LSW-WebDesign

This is meant to be a collection of different information points on legal subjects such as Sec.508 and DDA.

I will also try to break them into areas where needed. However web design is international, so even tho you may be a US American, does not mean you will never have a British client so you should be aware of British law, so the DDA.

Should anyone find good references other than mine please let me know so I can add them here.

Accessibility and the Law

UK

DDA (Disability Discrimination Act)

• Disability Discrimination Act 1995 - Disability.gov.uk
• Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (c. 50) - HMSO.gov.uk

US

Section 508

• Section508.gov
• Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards - Access-Board.gov
• United States: State Policies Relating to Web Accessibility - W3C.org

Germany/Deutschland

BGG/BITV

• Barrierefreie Informationstechnik-Verordnung - BITV
• BGG/BITV Begründung
• Gleichstellungsgesetze auf Länderebene - BIK-Online

Court Cases

• Access Now Inc. Vs. Southwest Airlines Co.
• Ramada.com and Priceline.com & Travel sites settle New York accessibility investigation
• Web accessibility litigation: it’s not what we want
• Target sued over web accessibility
• Disabled access law does not cover web sites, says federal court

This is a term I use often and will use often here.

It is about using the tags given us in HTML in the way they were meant to be used. I discussed this in my Right tools for the Job! thread.

Molly Holtzschlag as written a great article about what semantics mean and why they are important.

From the accessibility side it simply creates a logical structure of information for those who may not be able to see or understand your graphical highlites. So sematically correct use of tags make the meaning of the information far more clear to those who may have difficulties otherwise. They may be confused why a tag is a H3 when there is not preeceding H1 or H2.

It is a good read: The meaning of Semantics by Molly Holtzschlag