actinic
ecommerce
Accessibility Standards in Actinic Ecommerce Products
There
are lots of people browsing the web who are partially
sighted, or completely blind, who use various
tools to interpret the web page for them – such
as a 'screen reader' which literally reads
out the content of a page. In order for screen
readers to work, a page must comply with
a set of guidelines.
The most important set of web accessibility guidelines is published by
the 'World Wide Web Consortium' (http://www.w3.org/)
and is called the 'Web Content Accessibility Guidelines'. You can read
it at http://www.w3c.org/TR/WCAG10/.
Actinic v7 stores can be made to comply with all the 'Priority 1' guidelines
provided by the W3C, and most of the others as well. There are a few
guidelines that Actinic stores cannot comply with (such as only using
HTML tables for tables of data, and not just for layout) as there is
no way to make the stores work without them.
The 'Bobby' scheme ('http://bobby.watchfire.com')
is an opt-in approval scheme run in the UK where sites can have a little
badge on their site showing they are 'Bobby Approved' – and therefore
accessible to all web browsers. Bobby uses the 'Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines' provided by W3C to verify whether a site is compatible.
Am I going to get sued under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) if I am using Actinic?
First of all, it is worth stating that the section of Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) that mentions accessible websites was actually put into force way back in 1999. The new laws implemented in October 2004 are to do with physical access to buildings, and are nothing to do with accessible websites.
The relevant sections
from the DDA (1999) are as follows:
5.23 (p71): “For people with visual impairments, the range of auxiliary
aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that
services are accessible might include ... accessible websites.”
5.26 (p68): “For people with hearing disabilities, the range of
auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to
ensure that services are accessible might include ... accessible websites.”
So, there is no specific information provided by the government to help web site designers. However, it is widely accepted that if a site can be shown to be compliant with the Priority 1 guidelines from the W3C (or the 'A' standard from Bobby) that your site can be considered accessible. The EU also has guidelines on accessible websites, which state that the Priority 2 (or 'AA') guidelines should be met. Actinic meets most of these, but misses out on full compliance by using tables to control the layout of pages rather than CSS stylesheets.
It is worth stating, in conclusion, that the sort of sites which organisations like the RNIB are really critical of are sites that are purely driven by Flash, or sites which are nothing but images. Actinic sites can be made to comply with all of the Priority 1 guidelines (and most of the Priority 2 ones) - and they are static html, with a consistent layout, full use of ALT text and no reliance on JavaScript for controlling layout. They are not the sort of sites which the DDA was set up to eliminate.
With thanks to WebCredible (http://www.webcredible.co.uk/)
