Worldwide Accessibility enforcement?
A successful case of discrimination has been brought against a United States training company by a United Kingdom citizen with a disability.
It seems that US companies can be successfully sued under the UK Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) if they routinely provide goods and/or services to people in the UK, whether they have a physical presence in the UK or not.
According to a report on Out-law.com the case involves Sam Latif who works as an IT Project Manager with Proctor & Gamble. She decided to go for a recognised qualification which is administered by US not for profit company Project Management Institute (PMI) but found that her requests for training information in a format she could use were not forthcoming. Having got round this by paying a student to assist her, she then sat the examination but PMI refused to allow her to use her Jaws enabled computer, nor would they allow her to have Jaws installed on the machine at the testing centre.
Under the UK Disability Discrimination Act this is clearly a violation but until now, nobody has tried to force foreign companies to comply. Ms Latif not only tried but won. PMI have appealed and an outcome is awaited but this raises many issues.
There is a complacency in the UK amongst web developers regarding the DDA but this appears to be far outweighed by US developers who will cite Section 508 and how it doesn’t apply to them. Many are either unaware of or dismissive about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), possibly due to the number of cases thrown out by the US courts as the act doesn’t specifically mention web sites.
If the appeal is not upheld this opens the way for citizens of any country to expect equal access to goods and information on any web site, regardless of location. I forsee a number of companies changing their retail policies to exclude foreign purchasing but how are they going to prevent access to information?
Will we start to see the “This site best viewed in…” disclaimers being amended to “This site only to be read by citizens of ……..”?
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: April 12th, 2007 at 2:39 pm →
I like it
If they won’t do it on their own — and most don’t — then maybe this will give them the needed incentive. It should be law in the US, and as I’ve complained about before, it needs to be enforced. Section 508 is required by US government and government-affiliated sites, and most that I’ve seen fail to meet their own guidelines. Moreover, this leaves public utilities and businesses out of the picture. My electric company, for instance, has a grossly inaccessible site. This should not be allowable.
Aside from personal sites that engage in no commerce or public service, all sites should be required to meet the WCAG 1.0 Priority one must-haves. Screw Section 508… it’s too weak.
Jaybee responds:
Posted: April 12th, 2007 at 3:59 pm →
It needs to be enforced over here as well. The UK is known to have possibly one of the best chances to get this done due to the wording of our legislation. There is a lot going on behind the scenes but it needs to be made public. The RNIB has gone after a lot of companies over here but it’s all done in secret and we only know the names of a few, as most cave in fast and agree to do the changes required in return for anonymity.
You only have to look at the fiasco with the Department of Trade and Industry as posted by Grant Broome on his blog, to see the actual level of understanding in Government.
Nicole responds:
Posted: April 13th, 2007 at 12:37 am →
How many times do you get clients that say, after you’ve discussed their website, your business, and what you can offer them, “Ahhh Accessibility - we don’t need that”, like they think it’s an optional extra?
Even worse is when you’re subcontracting to another web designer who says “Ahhh Accessibility - we don’t need that”
The problem as I see it lies with little to no governance of web design and development by governments, but just because we don’t have to belong to any governing body is no excuse for designers to design inaccessible sites.
Another big problem of course is the “quick buck” mentality that seems so entrenched in the minds of most Americans.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: April 13th, 2007 at 1:34 am →
I don’t know if I would say “most.” Blanket statements can be dangerous.
Jaybee responds:
Posted: April 13th, 2007 at 9:15 am →
I’ve started to notice a more worrying trend in the UK where designers are becoming aware of the need for accessibility and think it’s sufficient to just stick the logos on their sites without having a clue what they’re about. I did a site last year for a local branch of a charity which uses Joomla and can’t be made fully accessible under the current version. I’ve done what I can, until the new version is released, and explained the limitations in the accessibility statement.
The UK governing body has seen the site and decided theirs needs a facelift. They’ve given it to the local designer who had done their previous offering. This designer has clearly referred to the site I’ve done for design, layout and content, it’s too similar to be coincidence, and has included an accessibility statement. I was about to hang the flags out when I clicked on the link and it took me straight to an accessibility page on Ability Net. Not only that but it opens in a new window with no warning. Further, the designer’s own site displays a WAI AA badge when the site doesn’t reach that. I tried to use their contact form to tell them nicely that they seem to have missed something but the form won’t load.
So whilst it’s good people are starting to become aware, it’s going to give us a whole bucketload of other problems.
Helena Boylen responds:
Posted: April 13th, 2007 at 9:37 am →
I agree with you Gill. There’s a designer local to me (who keeps ringing me up - go away!) who claims to build accessible sites but whose own site is riddled with fancy Ajax effects, none of which work without JS for a start.
Jaybee responds:
Posted: April 13th, 2007 at 11:15 am →
A little unfair. You might get that impression from frequenting some of the web design boards. As with most things, those that do a good job just tend to get on with it, those that shout loudest are usually the ones trying to cover their backsides and justify their stance. The voice of the reasonable majority is the one that doesn’t, present company excluded, tend to get heard.
Nicole responds:
Posted: April 18th, 2007 at 10:48 pm →
You are probably right, perhaps a little over the top.
But it does irritate me that there seems to be more of an expectation from Americans to make money from the web, rather than providing good quality information. Perhaps it’s the amount of Google Ads on the sites I look at from over there.
But I do wonder why, having invented the thing, that the US has so few designers per capita actually advertising the fact that they design standards compliant and accessible websites, and so few information sites discussing these topics compared th the UK and Australia for instance.
Apologies for going off topic (a bit)