Questions on Coding for Disability Access

Apologies if this is not in the right forum, only I'm not sure which one to put this in...

Apparantly, since 1999, although I only vaguely heard of it approx' a year ago, web designers in the UK now have a legal obligation to publish sites that can be accessed by disabled people.
For blind people, I guess this means audio equivallents or substitutes for all text content, together with audio references to images (?).
Q1: What or which html tags do you include to make pages audio-browser compliant?
Q2: Which audio-file format should you use for making recordings?
Q3: Which are the available audio-browsers? I've never heard of one...

regards

This is only partially true.
Web Designers are under the obligation to make their website as accessible as possible, i.e. without discrimintion. However , this does not mean making a site truly accessible for everyone, this would be far too time consuming.
Blind people will make use of Screen Readers, and so therefore the W3C have said that to make websites accessible for screen readers, content should be placed in a sensible order with the use of DIVS and NOT tables.
Tables that are incorrectly used (for layout) pose problems, for screen readers.
Making sure that your font can be changed is another large accessiblity issue, aswell as proper use of "TITLE" and "ALT" tags to give extra info about images (if images are disabled) for readility reasons.
AccessKeys can also be used to aide with navigation on a site.

General websites should be accessible and in theory, may be in violation of the Disability Discriminations Act, but it is only large public websites that need worry with regards to being prosecuted. It is the more common websites that come under scrutiny, so even though you should design for the largest amount of people possible, you can get away with not doing.

Craig

Best thing to do to answer your questions is to read this:

http://www.w3.org/WAI

Web designers are only encouraged to make their sites accessible, personally, I do my best to be compliant with all the standards but this is not always possible.

However, avoid relying on Javascript and Flash

This is prob one of the most important bits of advice.
Do not rely on anything that the user can have turned off or disabled.
I used to use JS, but now I dont use it at all in any of my sites. and I will never use Flash.
If you cant design in html and css, you shouldnt be a web designer as far as im concerned!

Craig

My guess would be this is the same law we have in the US. It's my understanding that any public related websites such as libraries and government must be designed using accessibility standards. I'm not aware that this law in any way shape or form applies to standard commercial sites unless the site in some way deals with government related products or services.

Never underestimate the power of the flash side :P

Flash is very powerful in the right hands and the kind of functionality it can provide surpasses html css and ss languages.

And with the growing support for flash with search engines it shouldnt be too frowned upon.

www.lightmaker.com check their portfolio for some nice flash sites.

Many thanks to all..

Most of my intended site is pure html, except for one page that contains a few flash games (.swf files), so don't know what to do there as I really want to keep these games.
There are a fair number of tables as well because I find them so versatile for use within layers - lol.
But the main thing is, it's good to know that only large public websites would come under scruitiny - at least I hope so. Not that I intend to tempt fate in any way...
My stratedgy will be to go with it as it is; whilst it is still a 'small and humble' site, and then later upgrade it accordingly to be Screen Reader compliant, etc, should it ever become more popular.
At the moment it's very easy to go through the hyperlinks using the Tab key, which is good for those that find using a mose difficult, and there is a simple, straight forward text and colour scheme - but that's as far as I've got.

I would actually like to point out that the onus on making a website accessible is down to the company who owns the website, and NOT the web designer unless he is under contract to do so.

If you have designed a site to fully comply with all points in the contract then you have legally fullfilled your duty. If your client has not specified an 'accessible site' however, you *should* from an ethical standpoint be pointing out the need for an accessible site... and the extra effort involved in creating said site (and extra charges) and what that means from a legal point of view as well as the positive impact it will have on a person using accessibility aids.

The legal responsibility lies with the company (THEY ARE ACCOUNTABLE), not the designer.

Of course, as an ethical design company you will likely point out in all your literature and website that ALL your sites are accessible anyway.

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Rob - Webforumz Founder

Many thanks - so the legal responsibility is with the site's owner.

This clears up a few gray areas.

The Disibility Discrimination Act should be less vague on what is meant by 'public service', considering that any website is providing some sort of service to the public, whether having been online for years or just a few months.
It should also be realised by the Internet 'powers that be' that smaller online operations on a tight budget (which is most websites) will find the requirements for having fully accessible sites problematic.