[Sigia-l] Accessibility guidelines in Great Britain

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org] 
> On Behalf Of Boniface Lau
> Sent: 03 September 2004 02:26
> To: sigia-l at asis.org
> Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] Accessibility guidelines in Great Britain
> 
> 
> > From: Jonathan Baker-Bates
> >
> > Most lawyers in the UK think that if a case ever comes to 
> court over 
> > this, the court would use Priority 1 as their baseline 
> indication of 
> > reasonableness. If the defendant could show Priority 1 
> compliance then 
> > it would be pretty unlikely the plaintiff could show that was 
> > unreasonable.
> 
> WCAG's Priority 1 is about "impossible to access" and 
> Priority 2 is about "difficult to access".
> 

That's an interpretation, and one that I agree with, but it's not
actually how the guidelines are presented for each level.

> The Disability Discrimination Act's "reasonable adjustments" 
> is about "disabled people might otherwise be substantially 
> disadvantaged".
> 
> Thus, lawyers can argue that a Priority 1 conforming site 
> that is "difficult to access" for disabled people still puts 
> them into a "substantially disadvantaged" situation. As a 
> support for being "reasonable", they can cite WCAG's Priority 2.
> 

I agree, but I have it on some authority that unless a great deal hung
on the case (e.g. death, injury resulting) then the court will most
probably say that if the site can demonstrate that they did something to
accommodate disabled people, and that something conforms to Priority 1,
then that will be reasonable. The court would not want to be involved in
interpreting the work of the W3C. 

Given the lack of even Priority 1 compliance by so many sites, I would
think that even this rather limp position would probably result in a
conviction!

Jonathan


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