The Disability Rights Commission
The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) is concerned about the current inaccessibility of websites to disabled people. In April 2004 we published the results of a Formal Investigation (FI) into the issues that disabled people face when using websites. The findings of the investigation led us to work with the British Standards Institution (BSI) to produce a set of formal guidance on website accessibility.
The DRC’s investigation discovered that many disabled people find many websites difficult to use. However, this hasn’t always been their experience of the web. When Professor Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW), he expected it to provide a level playing field for disabled and non-disabled people alike: ‘The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone, regardless of disability, should be an essential aspect.’
This was the case for the first few years after the invention of the WWW. Disabled people, including blind and partially sighted people, deaf and hearing impaired people, people with conditions that resulted in limited use of their arms and people with cognitive disabilities, were able to use the Web with relative ease. This was largely due to the creation of access technologies that would, for example, convert web text into audible, synthetic speech that blind people could hear. Access technologies worked relatively faultlessly because most websites were hand-coded using the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML standards.
The DRC’s investigation discovered that many disabled people find many websites difficult to use. However, this hasn’t always been their experience of the web. When Professor Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW), he expected it to provide a level playing field for disabled and non-disabled people alike: ‘The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone, regardless of disability, should be an essential aspect.’
This was the case for the first few years after the invention of the WWW. Disabled people, including blind and partially sighted people, deaf and hearing impaired people, people with conditions that resulted in limited use of their arms and people with cognitive disabilities, were able to use the Web with relative ease. This was largely due to the creation of access technologies that would, for example, convert web text into audible, synthetic speech that blind people could hear. Access technologies worked relatively faultlessly because most websites were hand-coded using the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML standards.
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