Web Design Minimum Requirements in UK Law Under The DDA
Minimal Level Of Accessibility – Websites, UK Law & DDA
As there has been no case brought to court (as yet) in the UK, there is no set minimum level of requirement. It has long been accepted that the minimum level required to comply with UK law is Priority 1 at the very least, which means you have at least removed some of the most obvious barriers to a disabled visitor to your site.
The UK Government and the RNIB both advise that you should be surpassing Priority 1 to at least Priority 2 to make your website truly useable by disabled visitors. The best we can hope to do is follow the recent recommendations Delivering Inclusive Websites;
Minimum level of accessibility The minimum level of accessibility for all Government websites is Level Double-A of the W3C guidelines. Any new site approved by the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Public Engagement and the Delivery of Service (DA(PED)) must conform to these guidelines from the point of publication.
Continuing standalone sites must achieve this level of accessibility by December 2008. Websites which fail to meet the mandated level of conformance shall be subject to the withdrawal process for .gov.uk domain names, as set out in Naming and Registering Websites (TG101).
Delivering Inclusive Websites, 14/05/2007
The E.U. has determined that Priority 2 should be the minimum levels a website design should meet.
In 2002, the European Parliament set the minimum level of accessibility for all
public sector websites3 at Level Double-A. However, a recent survey of public
sector services4 showed that 70% of websites in the European Union failed to
conform to Level-A of the W3C guidelines. E-inclusion is a European policy
initiative which aims to ensure that ICT (Information & Communications
Technology) is usable by a wider population; and to promote the use of ICT to
achieve social inclusion objectives. The Riga eInclusion Declaration5 agreed to
promote inclusive e-government by ‘ensuring accessibility of all public web sites by 2010,
through compliance with the relevant W3C common web accessibility
standards and guidelines’.Further information and advice is available from COI Digital Policy
webguidelines@coi.gsi.gov.uk
Delivering Inclusive Websites, 14/05/2007
As there are no set minimum standards, it is impossible to build a site to comply with the UK DDA (Disability Discrimination Act), but it is clear the UK Government and the EU are beginning to take notice of web accessibility issues.
Written by Shaun Anderson
