The Disability Rights Commission is an independent statutory
body responsible for advising the Government on the effectiveness
of disability discrimination legislation. Representing the
interests of Britain's 9.8 million disabled people, the DRC is
empowered by law to conduct formal investigations that meet these
aims.
In April 2004 it published the results of the first such
formal investigation into web sites, finding that most
organisations breach guidelines on making sites accessible to
disabled users and risk legal action under disability
discrimination laws.
The investigation, carried out by the Centre for Human
Computer Interaction at London's City University, involved testing
sites in the public and private sectors for technical compliance
with Version 1.0 of the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Of the 1,000 sites tested, 808 (81%) failed on automated
testing to reach the minimum WCAG standard for accessibility, known
as Level A; only two web sites conformed to Level AA; and no web
site conformed to the highest standard, Level AAA.
The DRC's report highlighted a gap in the knowledge of both
those who commission web sites and those who develop them: they are
aware of the WCAG guidelines and the importance of the issue – but
both parties still fail to apply accessibility.
So the DRC has commissioned the British Standards Institution
to fill that gap with new guidance, which will be produced in the
form of a Publicly Available Specification (PAS).
A PAS is not a full British Standard but is developed using a
similar process. It can be introduced more quickly because it
doesn't need consensus among experts. The end result is guidance,
not a standard, and it is subject to review in less than two years.
But a PAS can become a standard over time, depending on how it is
accepted.
The DRC says the PAS will remind web developers of the vital
importance of web standards. The document will describe the
standards that web sites should conform to. It will also tackle
many of the myths and confusions surrounding web accessibility,
including, for example, the role of automated tools, how to
validate the web code, quality assurance and benchmarking, and how
and when to involve disabled people in the design lifecycle.
OUT-LAW spoke to Stephen Beesley, Senior Web and Software
Developer with the DRC, and asked whether the PAS will compete with
or complement WCAG.
"We're not looking to replace the WCAG guidelines by any
means," he said. "The PAS document will set out good practice and
make reference to WCAG and other standards. It will describe the
role of standards, software tools and user testing within an
overall development cycle."
We put to Beesley that such issues were mentioned in last
April's report; but he explained that the DRC had been disappointed
by the lack of action in response to the report. It raised general
awareness, he said; but too few organisations acted on it. So this
appears to be the DRC's next step towards demystifying web
accessibility.
The PAS will collect all the important information into one
document that can be understood by managers and developers alike.
"You'll read the document and you'll see the place for standards,
the place for software tools, the place for user testing," he said.
"It's the first time all these things have been brought together in
one place."
Beesley reckons the final document will run to about 30 pages.
It may or may not recommend a particular level of accessibility on
the WCAG scale – which is something the DRC has always resisted to
date. While some criticise this as showing a lack of conviction,
the DRC's view has been that recommending a particular level of
conformance on the WCAG scale is dangerous. At a public meeting of
the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group last October, DRC
Commissioner Michael Burton commented: "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."
Beesley also confirmed that the level of detail will not
extend to, for example, the correct uses of acronym and
abbreviation tags when marking up a web page in HTML – a source of
some confusion among web developers trying to interpret WCAG. "The
focus will be outcomes, not processes," he said, echoing Burton's
comments last year.
But the PAS will make reference to WCAG, a set of guidelines
that date from 1999 and that have never been superseded – although
WCAG Version 2.0 is due this year from the Web Accessibility
Initiative. Beesley confirmed that, should WCAG Version 2.0 require
any changes to the PAS, an update can be published quickly – an
advantage of the PAS approach over traditional British
Standards.
OUT-LAW also spoke to Julie Howell, the Royal National
Institute of the Blind's Digital Policy Development Manager, who
was commissioned by the BSI as the Technical Writer for the PAS
project. She has written a first draft that will go to a steering
group of invited experts and then a review panel.
Howell said that Judy Brewer, the W3C's Web Accessibility
Initiative Domain Leader, has been invited to joint the review
panel. Howell said, "In my mind, it would be absolutely pointless
to move forward without buy-in from the key accessibility
organisations from around the world, including the WAI."
But it's not just WCAG that will be covered in the PAS:
standards for Cascading Style Sheets, XHTML (eXtensible Hypertext
Markup Language), and also usability standards will be referenced,
says Howell – although, like Beesley at the DRC, she was keen to
stress that the PAS will not be a technical document. "It's all
about processes," she said. "For those who understand web
accessibility, the PAS won't say anything new." Instead, it targets
those who are confused by the issue. "Developers may also find it
useful to show to their clients," she observed, pointing out that
clients are more likely to listen because following the PAS could
help to demonstrate legal compliance.
This is because the DRC's endorsement of the PAS should bring
it to the attention of any judge who has to decide whether an
organisation complied with the Disability Discrimination Act when
approaching web accessibility. While no judge has had to make such
a decision in the UK to date, if that should change, formal DRC
guidance tends to be influential in court proceedings on disability
discrimination.
The PAS is due to be published in the autumn and will be
updated every two years.
