Accessible sites

A high percentage of websites do not meet the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).

The majority of all the web creation (authoring) software cannot produce accessible web sites.

See ‘Selecting and Using Authoring Tools for Web Accessibility’ written by W3C The Web Accessibility Initiative at; http://www.w3.org/WAI/impl/software To follow link copy the address into your browser.

Even when the top two professional web creation packages are able to create accessible websites, it is up to the experience of the designer to complete the task.

How about checking a page or two on other websites, or checking your own site? You can check any website for free on the Accessibility checker page.

The result of a website failing the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act is that people:

• are not able to see the text easily enough to read some, or all of it.
• cannot hear complete sentences from a voice reader.
• cannot jump from one heading to another to find relevant information.
• cannot navigate to another page.
• are not able to know what the image is showing.
• cannot work out what the information is showing when displayed in tables.

We aim to design our websites so that they do not discriminate against disabilities.

The Law relating to website Accessibility:

The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) does not seek to impose a specific level of accessibility. Its purpose is to legislate against unreasonable discrimination, and to require reasonable adjustments in instances where discrimination does occur.

It’s highly likely that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) would be key in any UK court case, but any ruling will also be based on common sense and the individual circumstances.

Fulfilling any level of WCAG is not a legal guarantee of complying to the DDA, but it does show a strong commitment to avoiding discrimination.

The text and images of a website would also need to have no discriminatory material.

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