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The
Problem with Accessible Website Design
Worrying
about being prosecuted under the UK Disability Discrimination
Act for the inaccessibility of your company website? Frightened
by web consultants who say your site doesn't comply - and
that the RNIB will prosecute you? Relax - you have more chances
of winning the lottery than facing a judge because of your
site.
The
reality is that, while of course your site should be accessible
to visitors with disabilities, the chances of being prosecuted
are virtually non-existant, in the UK anyway. People think
the RNIB is out to get them, but this is simply not the truth.
The first step these guys will take is to call you up and
politely ask you to make a few, probably minor changes to
the site, and only if specifically asked to represent one
of their 'clients'. The RNIB does not surf the net looking
for people to prosecute - that's ludicrous.
If
you don't make the minor changes they might file a complaint
against you and after a very long process exhausting all the
niceties, they might refer your case to the DRC. Any website
owner with half a brain would immediately make changes that
could make their site just a little more accessible and so,
nuke any possibility of legal proceedings. You have to be
seen to be TRYING to make your site a bit more accessible.
The
liquid nature and growth of the web and the desire to keep
pages fresh and unique means that a lot of sites will fail
accessibility tests, especially after website updates. Some
pages might fail validation because the designer has introduced
a funky new design element and forgot to test it (and is currently
tweaking it), or fail to meet Priority 1 because of forgetting
to add an ALT tag to a new image.
At
the time of writing, the RNIB site currently does not comply
with W3C HTML validation recommendations on 7 pages out of
25 using the Silktide SiteScore tests. It's probably a glitch
in a small bit of code, but this is exactly the very reason
why you won't be prosecuted in the UK. Even the best advisors
on website accessibility in the UK mess it up from time to
time - and that includes Accessibility 101! The smallest errors
in code can lead to a failure to conform to W3C recommendations
or to comply with the UK government minimum recommended 'Priority
1' WCAG standard. I bet even some pages on UK Government websites
fail some sort of tests!
Conclusion?
There's a business case and moral obligation to make your
site as accessible as you can. There are over 8 Million people
registered as having a disability in the UK, and a lot of
them use the net - do you really want to ignore them? Prosecutions
have been successful in Australia and the US - it will happen
here, just not any time soon - so don't worry too much about
prosecution - and don't listen to the snake oil salesman who
want your hard earned cash for total website redevelopment!
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