Re: UK Access Rules:

Micheal,

You should look at http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy/#UK and 
http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy/#EU

The policy section of the WAI site has comprehensive links to all the 
material you need. Effectively it comes down to this:

In the UK currently you are not obligated to be accessible, however in Oct 
2004 when the Disability Discrimation Act of 1995 (DDA) part III comes 
into force then all public web sites (as services I gather, although I am 
not a lawayer) are obligated to be accessible to a reasonable degree. As 
far as I know there is no definition of accessible in the legislation, for 
example nothing which refers to WCAG 1.0. However the EU also has policy 
on this and they specificly refer to WCAG 1.0 double-A (thanks to Roberto 
Scano for actually reading these documents all the way through ;) ). It 
could then be inferred that this might be the legal stance taken by common 
law in the UK. However government guidlines for web sites already 
stipulate that public web sites should be accessible, and this is 
specifically listed at WCAG 1.0 A, in the "Framework for Senior Managers" 
document (http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/Resources/WebGuidelines/fs/en). This 
could be taken as the defacto standard also which would make it much 
closer to 508.

I hope this helps,

Tom

On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:49:53 -0500, Section 508.US <tagi11@cox.net> wrote:

> Julian:
> I am sorry on number 1 (subject line omitted)
> 2 The UK equivalent to our Section 508 legislation
>
> thanks
> m
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Received on Thursday, 16 October 2003 04:46:53 UTC