The Disability Discrimination Act expects companies to take
reasonable steps to make their sites accessible to the disabled.
The companies in Knexus Community reckon they are doing what is
necessary – but they lack the guidance that would give them
certainty.
Most people have never heard of Knexus Community, despite its
claim to being Europe's leading corporate business club and
network. But like most exclusive clubs, it keeps a low profile, and
only FTSE 100 executives get in the door.
At a Knexus forum this month, participants from member companies
including American Express, Boots, Britvic Soft Drinks, BSI,
ebookers, GlaxoSmithKline, Invesco, LloydsTSB, O2, Prudential,
Standard Life, Telegraph Group and William Hill met to discuss web
accessibility. Uncharacteristically, the forum went public with its
members' views.
Knexus chairman Graeme Foux spoke to OUT-LAW after the event. He
was keen to stress that neither he nor Knexus represents the voice
of these members. But he approached us to convey the tenor of their
concerns.
The upshot: Knexus members feel that they have taken reasonable
steps to ensure that all their information can be made accessible
to the disabled audience, "despite the lack of clarity in the
regulations over what constitutes a fully-compliant website,"
according to Foux. The lack of certainty, they say, makes it
impossible to gauge compliance accurately.
Foux said that the numerous complaints made to date had been
dealt with by his members as and when they arose. Sometimes it was
a case of making adjustments to a site; sometimes information was
provided in another form. There was no suggestion from Foux that
the complaints went any further. But some of the forum's comments
were more surprising.
One member, described as a leading provider of business
services, said: "We have provided the facility so customers that
visit our web site can get our information either through a
telephone number or request it in an alternative source."
The unnamed member added: "I would question whether we are going
over the top to ensure that everything has to be made [available]
on-line."
But the Disability Rights Commission does not consider it "over
the top," according to Patrick Edwards, a spokesman for the
independent statutory body that monitors the effectiveness of the
UK's disability legislation.
"It's extremely doubtful that services available on the web
could possibly be translated to a telephone line without some loss
in fairness to disabled people," Edwards told OUT-LAW. "Web
services are available 24 hours a day and have incredibly high
levels of interactivity and it is unlikely that similar type
services could be duplicated on a phone line."
Edwards cited a recent High Court case which confirmed that
reasonable adjustments under the Disability Discrimination Act "are
not about doing the minimum" but all about doing everything
reasonably practical to ensure that disabled people are treated the
same as non-disabled people.
"Companies holding these views on web access are acting at
considerable legal risk," concluded Edwards.
But while the DRC has provided guidance in very general terms
about the need for web accessibility, it stops short of making any
reference to technical standards. And this is a frustration for
members of Knexus.
"Someone needs to say what standard we need to meet," said
Foux.
The members of the forum shared their views on their own
respective current and target levels of web accessibility, making
reference to the best known standards, being those of the World
Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative: Levels A, AA
and AAA.
But the DRC has refused to recommend any particular standard as
a minimum, despite the evident confusion, not just among Knexus
members. Many organisations believe that meeting Level A fulfils
the legal obligation; others think that only Level AA is good
enough.
The Disability Discrimination Act itself does not mention
standards. Instead, it asks a court or tribunal to consider whether
services that are offered to the public – including information
services – are impossible or unreasonably difficult for a disabled
person to access. If so, there is a duty to take reasonable steps
to remedy that.
There is merit in keeping the legal obligation independent of
technical standards; but the point from Knexus is that that
obligation is impractical in isolation. Knexus accepts that one
answer is to aim for maximum accessibility – which benefits
everyone; but many businesses, even its Blue Chip members, cannot
justify the cost of doing that.
To explain the offering of a telephone alternative to web site
content, Foux drew the analogy of a single passenger booking a
scheduled flight from London to New York. "It might be cheaper for
the airline to charter a jet for that one passenger," he said. He
said that some of his members are faced with the management of
multiple web sites of thousands of pages each. The conversion of
all pages on all sites to maximum accessibility would be an
enormous expense.
Knexus Community is not alone in calling for the DRC to issue
more practical guidance. At a meeting of the All Party
Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG) in October, Tom Adams, Senior
Digital Media Consultant with the e-Government Unit of the Cabinet
Office, criticised the DRC for not making reference to standards.
But the DRC remains convinced that it would be wrong to recommend a
particular standard.
Speaking at the APIG meeting, Commissioner Michael Burton
responded: "It's not about whether you meet Level A or Level AA.
You could satisfy Level AA and still be in breach of the law so we
don't want to mislead people."
Burton was keen to stress that the DRC does not wish to
undermine the W3C guidelines. He said that "the focus should not be
on guidelines; it should be on outcomes. And each organisation
should set its own goals. It should regard any Level as not being
objective or the whole story."
