What Information do I Need by Law on My Website?
From January 2007, limited companies need to have the following information on their website and on business emails:
- Full company name
- Registered number
- Registered office address
Is the Disabilities Act Relevant to My Website?
Yes, Section III of the DDA, which refers to accessible websites, came into force on 1st October 1999 and the Code of Practice for this section of the DDA was published on 27th May 2002. This means that the majority of websites have been in breach of the law for over five years.
The DRC have issued a stern warning that organisations will face legal action under the DDA and the threat of unlimited compensation payments if they fail to make websites accessible for people with disabilities.
What Must I do to Comply?
The W3C is the Internet governing body and its web accessibility guidelines can be found on its website. In summary of the main points where a website must comply:
General
- Any non-text element such as image, animation, sounds, audio files and video should provide a relevant text descriptive. For instance, when you hover over any image it must provide text describing the image.
- Ensure that all information conveyed with colour is also available without colour. For instance, any error messages which highlight area in red for amendment must also provide this information without the colour coding.
- Clearly identify changes in the natural language of a document's text and any text equivalents (e.g., captions).
- Organise documents so they may be read without style sheets. For example, when an HTML document is rendered without associated style sheets, it must still be possible to read the document.
- Ensure that equivalents for dynamic content are updated when the dynamic content changes.
- Until user agents allow users to control flickering, avoid causing the screen to flicker.
- Use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site's content.
Images and Image Maps
- Provide redundant text links for each active region of a server-side image map.
- Provide client-side image maps instead of server-side image maps except where the regions cannot be defined with an available geometric shape.
Tables/Frames
- For data tables, identify row and column headers.
- For data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells.
- Title each frame to facilitate frame identification and navigation.
Applets and Scripts
- Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. If this is not possible, provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page.
- Until user agents can automatically read aloud the text equivalent of a visual track, provide an auditory description of the important information of the visual track of a multimedia presentation.
- For any time-based multimedia presentation (e.g., a movie or animation), synchronize equivalent alternatives (e.g., captions or auditory descriptions of the visual track) with the presentation.
Alternatives
If, after best efforts, you cannot create an accessible page, provide a link to an alternative page that uses W3C technologies, is accessible, has equivalent information (or functionality), and is updated as often as the inaccessible (original) page.
