The Equality Act 2010
“The legal duty to make websites accessible is firmly established in law” (from ‘Is your website accessible by the disabled? The law says it should be.’)
Making a website accessible for users with disabilities has been required by law since 1995, first through Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) and now through the Equality Act 2010. The act was introduced to tackle discrimination that many disabled people face online and off.
Shoosmiths lawyers have produced an excellent series of articles outlining the challenges to online businesses. The latest – ‘Website accessibility: A legal requirement and good commercial sense‘ – states that the real requirements for online businesses have not changed with the introduction of the new act, and that it is still:
“…unlawful for service providers (including businesses operating a website) to discriminate against – either directly or indirectly – a disabled user. Service providers have to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to ensure disabled users have equivalent levels of access to, and use of, a website.”
Success Criteria for Evaluation
The introduction of Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 has created a new set of criteria for successful evaluation. These can be measured by a mixture of both manual and automatic means – an automatic pass can show whether basic technical compliance has been achieved, with the manual pass ensuring evaluation of the real user experience, for example the perception of colour.
WCAG Conformance Levels
Conformance is measured in three levels – A, AA, AAA. A is a minimum level, with AAA the maximum level. The COI guidance for UK government websites is that the minimum standard is AA which sets the bar for other service based sites.
Evaluation
Hawdale Associates take a recommendations led approach to evaluation, and can make concrete recommendations to fix. Contact us for more details.
