DDA 1995/2005 Legal Opinion by Sally Thomson – Barrister. Legal Advisor to Textic and their clients

In my opinion, as advisor on legal disability issues to Textic and their clients, when a website has been built following W3C/WCAG guidelines, and provides additional technology tools give the ten 'reasonable adjustments' provided by the Textic Talklets toolbar I believe that this would be sufficient to address the needs of most users that could be reasonable accommodated given the level of technology.

It is highly likely that the site would be found to have met the ‘reasonable adjustments’ required by the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act UK, and Section 508 US acts.

It must be added that for public sector compliance (UK DDA 2005) and private sector corporate governance website accessibility should also form part of a disability policy, procedures and plans, which are subject to regular review and user group assessment; in order to ensure any specific issues are addressed as needs arise. In addition, Public Sector organisations should ensure that communication issues are covered within their Disability Equality Schemes.

More Legal information

Since 1999, the Disability Discrimination Act has required companies and organisations to make reasonable adjustments to the provision of their goods and services to make them available to all.

However, whilst many have embraced the challenge of improving physical access, few have made adjustments to the way in which they communicate with their customers, colleagues and the community. For example, recent research by the Disability Rights Commission found that 81% of websites failed even the most basic of accessibility requirements.

Their research also found non disabled users completed tasks 34% more quickly on well designed websites.

Well designed communication gets your message across to everybody!