Failure by business to comply with Disability Discrimination Act guidelines on accessibility has spurred the British Standards Institute to develop a new "tool-kit" primarily aimed at those commissioning websites, as well as those that build them.
The BSI commissioned the Public Accessibility Specification after a Disability Rights Commission survey of 1000 sites found that over 80% failed to meet the guidelines.
In the survey, many public sector sites fared little better than their private sector counterparts.
But, the PAS' technical author and Digital Policy Manager of the Royal National Institute of the Blind told AccountingWEB, the Specification is not so much aimed at providing new guidelines, but constitutes a "process standard."
Julie Howell said, "It discusses issues like levels of conformity, how to engage disabled people in website design, cost-effectiveness, and design strategy."
Howell said most developers and those that commission them have "both the technical knowledge and the willingness" to create accessible websites for the disabled, but that "[existing] guidelines" are still not translating into best practice."
Website accessibility is perhaps one of the more controversial aspects of the DDA. One web-designer told AccountingWEB that many in the industry are finding DDA requirements "something of a shock." He said, "There's definitely a sacrifice to be made in terms of appearance and quality that comes with compliance. Cost-wise, it isn't so bad if you're starting the site from scratch. But retro-fitting a large and already expensive site can cost the earth."
He added that there's also confusion regarding the compliance status of many popular site development tools. He said, "recoding can be very expensive'one tactic clients resort to is building a parallel 'accessible' site alongside the one with all the bells and whistles."
But Howell argued that "it isn't so much about coding" as it is about service provision and that many businesses could meet their DDA obligations by thinking laterally.
For example, she said that while it would be discriminatory to provide a "web-only" special offer that couldn't be easily accessed by a disabled person, ensuring that the offer could also be taken advantage of by telephone would provide a solution.
To date, there has not been a single prosecution under the DDA for failing to provide sufficient accessibility. There have, however, been two instances where the RNIB has settled on behalf of blind complainants, with businesses. In both cases, confidentiality was requested, and the sum not disclosed.
Howell concedes that a lack of case law makes defining "accessibility" a tricky task, but says businesses are complacent "at their peril." On the other hand, she says that most developers both understand the DDA guidelines (which are freely available on the Disability Rights Commission website, and elsewhere), and are interested in applying them; but that nonetheless, "knowledge and willingness are failing to translate as best practice."
It's likely that an absence of headline cases is tempting companies to wonder why they should bother - especially where there is considerable expense involved. But Alyson Rose of the Disability Rights Commission says that the best incentive is to remember that by neglected the needs of those with visually impairment or otherwise disabled, they're ignoring a valuable potential marketplace.
The PAS is due to be published in October, to coincide with a government-sponsored awareness campaign on accessibility issues.
