Background

Accessibility has become a mainstream problem. The US census bureau estimates that 1 in 5 Americans has some kind of legal disability. The total may be as much as 70 million worldwide.  These statistics exclude those who do not have a legal disability but have a reduced capability, such as the elderly. For this significant slice of the world population the digital age and the internet have huge potential for liberation and empowerment. Theoretically users can shop, pay taxes, communicate, work and play in ways that would never be possible without the web and technology. However, poor design and lack of awareness have created barriers that have hampered and even barred entry into the digital world. As more products and services go online, and often exclusively online, people with disabilities have found their horizons narrowed rather than widened and they have been excluded from their changing societies.

The Accessibility Movement

To address this problem there has arisen a huge, worldwide drive to achieve pervasive IT accessibility. This means accessibility in all parts of a solution or web site and in all aspects of development, from design to testing and training. Driven by the W3C, governments and disability rights groups the movement consisted first of guidelines and information resources and has grown to include legislation and the global adoption of standards. It is no longer possible for government bodies or even corporations to be ignorant of this problem.

An industry has developed to service this requirement that includes automated accessibility tools for testing and remediation and accessibility consultancies, such as the Paciello Group and Usable Design. This sector has matured greatly in the past 3 years and organisations now have an almost complete set of resources available to them.

Among the most significant and far reaching developments worldwide are:

The Web Accessibility Initiative

Founded by Mike Paciello in .. the WAI created a set of guidelines for improving accessibility in web sites and the tools that create them. These guidelines have formed the background to most initiatives and legislation in this area world wide.

Section 508

Accessibility is the law. Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act mandates web site and IT accessibility for all Federal Agencies and those selling to Federal agencies. Based on the WAI section 508 lays down clear requirements that technology must meet to be considered accessible. If affected organisations fail to comply they are open to legal action.

Disability Discrimination Act

The new Codes of Practice that have been published in the UK recently have opened the door to legal action against service providers in all areas whose services are inaccessible. The Royal National Council for the Blind, a leading campaigner in the accessibility area has stated its intention to act against companies whose services are inaccessible. This is potentially the widest ranging legislation of its kind as it affects all service providers, whether private or public.

EU Directives

The EU has issued several directives requiring the accessibility including a Council Resolution in 2002. The EU has set goals that member states must meet in provision of public information and services.

Australia

In August 2000 the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games was found to have engaged in unlawful conduct by providing a web site which was to a significant extent inaccessible to the blind. The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission ordered the web site be made accessible by the start of the Sydney Olympics. This is part of a committed drive on the part of the Australian government to address accessibility across the board since the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act of 1992.

Why invest in IT accessibility?

There are several reasons why organisations have in the past and should now invest in this area:

• It’s the law. Apart from the legislation described above there is certainly more legislation on the way and the focus is moving steadily from the public to the private sector.
• Addressing accessibility also ensures your IT is easy to use for everybody in the same way that adding ramps to entrances provides for people with buggies and suitcases IT accessibility brings many knock on benefits for the all users.

Accessibility and PDF

When the PDF format started out it was fundamentally inaccessible. Since then Adobe have made huge improvements to address this issue most importantly, the ability tag PDF documents to show their structure and to describe included images. Read more about PDF Accessibility >>