Web Accessibility and the Law - Australia
Australia has particularly taken a lead in institutionalizing regulations / guidelines that make web accessibility a mandatory requirement. This blog lists some of these regulations.
The Australian Disability Discrimination Act of 1992 (DDA, 1992) is probably the earliest regulation that has been extensively referred to while seeking accessibility of the Web for all. A section in this law talks about the type of discrimination towards people with disabilities in the provision of goods, services and facilities. In August of 2002, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) of Australia, as per the powers conferred on it by the DDA, issued the World Wide Web Access–Advisory Notes for the DDA, 1992. These notes contain specific guidelines for “authors and designers to make their Worldwide Web documents accessible to the broadest possible audience”. The notes help clarify the requirements of the DDA with respect to web accessibility and enable organisations developing or modifying web pages to understand how compliance with these requirements can be achieved.
A rather popular case that might have been a pre-cursor of these advisory notes is that of Bruce Maguire vs. the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) in June 1999. In this case Bruce Maguire complained to the HREOC that the website of the Sydney Olympic Games’ organising committee was not accessible as per the provisions of DDA, 1992. The commission declared in August 2000, only a few weeks before the inauguration of Sydney Olympics (15th Sept. 2000), that the complainant had been discriminated against and ordered the SOCOG to make certain access provisions to be complete before the inaugural date. SOCOG failed to comply with this order and hence in November 2000, the HREOC fined the SOCOG a sum of Australian $20,000.
Other regulation / guidelines in Australia that have a possible impact on web accessibility include:
- The Australian Government’s Web Publishing Guide which is meant to help Australian Government agencies to manage their websites, and to identify their legal and policy obligations.
- The Australian Government’s Guide to Minimum Website Standards published in 2000 and revised in 2003. This guide included a separate section on web content accessibility. However, this has now been superseded by the Web Publishing Guide mentioned above.
- The Commonwealth Government’s Strategy for Online Services “GovernmentOnline” published in 2000. This strategy was meant to provide common framework for provision of appropriate government services online as proposed in 1997 by the then Australian PM John Howard.
- The Internet Industry Association (IIA) of Australia’s Accessibility Web Action Plan. The plan “encourages web accessibility awareness and helps members develop and maintain accessible websites” and envisions that “members' web sites will set benchmarks for best practice in web accessibility”.
- Another report by the HREOC on Access to electronic commerce and new service and information technologies for older Australians and people with a disability investigates the challenges faced by the said category of people in accessing online services and commerce. It suggests minimum standards that need to be followed when bringing out new services. It also explores other steps such as education and training in removing barriers from usage of IT and online services.
This series of blogs is getting more detailed than expected hence let me stop here and write the next one on the regulations and guidelines in UK. I’m also retrospectively changing the title of the first post from ‘Web Accessibility and the Law_ Part 1’ to ‘Web Accessibility and the Law_US’.
