on the right. To gain an insight into the challenges faced by disabled web users, try the Flash demo on the Disability Rights Commission site. Flash accessibility FAQ Download a text to speech web browser |