Debunking The DDA Myth
I’m getting pretty sick of picking people up on complete misunderstandings of the UK DDA this point, so I’m going to say it nice and loud here and then just point people in the direction of this post in future. I will also update this post with any new myths about the DDA that I can debunk — so if anything else crops up, be sure to let me know.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that for reasons that will become clear later, this particular post fails to achieve WCAG 1.0 at even the first conformance level — Single-A — and therefore I am specifically excluding this post from my site’s general accessibility policy.
Right then, where were we?
The DDA Does Not Equate to WCAG
The UK DDA does not specify a minimum level of WCAG 1.0 that must be achieved before it considers a site to be accessible. Nor does the UK DDA insist that all sites must be accessible.
What the DDA does is seeks to ensure that there is no unreasonable discrimination against people on the grounds of disability. However, even if Joe Public’s personal site wasn’t accessible, it’s extremely unlikely he could be sued for it — it is simply not reasonable to expect that an ordinary member of the public could be sued for having an inaccessible personal site.
However, if the online shop of the multimillion pound company The Shop plc was inaccessible, there would be a much stronger case that it would be reasonable for a company with those resources to make their website accessible and not to discriminate against disabled people.
Did you know, in one of Arnie’s films, he said “Hasta La Vista, Baby”.
Now, you may be wondering what that line above was for. It was included to ensure that this post is in breach of both a Priority 1 and a Priority 2 checkpoint in WCAG 1.0. For instance, I’ve breached this Priority one checkpoint:
4.1 Clearly identify changes in the natural language of a document’s text and any text equivalents (e.g., captions).WCAG 1.0
…which according to WCAG 1.0 means that one or more groups will find it impossible to access the information in this document. I’d dispute that, to be honest: all I’ve said in this case is that he did say that. The fact I’ve not marked up the language correctly may mean that it’s pronounced incorrectly by a screenreader, but it doesn’t mean that the information is then impossible to access by a disabled user, and I think you’d find it hard to prove otherwise in court.
Similarly, that’s a direct quotation from Arnie, meaning that I’m also in breach of this Priority 2 checkpoint:
3.7 Mark up quotations. Do not use quotation markup for formatting effects such as indentation.WCAG 1.0
…because I’ve not marked up the quotation. Again, does this prevent disabled people from using the document? No it doesn’t.
I’m not saying that WCAG 1.0 is a load of nonsense — it’s plainly isn’t and is an excellent primer for someone learning about accessibility. Someone who achieves the various checkpoints will usually have a site that is more accessible than an equivalent site that doesn’t. I’m merely stating that it’s possible to breach WCAG 1.0′s Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints in such a way that it makes little or no real difference to the actual accessibility of your document.
So then, this post is in breach of WCAG 1.0, level A. Does that mean it’s in breach of the DDA? Only if I am unreasonably discriminating against disabled people. Am I?
I think not. I may be discriminating against people who don’t read Spanish — including myself — by not providing a translation, but that applies to everyone who visits my site, not just those who are disabled.
On the other hand, I could include a piece of ASCII art four thousand characters long, which could be read out by a screen readers (the exact enunciation of punctuation will usually depend on screen reader settings) as something along the lines of “asterisk, dash, single quote, greater than, full stop, full stop, plus” and so on for about twenty minutes. I would argue that a disabled person who cannot skip past that art (for example, a blind person using a screen reader) is going to find a site that does that unreasonably difficult to use — and yet this equates only to a Priority 3 checkpoint in WCAG:
13.10 Provide a means to skip over multi-line ASCII art.WCAG 1.0
Hopefully I have demonstrated sufficiently that it is therefore impossible to set any single conformance level to which a site must achieve for it to be safe in avoiding the charge of unreasonably discriminating against people with disabilities under the DDA.
Your Site Is Inaccessible To Some People — You’ll Get Sued!
If this is the case, then it is entirely possible that you may be sued under the DDA. However, as I’ve demonstrated earlier it must be firstly established that you are unreasonably discriminating against disabled people.
In order to establish this, two things must be clear:
- A disabled person in the UK must find that your site is inaccessible and is discriminating against them
- It must be reasonable for you to make adjustments to your site to make it accessible (and you don’t carry these out)
I am not a lawyer, and you shouldn’t be looking to me for legal advice, but I would find it difficult to believe that you would be successfully prosecuted under the DDA unless someone first approached you to tell you that your site was inaccessible, and that you were then given an opportunity to fix the problem which you chose to ignore, and that it would have been reasonable for you to make these adjustments.
The Disability Discrimination Act Does Apply To The Web
This myth that it doesn’t has come about because websites and the internet are not specifically mentioned in the actual legislation. This is indeed true, but no one is arguing that the Disability Discrimination Act doesn’t apply to Italian restaurants, because they aren’t specifically mentioned in the Act either. In fact, while the Act does not specifically mention websites, it does refer to the provision of goods and services, and the Code of Practice in relation to goods and services does specifically state:
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.DDA Code of Practice Access to Services
So the Disability Discrimination Act is plainly shown to apply to websites. I have heard the argument that it’s not discrimination if the same effect can be carried out elsewhere — in the example above, presumably by either turning up in person or booking over the phone.
Firstly, it’s clear that if either turning up in person or booking over the phone don’t provide exactly the same discounts and guarantees as booking online, that you’re then providing an unreasonably poorer service to those people on the grounds of disability — because your unwillingness to make reasonable adjustments to your site is preventing them from accessing it.
Secondly, online bookings are normally available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — unless your telephone line and booking office never close, you’re again discriminating against people if they can’t use your online service.
Finally, and most importantly the Code of Practice, as we’ve seen above, specifically identifies the website itself as the service — so even if you provided other services through other channels, this specific service is still in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act.
Steve Pugh says:
September 25th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
I got about half way through and then I had a sudden flashback to seeing the late Victor Borge do his phonetic punctuation routine…
Seb Crump says:
September 26th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
I guess this is simlar to/converse of you’re “you’ll get sued” myth.
However, the myth in marketing material from certain companies stating that their product will “make you site legally accessible” (or somesuch statement along the lines).
Nobody can claim that, as we don’t have any case law in the UK to define what constitute ‘reasonable adjustments’.
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