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Disability Discrimination Act (DDA)

Last updated 20/01/05
From October 2004, companies and organisations that provide services to the public will be required by the Disability Discrimination Act to ensure that those services are reasonably accessible to disabled people.

The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) web investigation finds many public websites 'impossible' for disabled people to use. Many disabled people find it impossible to book a holiday, open a bank account or buy theatre tickets online. At the conclusion of the first comprehensive investigation into the user friendliness of websites - covering Government, business, leisure, web services and e-commerce websites - the DRC issued a stern warning that swathes of businesses may not be complying with existing equal access laws and it was 'only a matter of time' before they faced legal challenge from disabled consumers.

Part 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) makes it unlawful for a service provider to treat disabled people less favourably for a reason related to their disability. Service providers must also consider making reasonable adjustments to the way that they deliver their services where disabled people find these impossible or unreasonably difficult to access.

There are provisions in the DDA (section 19(3)) that state that "access to and use of means of communication" and "access to and use of information services" are both examples of services which would be covered by Part 3.

There are many kinds of disability. People who may require information in a variety of formats include:

  • people who have difficulty reading because they have a visual impairment, have a learning disability, are profoundly Deaf and use British Sign Language as their first language, or have a low standard of literacy;
  • people who cannot hear spoken information, nor use a voice telephone, because they are deaf or hard of hearing;
  • people who cannot see text, images or moving pictures;
  • people who have a speech impairment and therefore find it difficult to use a phone;
  • people who have dexterity problems which make it difficult to hold or manipulate a printed document or use a keyboard.

Web accessibility evaluation

SP offers a web accessibility evaluation to assess whether your website complies with web accessibility guidelines, and if not, will make recommendations as to how it can improve its accessibility, with an outline of possible costs.