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Web accessibility - Crisp eBusiness
Aiming to improve website performance for businesses in the South West
Crisp eBusiness, the specialist web development wing of Exeter based business services organisation Crisp Group are actively promoting an offer to help regional businesses and organisations review their websites to ensure compliance with an important but continually overlooked legal requirement.
Virtually every business large or small now has a website to help promote its offerings and/or in many cases function as an on-line sales tool. However, many websites despite their creativity, ingenuity and functionality are failing to meet a basic legal requirement – accessibility for disabled users!
Making your website accessible is now a legal requirement under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA). It is against the law to provide an inferior service to, or discriminate against a disabled person. Failure to meet standards can expose an organisation to litigation. The standards are set out by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.Where websites are concerned this requirement is particularly important, given the growth in web access and usage, and Crisp eBusiness have found that there is very little awareness amongst businesses in the South West.
A survey recently undertaken by Crisp eBusiness reviewing 200 websites across the South West’s important food sector found that 79% failed the basic compliance level advised by the DDA, while a massive 98% failed the Priority 2 recommended level! An earlier survey by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) of a 1000 websites also found 80% failing to comply.
Very much a global issue, there have been several high profile cases involving multi-international organisations and household names, who have fallen short of basic standards.
There are many good business reasons for maintaining an accessible website:- The site will reach more people – 8.6 million (14%) of the UK population are registered disabled, 9% have some form of colour blindness; 4% have a sight problem, and 12 million are aged 60 or over.
- The site will perform better – it will cost less to run, will reach your audience more easily, and download more quickly - and will therefore give more opportunities for publicity
- The site will appear higher in search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo;
- The site will be more compatible with newer technologies – mobile phones and PDA’s, and with all of the various web browsers used
- It won’t incur legal penalties for breaking the law
‘Crisp eBusiness have in fact led the way in creating Accessible websites long before this legislation came into force’, commented Alex Wren, Crisp’s Technical Development Manager, ‘we were fortunate to work on a project with disabled users which made us fully aware of the problems with a badly designed site and allowed us to establish a set of good practice ground rules for every site we build for our clients.
By ignoring these basic requirements any organisation can risk alienating as much as 20% of the UK population – not good business practice in any sense!’
Crisp eBusiness see this issue as an opportunity to help to raise the level of business performance in the South West by highlighting how their websites can be maximised to operate as effectively as possible.
Crisp eBusiness already offer a free website review which now will include a specific section on Accessibility. www.crisp-ebusiness.com
For more information call Alex Wren directly on 0870 213130 for a more detailed discussion.
Editors Notes:
Information on Accessible Websites
Making your Website accessible is now a legal requirement, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) makes it illegal for companies to provide an inferior service to, or discriminate against, a disabled person.
The part of the DDA that states websites must be made accessible came into force on 1 October 1999 and the Code of Practice for this section of the Act was published on 27 May 2002. The relevant DDA change that came into effect on October 1 2004 was that the small employer exemption is now removed. All employers are now legally obliged to make all their services accessible including websites, intranets and extranets.Steps that should be taken to make reasonable adjustments include changing:
- A practice, policy or procedure which makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult for a disabled person to use a service.
- Any physical features which make it impossible or unreasonably difficult for a disabled person to use a service.
- Auxiliary aids and services (an example of which would be an accessible website) where these would enable or facilitate the use of a service.
- The type of service provided
- The type of organisation you are and resources available
- The impact on the disabled person
What happens if my website does not comply?
A disabled person can make a claim against you if your website makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult to access information and services. If you have not made reasonable adjustments and cannot show that this failure is justified, then you may be liable under the Act, and may have to pay compensation and be ordered by a court to change your site.
A useful reference is the case brought against the Sydney Olympics Committee in Australia in 2000. This resulted in a landmark decision against the website owners, requiring them to pay $20,000 Australian dollars.
What level of compliance should I be achieving?
Websites should exceed the basic level of compliance that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend in their Website Accessibility Guidelines (WAG) version 1.0 and aim for double AA compliance.
Crisp eBusiness is a full service Web development agency offering: Programming & Design, Hosting, Email services, Domain Registration, Marketing & Promotion, Training & Support. www.crisp-ebusiness.com
Crisp eBusiness is part of The Crisp Group, Business Development & Communications Group www.crispgroup.com
Updated: 05.10.06
