Accessibility and usability

There are good commercial and ethical reasons for making your website accessible and usable for disabled internet users. In the UK, there is also a legal reason.

OUT-LAW Guides (UK law)

• Disabled access to web sites under UK law: an overview
  This guide explains how the Disability Discrimination Act applies to your website and also the relevance of the law to guidelines from W3C's WAI .
• Legal reasons to make intranets, extranets and software accessible
  Employers have duties to ensure that these electronic tools are accessible to staff.

Recent OUT-LAW News

• Carers for disabled people could be protected by discrimination law
• Employers can't judge disability on future events, says court
• California court tilts towards mandating web accessibility
• Web accessibility 2.0: new guidelines will be ignored, says critic
• New Equality and Human Rights Commission aims for fairer Britain

Guest contributions

• Improving accessibility for motor impaired users

Added-value services

We can help if you need help understanding how accessibility laws here and abroad will impact on your services. Or you may want help with the wording of an agreement that your organisation is signing with another. What indemnities are reasonable to expect, for example?

Or maybe you just want some recommendations for usability and accessibility specialists to work on your site.

Feel free to contact us.

You may also benefit from OUT-LAW Compliance, a service that provides a check of your website by our IT lawyers for compliance with various e-business laws for a fixed fee. Part of this service includes a check of your site's accessibility.

OUT-LAW contacts

Get in touch our key contacts on web accessibility at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM: Struan Robertson (Glasgow, 0141 249 5422) or Jon Fell (London, 020 7490 4000)

Useful links

• Disability Discrimination Act 1995
• Disabiltiy Rights Commission's Code of Practice on Rights of Access to Goods, Facilities, Services and Premises (large Word document)
• European Commission Communication of 2001 regarding Accessibility of Public Web Sites and their Content
• European Parliament resolution of 2002 on the Commission communication
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (from W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative)
• The Usability and Accessibility Working Group
• OUT-LAW's own accessibility statement