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The Disability Discrimination Act Explained

The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) came into force late in 2004. But what exactly does it aim to achieve? What does it mean for websites? And how can you make sure that your website is DDA compliant?

Overview of the DDA

The DDA aims to end the discrimination which many disabled people are faced with on a daily basis. Specifically, the act grants disabled people rights in the areas of employment, access to goods, facilities and services, and buying or renting land or property. The DDA also sets minimum standards with regard to public transport.

The DDA was brought into force between December 1996 and October 2004.

Impact of the DDA on websites

Websites fall into part 3 of the DDA (access to goods and services) and must therefore ensure that they do not treat disabled people less favourably than non-disabled people.

This means every website must ensure that any user, using any device or browser, can access 100% of a website's content.

Any user

Disabled users must be able to access the same or equivalent content available to users without a disability. With this in mind, websites should pay particular attention to:

  • Deafness / hearing problems
  • Blindness / eyesight problems
  • Problems using a keyboard or mouse

Any device or browser

The user should be able to use any device (computer, PDA, mobile phone etc) or browser (IE, Firefox, Netscape, Opera, Lynx etc) to view the website. Websites should pay particular attention to:

  • Consistency of presentation in all browsers
  • Providing alternatives to client-side / browser-specific scripting
  • Mark-up validity

100% of content

All content on the website must be provided in such a way that any user can interpret it. Typical examples of provision are:

  • Ensuring that screen-readers can interpret text
  • Providing text alternatives for images and audio
  • Providing a site map

Switchplane action points

Some of the ways we ensure our customers' websites are DDA compliant:

  • Automatic high-contrast text-only mode
  • Automatic site map allows quick navigation to any page
  • The content management system outputs standards compliant HTML code ensuring that any standards compliant device can interpret the page
  • CSS is always used in favour of in-place styles ensuring that mark-up is semantically correct

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