Some organisations are changing their websites, but many are seemingly not making adjustments. Disabled people don’t access their website, they say, so why should they care?

The statistics on number of users who may face difficulties in using your website are however quite startling:

•There are 8.6 million registered disabled people in UK (14% of population) (http://www.drc-gb.org/whatwedo/aboutus.asp) •One in 12 men and one in 200 women have some form of colour blindness (nine percent of UK population) (http://www.iee.org/Policy/Areas/Health/cvdintro.cfm) •Two million UK residents have a sight problem (four percent of population) (http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_rnib003680.hcsp#P16_1214) •There are 12 million people aged 60 or over (21% of UK population) (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/pyramids/pages/UK.asp). At this age most people begin to experience a decrease in vision, hearing and physical and cognitive ability.

Although there is inevitably some overlap between all of aforementioned groups, adding up these numbers provides a total of 48% of UK population that could potentially face problems using your website. It is an extraordinarily high number.

He has a point. The RNIB (Royal National Institute for Blind) and DRC (Disability Rights Commission), two of most renowned advocates for creating accessible websites, have no specific information about laws and what websites specifically need to do in order to meet legal requirements.

So, what does law state? Part III of Disability Discrimination Act refers to provision of goods, facilities and services. The Code of Practice, which specifically mentions websites, can be downloaded in its entirety from DRC website (http://www.drc.org.uk/open4all/law/Code%20of%20Practice.pdf 676kb).

The relevant quotes from this 175-page document are:

2.2 (p7): “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 public.”

4.7 (p39): “From 1st October 1999 a service provider has had to take reasonable steps to change a practice which makes it unreasonably difficult for disabled people to make use of its services.”

2.13 – 2.17 (p11-13): “What services are affected by Act? An airline company provides a flight reservation and booking service to public on its website. This is a provision of a service and is subject to act.”

5.23 (p71): “For people with visual impairments, range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include ... accessible websites.”