DDA Compliant

5 Items, latest addition, Fri, 27th April 2007

How the UK DDA applies to Websites

23/03/2005

The DDA makes it a legal requirement for service providers to ensure access for disabled customers and if neccessary make reasonable adjustments to the way they deliver their services.

Specifically websites are mentioned as examples of how services could be delivered in The revised Code of Practice [2]:

For people with [hearing disabilities or visual impairments], the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include one or more of the following: ... accessible websites

An airline company provides a flight reservation and booking service to the public on its website. This is a provision of a service and is subject to the Act.

The guidelines for UK Government websites [3] state:

DDA

Part III of the DDA makes it unlawful for a service provider to treat disabled people less favourably for a reason related to their disability. Service providers must also consider making reasonable adjustments to the way that they deliver their services where disabled people find these impossible or unreasonably difficult to access.

There are provisions in the Disability Discrimination Act (section 19 (3)) that state that "access to and use of means of communication", and "access to and use of information services", are both examples of services which would be covered by Part III.

However, it would be for a court to decide whether it would have been reasonable for a particular service provider to have made a particular adjustment to enable access for a disabled person, taking into consideration all the circumstances of the case.

Government policy is to encourage departments and agencies to make their services as accessible to disabled people as is reasonably possible. These guidelines have been developed with this aim in mind.

After approacing a number of organisations with regard to the inaccessibility of their websites, the RNIB has successfully encouraged them to make the neccessary adjustments to their sites, rather than face legal action.

How to Comply with the DDA

The W3C's published standards and accessiblity guidelines (WCAG & WAI) are generally regarded as suitable guidelines for accessibility requirements. The WAI has three priority levels A,AA and AAA (levels 1,2 and 3), Level AA is recommended and level A is the minimum acceptable standard for accessibility.Several articles and papers make reference to the WAI and level A as being the minimum acceptable standard for website accessibility:

More Information, Resources and links

For technical guidelines and tutorials on how to design for accessiblity on your website, search our developers section. Also refer to the links page for links to further articles, resources and service providers specialising in updating websites for DDA compliance

DDA Links for this article