Essential Uitlities

[D3mon]

Two great links I found this week:

Web Accessibility Toolbar
Fanatastic Toolbar, brings together all the tools a professional webmaster needs on a day to day basis.

Web Page Analyzer
Optimize your pages for faster loading

[Smokie]

D3mon, thanks for the links. Do you know if there is a law in the UK now that all websites should be accessable?

[Rob]

Originally Posted by Smokie

Do you know if there is a law in the UK now that all websites should be accessable?

The legal requirement
If you provide a service to the public, you have duties to disabled people. The Act makes it unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public. The duties relating to the Act have been introduced in three stages, with further legislation expected in October 2004. However, it is important to realise that the law relating to accessible websites came into force on 1st October 1999. The supporting Code of Practice for this section of the Act was published on 27th May 2002. Up to 80% of websites are currently breaking the law.

[Smokie]

d'oh!

[Webforumz Staff]

I believe that your 'business' must have some kind of disabled access. So if you're on the high street you need a ramp, you need wide doors and the building needs to be easy to navigate in a wheelchair.

Of course the cost of doing that for some businesses would be ridiculous, so the company can offer the same services that they offer on the high street as a website and that will fit the law.

So it's not saying that all websites for UK businesses have to be accessible... just that there has to be an accessible way for any disabled person to use your business.

I think we might start to see 'altenate' sites for disabled users, or at least alternate css, etc.

[Rob]

This extends to websites regardless of the ability of disabled users to physically access your building/shop (or not)

[D3mon]

Yup, this is particularly applicable to websites since the final phase of the Disability Discrimination Act came into force in October 2004.

Sites without Accessibility features aren't necessarily 'illegal', but a person or organisation that finds it impossible to access your published content could bring a legal action against you.

A successful case in Australia, was made against the Australian government for their Olympics website whihc was found to be in-accessible. (IIRC)

http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-fr...irements.shtml