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
http://www.theusabilitycompany.com/
www.rnib.org.uk/digital/
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