Closer to home

Astonishingly, discrimination against disabled people was entirely legal in the UK until 1995, when the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) was brought in. The Act makes it unlawful to refuse to serve a disabled person or to offer service on different terms or to a lower standard. In 1999, a second set of provisions was implemented, which places a duty on providers to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to their services so disabled people can access them. Although the Act does not explicitly refer to an Internet or intranet web site as an example of a service, actions brought in Australia and the USA suggest that it can. Compliance with the W3C’s WAI guidelines, to the first priority level, would be deemed as a reasonable adjustment to make to ensure accessibility.

According to Martin Sloan from the Graduate School of Law, Glasgow, “It seems clear that a disabled person could bring an action under the Act. Whilst this may seem relatively straightforward on paper, in practice there are greater problems. The nature of the Act and in particular the Code of Practice is to encourage dispute resolution before a case reaches court. Thus, like the in US, it may be that the courts are never given a chance to make an express judgment on the issue. The provisions being of a civil rather than a criminal nature also hamper the influence of the court. Hence, at least in Scotland, there cannot be any punishing element in the court's determination. This lack of a deterrence means that service providers will view the potential application of the provisions with disdain until a successful test case is brought that reaches court and forces them to take notice.”

One company that is being proactive in meeting its obligations under the Act is Scottish Equitable. Jillian Givan is e-Learning Delivery Manager: “We have three deaf people on our staff and they have had difficulty in using the audio and video sections in the CBT courses that we produce in-house. We are keen, as are the employees, that they receive exactly the same training as everyone else, so we had a representative of the Deaf Society come in to sign along with the course. We have recently commissioned a report on accessibility to make sure that we take account of the needs of our disabled staff in future e-learning that we provide.”

Although education and 'certain ancillary services' are excluded from the DDA, the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 (SENDA) establishes legal rights for disabled students in pre- and post-16 education. It is unlawful for responsible bodies to treat a disabled person 'less favourably' than a non-disabled person for a reason that relates to the person's disability. For example, a dyslexic student applies to do a law degree. The university tells her that they do not take dyslexic students on law degrees. The treatment she receives is less favourable compared to other students, and the reason for the treatment relates to her disability. The university is likely to be acting unlawfully. If a disabled person is at a 'substantial disadvantage', responsible bodies are required to take reasonable steps to prevent that disadvantage.

For those responsible for creating bespoke solutions, it may not always be necessary or appropriate to try and engineer the materials for every audience. According to Ian Crossley, Bid Manager at UK training provider Parity, “It is simply not possible in every case to meet everybody’s needs with a single method. This could drive up the cost of e-learning to a level at which nobody would buy it. Sometimes it pays to address the needs of particular groups in different ways. For example, in an ECDL pilot that we conducted with the Department of Health, we provided one-to-one training for a single blind person, as it was uneconomic to make the necessary changes to the materials.”

Clearly, anyone associated with e-learning in the UK will find it essential to become fully conversant with the provisions of the DDA and SENDA, and the e-Learning Network provides a useful forum for obtaining and sharing this information. Vaughan Waller is Chairman of the e-Learning Network: “We consider it one of our key roles to extend our members’ knowledge and experience of accessibility issues. Accessibility is one of the most important considerations for e-learning providers and one that really cannot be overlooked.”

Six rules for improved web accessibility

1. The following rules are extracted from the Institute of IT Training’s Website Usability Standards:

2. Avoid combinations of foreground and background colour that would cause reading difficulties for colour-blind users.

3. To facilitate user-determined font sizing, use relative rather than absolute font sizes.

4. To facilitate the use of screen readers, use HTML heading tags to mark the beginning of each new section.

5. Use HTML alternative text to provide a textual description for images, animations, hot spots within client-side image maps and video files.

6. Include transcripts or sub-titles for all audio and video material containing the spoken word.

7. Ensure buttons and hotspots within image maps are sufficiently large as not to require precise positioning.