Web Accessibility

A US federal law, "Section 508" taking effect June 21 2001, promises to make major commercial hardware and software products, as well as federal government websites, more accessible to users with disabilities.

Section 508 was passed in 1998 and requires the federal government to purchase computers, software, and electronic equipment that meet new standards for accessibility. Any "electronic technology" developed, used or maintained by the government must also meet the new standards. In other words, the new requirements also apply to the federal government's millions of publicly accessible Web pages.

The new standards are designed to prevent web designs that depend too much on one sense, such as sight or hearing so that those who are blind or deaf will still be able to access the Internet.

The Section 508 accessibility guidelines closely resemble the first stage of a multi-level protocol established by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), a project of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). WAI is supported in part by the US Department of Education's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, European Commission's Information Society for Technologies Programme, Microsoft Corporation, IBM, and Verizon Foundation.

WAI have issued Web Content Accessibility Guidelines which oblige web content developers to:

• provide a text equivalent for every non-text element (for example, via "alt" or "longdesc"). This includes images, graphical representations of text, image map regions, animations, sounds, audio files, audio tracks of video and video etc;
• ensure that all information conveyed with colour is also available without colour;
• clearly identify changes in the natural language of a document text's and any text equivalents (e.g. captions);
• organise documents so they may read without style sheets;
• ensure that equivalents for dynamic content are updated when the dynamic content changes; and
• use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site's content.

A copy of the W3C Guidelines can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10/.

While Section 508 only applies to the US federal government and its subcontractors, its impact will be felt throughout the IT industry. The federal government is one of the US's biggest, if not the biggest, single customer for hardware and software. Commercial producers say that it is easier to make their off-the shelf products compliant with the federal accessibility standards rather than customise their products for the government.

A recent report by Forrester Research discovered that only one in four sites surveyed met even minimum WAI requirements for disabled Internet users, for example providing text descriptions of images for the blind. The precise size of the disabled Internet population is not known but it is estimated that between 4 and 17 percent of the online population have some form of sight, hearing, cognitive or physical disability.

Companies whose sites are not accessible to the disabled could face discrimination claims under legislation such as the UK Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Successful discrimination claims have already been made in the US and Australia.

Bank of America and the Californian Council of the Blind settled an agreement in March 2000 under which the bank agreed to make its website accessible and to provide universal ATM machines in California and Florida. A case between AOL and the National Federation of the Blind was recently settled out of court under which AOL is required to produce an accessible version of its software and browser by the end of this year.

Last year the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) was forced to make its Olympics website accessible to a blind user who made a complaint pursuant to Australian Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (which contains similar anti-discriminatory provisions as its UK equivalent). The Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission ("the Commission") determined that SOCOG both directly and indirectly discriminated against the complainant in failing to provide a web site which was accessible to him because of his disability. It ordered SOCOG to do all that was necessary to render its site accessible to blind Internet users and awarded the complainant A$20,000 compensation.

In reaching their decision the Commission referred to the fact that an alternative source of information was not available to the complainant. It is therefore possible that the provision of a service by alternative means could mitigate against a Web provider's conduct being found unreasonable and discriminatory. For example, a Web provider could offer equivalent telephone services for visually impaired users.

SOCOG raised the defence of unjustifiable hardship which was based on two grounds Firstly, it was too expensive to make the site fully accessible to visually impaired people and secondly, visually impaired people could obtain Olympic results from the radio or print media. However, the Commission held that the expense estimates provided by SOCOG for making its site accessible were exaggerated and that results from radio and print media were significantly less favourable alternatives.

Such high profile decisions and the adoption of Section 508 have boosted awareness of issues concerning accessibility of the Internet for those with disabilities. IT experts agree that the most cost-efficient solution to making the Internet accessible to everyone is to build it in accordance with the WIA from the outset. Retro-fitting a site can be very expensive. In the SOCOG case, the site's creator, IBM, estimated that fixes would cost SOCOG around US$2.2 million.

Those concerned about the accessibility of their website can test it free of charge on a non-profit site commonly known as "bobby" which checks for compliance with the basic W3C standards. Bobby can help web designers identify any changes needed to make their web pages more accessible to disabled users. Further details of this tool can be found at http://www.cast.org/Bobby/AboutBobby313.cfm.

© Herbert Smith 2002

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