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Accessibility and UK law

The significant legislation for providers of online services to consider is the Disability and Discrimination Act 1995 (the Act). The Act has been implemented in stages and Section III, which is now in force, is the section that most directly effects online services.

In general, it is unlawful for service providers to discriminate against a disabled person:

  1. in refusing to provide, or deliberately not providing, to the disabled person any service which he provides, or is prepared to provide, to members of the public;
  2. in failing to comply with any duty imposed on him by section 21 in circumstances in which the effect of that failure is to make it impossible or unreasonably difficult for the disabled person to make use of any such service;
  3. in the standard of service which he provides to the disabled person or the manner in which he provides it to him; or
  4. in the terms on which he provides a service to the disabled person.

and along with the Act is a Code of Practice, which is admissable as evidence. A new Code of Practice has recently been issued that explicitly mentions online services:

For example

An airline company provides a flight reservation and booking service to the public on its web site.

This is a provision of a service and is subject to the Act.

Under the Act a service is a 'provision of goods or facilities'. The service provider can be public, private or voluntary and the service can be paid for or free.

Every individual is responsible under the act (P 2.14), whatever their position and whether they're full or part-time, permanent or temporary.

Reasonable Steps

Financial considerations will be a factor in determining what is reasonable provision; if a service provider's profits would allow it to make adjustments to its online service provision then it will be expected to make those adjustments. And the W3C's accessibility guidlines will be used as a standard when considering what are reasonable steps.

The RNIB has considered bringing a number of test cases to court but each time the service provider has altered their site to make it accessible rather than resist legal action. Of course, this indicates how easy it is to comply with the guidlines.

Other Issues

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