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Unread 22 Feb 2005, 19:38   #1
Rc mayhem
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Disabilities and Discrimination Act and websites

I am creating a new website for an organisation, there are around 700 members in the national organisation, of which around 200-300 are in the South East Region, which is who the website is for, the old version of the website, which I host, gets about 2-5 visits per day. I have been advised to make it compliant with the 'new' Disabilities and Discrimination laws. I have done some research and have tested and amended the design after a free LIFT report (http://www.usablenet.com/products_se...ft_online.html). I have also had a look at the "Bobby" website and had a free report with them. I have found, however that a lot of these guidelines are very restrictive on design, and ask for the creator to go a long way out of their way to comply (one item I have decided to not do is to have an audio version of all documents on websites) so I have to following questions/discussion points:

1) Does anyone know of any more of these free tests?

2) How much should I try to comply with the guidelines and this law? (From my research I have found that no one has been prosecuted and all that has been happening is that Help the Aged (I think that is correct) have told a couple of companies to change their websites, which they have)

3) Is this an infringement on my right to express myself in the way I want to as there are rules on what colours can go together and what font etc? (No one forces art galleries to only show contrasting pictures)

4) Due to the colour contrast rules, is it an end to colour on websites (I have already noticed an increase in the large companies going to black text on white web pages)

Discuss away

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Unread 22 Feb 2005, 19:45   #2
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Re: Disabilities and Discrimination Act and websites

personally, I think this act is somewhat of an idiocy.

After all, anybody with any type of colour blindness will be unable to view a large portion of the websites using colour, so why not just ban colour alltogether?

First we go and make a place where anybody can do whatever he wants for his website, then we're gonna go and force them to all make websites which look exactly the same? This may be something that companies are all gonna follow, but I'm still just gonna make a website that looks the way I want it to look
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Unread 22 Feb 2005, 21:40   #3
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Re: Disabilities and Discrimination Act and websites

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Originally Posted by flapjack
personally, I think this act is somewhat of an idiocy.
Perhaps I should read the guidelines somewhere, but if it's true, then I agree, it's idiocy.

Quote:
Originally Posted by flapjack
This may be something that companies are all gonna follow, but I'm still just gonna make a website that looks the way I want it to look
Yes, with big flashing GIFs to scare away all those epileptic people and a red font on a blue background just to be hip.

I like black on white BTW. Contrast is a very important factor if you have people reading the content for a longer period of time.
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Unread 22 Feb 2005, 22:14   #4
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Re: Disabilities and Discrimination Act and websites

God disabled people suck, the ****ing cheek of them wanting on my internet.
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Unread 22 Feb 2005, 23:22   #5
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Re: Disabilities and Discrimination Act and websites

Quote:
Originally Posted by flapjack
After all, anybody with any type of colour blindness will be unable to view a large portion of the websites using colour, so why not just ban colour alltogether?
Because that's not necessary.

Colour blindness web page emulator
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Unread 22 Feb 2005, 23:36   #6
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Re: Disabilities and Discrimination Act and websites

Maybe I should point out that I also like white background with black text and so have this as I have a series of tables inside tables with the background of the text table black on white.
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Unread 22 Feb 2005, 23:54   #7
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Re: Disabilities and Discrimination Act and websites

My understanding is that it applies only to sites providing a "public service". This isn't very carefully defined, but your own personal fanboy site on why you wank over Jennifer Alba would be exempt, but a site for a large business probably wouldn't. I seem to remember Odeon trying to sue some guy who made an accessible (non-flash possibly) version of their site and they may have run into some problems there.

It's just trying to bring websites into line with building regs on disabled access points etc. If people should be able to access any public building (e.g. shops, offices) why not their websites? Do building regulations infringe on the freedom of architechts / planners to build how the hell they want?
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Unread 23 Feb 2005, 00:14   #8
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Re: Disabilities and Discrimination Act and websites

If you build your website properly - correct semantic use of (X)HTML & CSS -, there is absolutely no need to worry about the Disability Act, as that in itself will already allow visually impaired people to use your website correctly.

You do not need to provide a high-contrast version or audio version of your pages seperatly (although it is very easy to do so), as the visually impaired will very likely already have browser-specific settings and/or a screenreader.

Of course, the use of proprietary, malformed HTML tag soup will present screen readers and custom settings with all kinds of obstacles that may render your site unuseable.
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Unread 23 Feb 2005, 10:00   #9
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Re: Disabilities and Discrimination Act and websites

Basicly, as leshy said, use XHTML and CSS, and use the the XHTML validator at w3.org.
The XHTML spec recommends, and in some cases, forces you to include many of the properties that they bang on about anyway such as the "alt=" for images and "title=" for links.
In combination with CSS you can keep all layout information out of the document, which makes it much more accessible to text-to-speech readers and so on.
A basic rule is do NOT use tables for layout. The only time you should use a table is if you need to display a table.

I am still developing my new site using the above methods - the dynamic php version is not publicly available yet but you can see the concept here. If you view the source you will see that there is no layout information contained in the XHTML page despite the layout being a fairly familiar "table based" look.
You will notice I forgot to use the "title=" property for the links, as this was an early concept.
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Last edited by meglamaniac; 23 Feb 2005 at 10:06.
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Unread 23 Feb 2005, 16:02   #10
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Re: Disabilities and Discrimination Act and websites

nice emulator, to bad it breaks all the images and makes the page utterly unreadable because it's all over the place...

Obviously a colourblind person wouldn't have a load of broken images
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Unread 23 Feb 2005, 19:01   #11
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Re: Disabilities and Discrimination Act and websites

Quote:
Originally Posted by flapjack
nice emulator, to bad it breaks all the images and makes the page utterly unreadable because it's all over the place...
Can't said I've ever had that problem while using it.

If the images are too numerous, and/or too large, I'd expect the emulator's requests to time out.
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