Accessible Website Design

Is Your Website Legal?

The Disability Discrimination Act states that all information supplied by an organisation to the general public should be accessible to everyone. A website should be designed with the DDA in mind as modifying a website at a later date always costs a lot more. Occasionally at AFM we have had to completely redesign new client's websites in order to bring them inline with the DDA because the original designers either did not know about website accessibility or did not care. Currently approximately 80% of websites in the UK do not reach the standard level of accessibility. Interestingly, nearly all of the government and council websites now comply and we believe that they have been putting their own houses in order before they start to crack down on others.

Whose Responsibility Is It To Ensure A Website Complies?

It is the website owner who is responsible for DDA compliance. Website designers are not even compelled to inform a client about the DDA. In our experience, when people with non compliant websites have mentioned the DDA to their current designers they have received answers such as "no problem, it's all done" or "you don't need to worry about that" or even "you never asked for it". These comments indicate to us a lack of knowledge about the DDA and how it applies to website design. At AFM we ensure our clients have a good overview of the DDA because, apart from the legal side, making a website accessible is great for search engine optimisation (SEO). All AFM client websites comply with the standard level of accessibility as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium.

Is There A Commercial Reason To Have An Accessible Website?

There are three good commercial reasons to have an accessible website.

1. People with vision impairments use a text browser combined with either a screen reader or Braille tablet to surf the Internet. In order to make a website accessible to this technology it must be correctly designed. Search engines, such as Google, only use the text on a website to catalogue it and therefore an accessible website is far more likely to be displayed for the correct search terms. When Legal and General had its website redesigned to make it accessible it experienced a huge increase in traffic and the resulting revenue allowed it to recoup the cost of the improvements in a matter of months.
2. Accessible websites allow a visitor to adapt the site to suit their own needs. This may involve nothing more than increasing the text size to make it readable. If a website text size is locked they may simply go elsewhere. That is not good when most managers are 30 or over and they control the company purse strings. Also, according to government figures, 12 million people in the UK are over 65. By the way, the usual reason the text size is locked is to make the website designer's job a lot easier and therefore increase their profits.
3. There are 8.6 million people registered disabled in the UK (approximately 15% of the population). Can you really afford to disregard this huge number of potential new customers by having an inaccessible website?

"An accessible website is one that
can be accessed by everyone"

But Don't Accessible Websites Look Rubbish And Cost A Fortune?

These are the usual arguments from website designers who have little or no knowledge of accessibility. All the websites produced by AFM are accessible, have a look at the websites on our portfolio page and judge their looks for yourself. The website you are currently looking at satisfies the highest level of accessibility yet still includes graphics, animation and resizes to fit the available screen space.

As for the increased cost, if a website designer has a good knowledge of accessibility and incorporates the correct design techniques from the start (as all AFM web designers do) then there is a negligible cost increase in the region of 5-10%. However, this small increase pays off again and again for the reasons mentioned above. The cost of making an existing website accessible depends on the site itself.

Free Accessibility Check

We are happy to look at any website and provide some free advice over the phone or via email. If you are wondering whether your own website is accessible, or what would be required to make it accessible, then contact us on 0845 078 0193. We also provide accessibility audits on existing websites. These are much more comprehensive and described below.

Accessibility Services

As well as designing and developing accessible websites AFM offers an accessibility evaluation service for existing websites. Our evaluation will compare your website with current World Wide Web Consortium Accessibility Guidelines and supply the results to you in the form of a printed report. Included with each report is a compact disk containing the evaluation test evidence in the form of PDF files.

The main areas covered by the report are as follows:

• Executive summary
• Why have an accessible website?
• Website accessibility and the Law (British Disability Discrimination Act 1995)
• What does our website look like to other people?
• Method of evaluation
• Evaluation and validation tools
• Results and recommended priorities of actions
• General comments
• Description of the accompanying compact disk
• References

For more information please contact us.

What Does The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) State?

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 in its entirety from the DRC website.

The relevant quotes from the 175-page Code of Practice are:

• 2.2: 'The Disability Discrimination Act makes it unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public.'
• 4.7: 'From 1st October 1999 a service provider has to take reasonable steps to change a practice which makes it unreasonably difficult for disabled people to make use of its services.'
• 2.13 - 2.17: 'What services are affected by the Disability Discrimination Act? An airline company provides a flight reservation and booking service to the public on its website. This is a provision of a service and is subject to the act.'
• 5.23: 'For people with visual impairments, the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include ... accessible websites.'
• 5.26 (p68): 'For people with hearing disabilities, the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include ... accessible websites.'

When Did The DDA Come Into Force?

It's widely believed that the new laws were implemented in October 2004, when the final part of the DDA came into force. This final piece of legislation actually referred to service providers having to consider making permanent physical adjustments to their premises and is not related to the Internet in any way.

Section 111 of the DDA, which refers to accessible websites, came into force on 1st October 1999 and the Code of Practice for this section of the DDA was published on 27th May 2002. This means that the majority of websites have been in breach of the law for over five years.

Can You Be Sued?

Basically, yes. The RNIB has approached two large companies with regard to their websites. When they raised the accessibility issues of the websites under the DDA, both companies made the necessary changes, rather than facing the prospect of legal action (in exchange for anonymity).

The Disability Rights Commission (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 organizations will face legal action under the DDA and the threat of unlimited compensation payments if they fail to make websites accessible for people with disabilities.

How Do You Comply With The Disability Discrimination Act?

It's widely believed that if, or perhaps more appropriately when, a case makes it to court that the W3C accessibility guidelines will be used to assess a websites accessibility and ultimately decide the outcome of the case. W3C is the Internet governing body and its web accessibility guidelines can be found on its website.

There are three levels of compliance according to the W3C.

• Priority 1 guidelines must be satisfied according to the W3C).
• Priority 2 guidelines should be satisfied and are the EU recommended level of compliance.
• Priority 3 guidelines would ideally be satisfied. The website you are reading conforms to this level of compliance.

The courts will also no doubt take guidance from the outcome of an Australian case in 2000, when a blind man successfully sued the Sydney Olympics organizing committee over their inaccessible website. The Australian Disability Discrimination Act quite closely resembles that of the United Kingdom. UK courts may also take into account the New York case against Ramada.com and Priceline.com, who were also successfully sued over the poor accessibility level of their websites.

If you would like further information about website accessibility then contact us and we will be happy to discuss it further.