Re: UK Businesses Reject Accessible Web Sites

Access Systems wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Dec 2004, David Woolley wrote:
>>1) they believe that providing phone access excuses them from making
>>   web sites accessible;
> 
> ?? is the phone access 24/7 and what do folks with speech problems or
> hearing problems do???  the big question "is it equivalant facilitation"

The DRC's Code of Practice largely documents what is expected of service 
providers, some examples cover websites. What is interesting - and 
Matthew Somerville highlights this during the Odeon debacle (e.g. 
<url:http://feetup.org/blog/rants/odeon.html>) - the Code of Practice 
documents doesn't refer to services, but to _provision of services_ that 
need to be accessible. A banking service is a service, an online banking 
service is a provision of a service. The Code of Practice which explains 
the relevant portions of the DDA clearly documents provisions of 
services must be accessible (not just the "service").

With this particular point it looks clear that the provision of 
telephone access is not enough to make an online service acccessible.


Mike.

Received on Saturday, 25 December 2004 08:09:09 UTC