Marty Carroll, Director of Usability Practice, The Usability Company
Web and Intranet accessibility has become an important issue for moral, legal and business reasons, so much so that RNIB recently announced that it is to bring the first legal cases for lack of online accessibility. Marty Carroll, director of usability practice at The Usability Company, looks at what charities with limited resources can do to fulfil their legal and what some consider a moral obligation to ensure that their websites and Intranet comply with accessibility guidelines. The issue of website accessibility has once again come to the fore with RNIB's recent announcement that it is supporting a number of individuals in legal cases against organisations for failing to provide websites that can be used by those with sight problems.
Under the Disability Discrimination Act (1995), DDA, organisations are legally obliged to make 'reasonable adjustments' to ensure services are accessible to everyone, and last year the Disability Rights Commission's Code of Practice that accompanies the DDA confirmed that this requirement applied equally to online services. Although these are the first cases of this type to be brought in the UK, there have been a number of successful prosecutions abroad, the most famous of which was against the Sydney Olympic Committee in 2000.
In the UK RNIB has done much to raise awareness of the need for online operations to comply with the legislation, however designing a truly accessible website involves consideration of more than blind and partially sighted people. There are many other kinds of difficulties that can affect someone's ability to use a website, such as problems with hand-eye co-ordination. Despite growing awareness of the need to address such issues though, there still exists a great deal of uncertainty and confusion about which steps exactly should be taken to deliver an accessible website.
Much of this uncertainty stems from the nature of the British legal system, which means that until case law is established it is impossible to say what level of accessibility is needed to ensure compliance. This situation is further complicated by a number of international and domestic accessibility guidelines. The Worldwide Web Consortium has developed a set of guidelines for developers (WAI - Web Accessibility Initiative) but these have been criticised for being overly complex and difficult to implement. There's also Bobby, a commercial tool that provides organisations with an evaluation of any accessibility difficulties, while RNIB has developed its See It Right logo, which remains the only accessibility accreditation in the UK to be awarded by an independent body.
It's understandable then that many organisations faced by the maze of legislation, guidelines and standards are perplexed as to how exactly to deliver a socially inclusive website, particularly organisations with limited resources.
Of course, the ideal scenario would be to incorporate accessibility considerations into the design process from the very beginning. A good design methodology should balance all of a project's requirements - good usability, accessibility, aesthetic considerations, as well as the organisation's needs - to create websites that deliver on all of these fronts from the outset. Building accessibility into a website is not as complex as it sounds, but requires an awareness on the part of the developer of the tools and software that are used by those with physical disabilities. Steps to consider for instance include adding keyboard functionality to websites for users who have difficulties using a mouse, or adding concise and comprehensive tags for blind users who use screen readers.
For organisations with limited resources though, creating an accessible website may be a new consideration and building from scratch is simply not an option. Admittedly, it may be necessary to retrofit prominent and frequently used parts of the site, adding new features to improve ease-of-use for the disabled. However, a fruitful and long-term approach to ensuring accessibility should be incremental, whereby accessibility becomes not a one-off solution, but is integrated into a design approach aimed at the slow evolution of the site towards increasing accessibility. Once designers are aware of the steps that can be taken to improve accessibility, these considerations should form an integral part of design processes as the website continues to grow and be modified. A useful benchmark here is perhaps the WAI, which suggests three increasingly advanced accessibility standards, offering organisations a road-map over time to greater accessibility.
As mentioned, until the first test case the exact nature of the required 'reasonable adjustments' will remain unclear, but an organisation that has embarked on this route, and whose fixed goal is increasing accessibility, can safely be said to be erring on the side of caution. It should be remembered too, that the significance of website accessibility goes way beyond fulfilling a set of legal requirements: the case for accessibility is simply a recognition that IT and the internet have revolutionised the way we work and communicate. It is vital that as technology advances in its complexity and reach, and continues to play an ever more important role in our working and home lives, nobody is excluded from the immense possibilities this brings.
For further information see:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp
https://theusabilitycompany.com/
www.rnib.org.uk/digital/
Return to newsletter
|
