Not taking steps to make Web sites more accessible to people with disabilities is no less discriminating than failing to provide a ramp for access into a high street store, or not offering lifts for access to upper floors. What's more, it contravenes the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), as the DDA enforcement agency The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) continually reminds retailers. In a recent look at 1,000 Web sites, the DRC said 81 per cent failed to meet minimum standards for disabled Web access.
So here's the negative view: if you don't take steps to make your Web site more accessible, you run the risk of disability discrimination complaints, prosecution, fines and adverse publicity. The positive view is: if you do it properly, you can bring many more shoppers to the site, including people who would find it difficult to shop at high street premises. In fact, 8.5 million people in the UK are considered disabled - that's one seventh of the population. Of these, two million have a significant visual impairment, perhaps the most obvious group excluded from Web sites.
Comet content manager Adrian Gans says since introducing the Browsealoud speech-enabled software on the Comet Web site, 500 people a week have downloaded the free Browsealoud plug-in. This is a good indication of how many people require help with Web sites, and offers good publicity thanks to Comet's claim to be 'the world's first speech-enabled store'.
Browsealoud won't help people who can't see well enough to point and click at the text, but it is useful for people who have dyslexia, or for those whose first language is not English. As all acknowledge, it's a step in the right direction, and is an easy step to take, because it involves next to no re-writing of the Web site. More advanced solutions such as JAWS (Job Access With Speech), which translates text to speech or Braille for people with severe visual impairment, require considerable rewriting of Web pages.
Browsealoud is just one way that Comet has been making its site more accessible. Gans advises thinking about disability access before writing Web pages, rather than having to rewrite them afterwards.
Most importantly, if you seek outside help updating your site, take the warning from the Disability Rights Commission to heart: be careful to avoid the cowboys.
Take a look at the DRC Web site (www.drc-gb.org) for a good example of disability access. For advice see the Royal National Institute of the Blind site at www.rnib.org.uk - the case brought against the Sydney Olympics Committee in Australia in 2000 makes very interesting reading. Another place to start is the W3C Consortium (www.w3c.org).
No comments yet