Accessibility - Why does this affect you?

Part 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act (HMSO, 1995 [online]) [DDA] passed by parliament April 2005 has been widely promoted in the press. Basically it is the “LAW” that all organisations do the following where it is “reasonably” practical. [Reference disability.gov.uk]

Change any practice, policy or procedure which makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult for disabled people to use a service.
Provide an auxiliary aid or service which would enable disabled people to use a service.
Overcome any physical feature by providing services by alternative methods.

To date I am not aware of any case in the UK being brought against any organisation, although they have occurred abroad. Having said that it is easy to see that all the above bullet points do apply to web sites, the key being that an organisation shows it has taken “reasonably” practical steps to avoid discrimination.

The big issue here is the word reasonable, as clearly what is reasonable for an SME or owner/operator business is not the same as a p.l.c.

The W3C has set its Web Accessibility Guidelines to help developers meet certain design standards known as Priority 1, 2 and 3. Meeting these standards gives an advantage in marketing terms as it will improve your generic & paid rankings on search engines.

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Accessibility - Why does this affect you?