Websites : Disability Discrimination Act

DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION ACT 1995 – IS YOUR WEBSITE COMPLIANT?

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (“DDA”) makes it unlawful for a “provider of services” to discriminate against a disabled person.

There is a duty not to treat the disabled less favourably in supplying the service which involves taking reasonable steps to consider the manner in which the service is delivered so that the disabled may make use of the service provided.

The provisions of the DDA apply to information mediums including the web.

The Disability Rights Commission have recently announced that they are to investigate one thousand web sites in order to check whether their accessibility is compliant with the minimum provisions of the DDA. If web sites are non-compliant then those responsible for the sites are at risk of a claim being made against them under the DDA. There are, for example, some two million visually impaired people in the UK. Individuals with impaired sight may read web pages with the aid of various technologies installed on their computers. Special software can read the information on web sites aloud using a speaker and screen readers can translate the contents into a braille display.

To enable the web to be used by those with a disability it is essential that site providers carefully consider the accessibility of their sites at the design stage.

Measures for consideration when designing for accessibility include :-

• choosing a background that is a single, solid colour and ensuring that the colour scheme can be overridden by the users browser settings
• ensuring the pages are written in valid hypertext mark-up language (HTML)
• ensuring that only relative font sizes are used in codes, not absolute font sizes which cannot be overridden by some browsers
• avoiding the use of frames where possible  

The Web Accessibility Initiative have published a comprehensive and detailed set of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines which can be found at www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

Please contact us for further information.