Information Design and Access Entitlement

humanITy Briefing Paper 3

Date: 19/03/2003

1. The Legislative Background

1.1 DDA. Under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) of 1995, disabled people are entitled to expect providers of information to: "Make reasonable adjustment" to make this accessible. What is "Reasonable" depends upon:

The objective of the organisation (does it exist primarily to serve the general or an identifiable segment of the population)
Size (More will be expected of larger companies)
State of technology (compliance is plastic and will broaden and deepen as ICT develops.

1.2 Freedom of Information Act. In itself, the Freedom of Information Act (2000), whose main provisions come into force in 2005, does not appear to present major logistical difficulties for the Government but when it is combined with the DDA it is obvious that the legal entitlement to information, tied to the right of information in an accessible format, does present some problems, the chief of which is, at the moment, that the Government has not yet grasped that there is a problem.

1.3 The European Union Treaty of Amsterdam. Clause 13 of the EU Treaty of Amsterdam, incorporating new conditions into the EU's foundation Treaty of Rome (amended by Maastricht) is a general anti discrimination clause which individual countries will progressively interpret. This may be seen as a general background provision which, over time, will affect the climate of legislative provision. This should be seen alongside the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights (Not an EU Convention) into UK law. Again, this affects climate more than specific provision.

2. Current Compliance Overview

Currently most major organisations, including commercial organisations and Government Departments, if they think of DDA compliance at all, think of it in terms of making their web sites conform to the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 to a level of minimum of single A compliance. This is useful for people who need to adjust the font and size of print, need graphics describing and who want an un-fussy design; but the requirements are far from satisfactory for those with learning and cognitive difficulties and that 20% of our population which is functionally illiterate. To legislate and act on the basis of compliance with WCAG Version 1.0 is a necessary but not sufficient condition for complying with the legal yoking of the DDA with Freedom of Information.

3. The Public Sector

The Public Sector has a particularly broad and deep requirement to make its information accessible:

Legal (as set out in Section 1.)
Fiscal (All people living in the UK pay tax; even children pay VAT)
Moral (there is a moral requirement of equal citizenship)
Efficiency (if digital information continues to be inaccessible to those who account for most Government/citizen transactions then public investment in digital information systems will not save analogue transaction costs)

So far the public sector has found it hard to make its web sites accessible because it has adopted a policy of retro engineering, of building a site to a rigid house style and then discovering that it needs to make accessibility adjustments. The UK Government has simultaneously adopted the WCAG Version 1.0 Guidelines and allowed Departments and Agencies to develop house styles without reference to them. The Freedom of Information Act will put further pressure on Government to provide personal and public document accessibility and it is vital that this compliance IS NOT based on re-engineering existing material. If that persists, the Government will never catch up. The public sector needs to establish a rule that legal compliance involves:

Ensuring that any future site, document, publication or broadcast, or any major re-design, re-fit or upgrade of any of these, complies with accessibility standards as they will be at the time of the planned activity.

The public sector will then have to make special provision for individuals who wish to access older documents. If the Government does not consciously adopt this or a similar policy it will leave itself open to litigation even while it is retro-engineering; in other words, it needs to be able to refer to how it plans to meet its legal obligations even if these are not yet currently being met.

4. The Commercial Sector

The Commercial sector should consider accessibility compliance on the following basis:

Legal (a careful consideration of "Reasonable Adjustment" is required; it is also likely that companies operating under licences, e.g. telecommunications companies, broadcasters, financial services, will be required as a condition of licence to meet accessibility requirements)
Market (The purchasing power of those with accessibility problems, notably those in late middle age, is universally under-estimated)
Objective (organisations which claim in mission statements to provide services on a non discriminatory basis to the whole population or to defined segments, need to be aware of the requirements for meeting their stated objectives)

5. Plasticity in Compliance

It should come as no surprise that as technologies develop an ever-higher level of compliance will be required. To give an example: it is currently widely understood that users should be enabled to adjust their print font and size, to alter colour and contrast and other simple settings; but requirements for such features as voice in/voice out, signing/'speaking' avatars and language simplification /translation machinery will become part of established accessibility requirements as their cost drops and their ubiquity increases. Providers also need to recognise that compliance with accessibility requirements will also deepen as multimedia becomes more common; this is an acute problem for digital broadcasters whose level of compliance will need to be much greater than that required of analogue broadcasters.

6. Core Argument

At the core of this argument is the idea that making digital information accessible is integral to its commercial viability and legal integrity, it is not an optional extra. The legal concept of "reasonable adjustment" will encompass any argument about cost; what is reasonable for a multinational would not be reasonable for a two-person consultancy. From the public sector's point of view, policy needs to be turned into delivery.

7. Cost

Generating accessible information is generally no more costly per user than providing one size fits all pages. The exceptions to this general rule are those areas where a human agent is required, as in describing graphics or generating sub titles; but a creative approach to these tasks could radically decrease human agency, e.g. using the authorial source for graphics descriptions or using a catalogue entry; using language simplification engines to provide automatic sub-titles). The phrase "per user" is important here because the absolute cost may be slightly higher but situations where discrimination may be applied on the ground of cost will need to be carefully thought through.

8. References

Design Council, www.design-council.org.uk
Disability Discrimination Act, http://www.disability.gov.uk/dda/
e-Accessibility EU, http://www.cetis.ac.uk/content/20021010170722
e-Envoy design requirements, http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/oee/oee.nsf/sections/webguidelines-handbook-annexes/$file/checklist.htm
Freedom of Information Act, http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/20000036.htm
humanITy, www.humanity.org.uk
Treaty of Amsterdam
- http://www.europarl.eu.int/topics/treaty/analysis/index_en.htm
- http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/treaties/selected/livre2_c.html
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT

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