Draft British Standard for Web Accessibility - 23-Feb-09
A British Standard for building and maintaining web content accessible to disabled people has been drafted and publication of the official standard is expected in Summer 2009.
The draft incorporates a business argument for accessibility, the impact to date of the Disability Discrimination Act, allocation of accessibility responsibilities within an organisation and the selection of technologies. It is hoped that organisations will extract appropriate content for use within their own accessibilty statements.
It is suggested that the organisational CEO should ensure that a specified person or department is responsible for compliance with the new standard. It also recommends involving people with a range of differing disabilities in the planning, development and testing of a website. However, there is an acceptance that any investment in testing and monitoring needs to be commensurate with the size of the organisation and the scope of the project.
Regrettably, by the time this information arrived on my desk, the consultation period had expired. However, reference to the draft document may still prove of assistance.
Let's hope that, as with the early days of the DDA, application and implementation is exercised with an element of flexibility from all parties.
Source: NFP Techno
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