Does your website comply?

you may want to check

Beyond's ClearText engine helps customers achieve Disability Discrimination Compliance. See it in action here or by pressing CTRL-ALT-C.

The Issue

More and more countries are enforcing standards for websites that offer products or services to the general public. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium which develops standards for the World Wide Web and it has set a series of standards for accessibility for web sites, known as Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

In the UK, you should be aware of Part III of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Since 1st October 2004, it has become unlawful for websites to discriminate against disabled Internet users. If your website fails to accommodate the needs of the visually or physically impaired, a person can make a civil claim to the County Court for damages, including compensation for injury to feelings. At present, there is no case law to indicate how high the awards for damages may go.

In the USA, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act In 1998 to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. Section 508 was enacted to eliminate barriers in information technology, to make available new opportunities for people with disabilities, and to encourage development of technologies that will help achieve these goals. The criteria for web-based technology and information are based on access guidelines developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

• The Web Accessibility Initiative from W3C is voluntary
• In the UK, the Disability Discrimination Act is enforceable by law
• In the USA, Section 508 only applies to Federal web sites presently, but why wouldn’t every organisation want to comply to show it cares?

The Challenge

The challenge is to ensure websites do not discriminate against visually impaired people or those with cognitive impairments. Ensuring that your web sites comply, or use technology that enables them to comply is paramount in today’s litigious society.

Complying with the various acknowledged standards; W3C AAA, Section 508, Bobby, Watchfire, XHTML 1.1, is the best way to achieve this.

Beyonds Solution

Developed with the assistance of The Royal National College for the Blind, ClearText can easily help to address a pressing legal issue for web site owners. If you use the features we make available to you, then the pages should comply with disability standards.

The advanced system architecture in Beyond allows the page to be switched on the fly to the ClearText view. You can navigate the whole site while in ClearText mode. Some other systems now offer a ‘text only mode’ but this is inferior to how we address the issue. Other systems will simply ‘parse’ through a single page and strip out everything that isn’t text. What you end up with is a text only page, but one with no other intelligence.

Our ClearText pages are loaded with code to help screen readers such as JAWS navigate the whole site in ClearText mode. One of the coolest features is that even our e-Commerce engine is able to be used in ClearText mode!