- James Company Karaoke
Working with you not for you- Rafe
The law and your website.
If you operate a business that provides goods or services within the UK then there are certain legal requirements you must not fail to provide for.
The reason we word it this way is purely because of the legal mumbo jumbo of never getting anything down in black and white, particularly so when it comes to the DDA.
Part III of the DDA refers to the provision of goods, facilities and services. The Code of Practice which specifically mentions websites, can be downloaded from the Equality and Human Rights Commission website.
The relevant quotes from the Code of Practice are:
You may have seen on the sites of web designers and developers where they talk about making sites that meet DDA requirements. The truth is that this declaration of fact is actually a simple marketing tool they use to suggest that your site will be on legally safe ground.
The sad truth is that many of these statements are just words on a screen. There is nothing to back them up. No actual thought has gone into what it all really means.
The list goes on and on.
Developers and designers (and some of them big names!), who tell you your site will reach the legal requirements (let alone those that tell you they will reach the highest standards), yet fail time and time again through lack of knowledge and not really caring. Half of these companies only say these things because it is a legal requirement for you, not because they actually give a damn about how accessible your site is.
Here is the crunch... it is you who will face legal action, not the developer. You are the provider that is mentioned in the DDA. Whoever designs and/or develops your site is currently unaffected from a legal standpoint. All that the developer is legally responsible for is their own website selling their services.
Section III of the DDA, which refers to accessible websites, came into force in October 1999 and the Code of Practice for this section was published in May 2002.
A legal precedent was set in Australia during the time of the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. The Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) failure to meet established accessibility rules and standards, not only disadvantaged certain sections of society but also ended up costing them $20,000 AUD in compensation (roughly £9,000 Sterling).
An American precedent was set in 2004 when New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer contradicted an earlier ruling by Judge Patricia Seitz, by stating that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, did in fact apply to the Internet. This had an immediate joint financial cost to the two companies involved of $77,500 USD (roughly £54,000 Sterling), then they had to make their sites accessible.
When the RNIB approached two large companies about their websites and the DDA, both made the needed changes (in exchange for anonymity) rather than face legal action.
In April 2004, the DRC launched a formal investigation into 1000 websites, of which over 80% were next to impossible for disabled people to use. They issued a stern warning that organisations will face legal action under the DDA and the threat of unlimited compensation payments if they fail to make their websites accessible for people with disabilities.
The answer here is basically, yes. Two major companies have already decided to implement changes rather than face legal action after the RNIB approached them about accessibility issues.
The Australian Olympic case and the American travel case are more than likely to set international precedents for legal action.
Don't forget, the responsibility lies with you the site owner, not the designer/developer.
The DDA guidelines on what exactly is required are difficult to pin down at best. A European Parliament report on Accessibility of Public Web Sites and their Content from 2002, is geared towards meeting the priority 2 requirements of the WCAG1.0 otherwise known as level AA.
To meet DDA requirements it is important to meet all of priority 1 (level A) of the WCAG1.0 and suggested to meet most if not all of priority 2 (level AA). Public sector websites must meet all of the priority 2 guidelines.
As you are aware time moves on, and the WCAG1.0 is in the process of being taken over by the WCAG2.0 and changes are bound to occur.
It is not up to you to necessarily know everything that is in these requirements, however you do need to make sure your developer knows precisely what they are. For this reason it would help if you had a little knowledge of them, and ask your developer exactly what they have done to meet them.