IM2044 Week 11

Dr. Andres Baravalle

Lecture content
DDA and Equality Act
What is a disability?
Reasonable adjustments
Different standards
Different terms of service



Learning outcomes
This week we will be working on:
LO2: Apply appropriate design and
specification standards
LO4: Effectively evaluate various systems and
make appropriate design decisions

Social and ethical issues
The web and new technologies in general
are used more and more to provide
services and goods
The web, as it has the potential to reaches
users directly at home, can diminish both
the isolation and interaction problems of
disable citizens
4
Social and ethical issues (2)
The right of users, regardless of their
disabilities, to use the web is widely
acknowledged


Social and ethical issues: some
examples
A un-accessible shopping web site would
exclude the type of users that are more likely to
want to use it
A un-accessible government web site would
exclude the type of users that might have
problems to reach the government (local or
national) in other ways
A un-accessible web site on health might be
excluding exactly the users that would want to
use it
Legal requirements
Usability is not a legal requirement per
se in the UK
Remember that usability is about achieving
goals with effectiveness, efficiency and
satisfaction
The discourse for accessibility is more
complex and will be covered during the
rest of the lecture

DDA
The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) (1995
with modifications in the following years) is the
first piece of legislation which made it unlawful to
discriminate against people in respect of their
disabilities in relation to:
Employment
Provision of goods and services
Education
Transport
EA 2010
The Equality Act (EA) (2010) protects
people from discrimination and
harassment based on protected
characteristics: disability, gender
reassignment, pregnancy and maternity,
race, religion or belief, sex and sexual
orientation
We will discuss disability only
DDA vs EA (selected)
The EA introduced improved protection from discrimination that
occurs because of something connected with a persons disability
This form of discrimination can be justified if it can be shown to be a
proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
The EA introduced the principle of indirect discrimination for
disability.
Indirect discrimination occurs when something applies in the same way to
everybody but has an effect which particularly disadvantages disabled people.
Indirect discrimination may be justified if it can be shown to be a proportionate
means of achieving a legitimate aim.
The EA extends protection:
To harassment that is related to disability
To direct disability discrimination and harassment where this is based on a
persons association with a disabled person, or on a perception that the person is
disabled
EA: disability definition
A person has a disability if:
The person has a physical or mental
impairment, and
The impairment has a substantial and long-
term adverse effect (> 12 months) on the
person's ability to carry out normal day-to-day
activities

EA: protections
The Equality Act protects:
People who currently have a disability against
harassment and discrimination
People who have had a disability in the past
against harassment
Non-disabled people only where they are
perceived to have a disability or are
associated with a disabled person
Discrimination
In the context of the DDA and EA, discrimination
means treating a person less favourably
There is no discrimination when the practice
under question is a proportionate means of
achieving a legitimate aim
Direct discrimination is not unlawful in relation to
the protected characteristic of disability, where a
disabled person is treated more favourably than
a non-disabled person



The role of the DDA/EA
To provide guidance for both service providers
and people with protected characteristics
As you have seen in the previous slides, the scope of
the DDA/EA is quite wide
We are going to focus only on a subset of issues
(which are the most relevant for the aims of this
module):
Direct or indirect discrimination based on disability in
the provision of goods and services


Provision of goods and services
It is unlawful to discriminate against a
disabled person:
By refusing to provide a service to a disabled
person
By failing to make reasonable adjustments to
allow a disabled person to use a service
By providing services with different standards
In the terms on which the service is provided

Provision of goods and services
(2)
It is irrelevant whether a service is
provided on payment or without payment

Reasonable adjustments:
practice, policy or procedure
Where a provider of services has a
practice, policy or procedure which makes
it impossible or unreasonably difficult for
disabled persons to make use of a
service it is the duty of the provider to
take reasonable steps to change it
Reasonable adjustments:
physical features
Where a physical feature makes it impossible or
unreasonably difficult for disabled persons to
make use of a service, it is the duty of the
provider to take reasonable steps to:
Remove the feature
Alter it so that it no longer has that effect
Provide a reasonable means of avoiding the feature
Provide a reasonable alternative method of making
the service available
Reasonable adjustments:
nature of the service
Service providers do not have to take any
steps which would fundamentally alter the
nature of the service (or make it
economically unviable)
Reasonable adjustments:
examples
Some examples for web sites:
Include alternative descriptions for images,
audio and video
Provide fallback options for AJAX interfaces
Some generic examples:
Avoid inadequate color combinations
Allow different ways of interaction (e.g. mouse
and keyboard, or text and graphics)
Providing services with different
standards
Some discrimination examples for web sites:
Adobe Flash based site with only a few pages
available in HTML format
Improper description of media files (longdesc
attribute should be used whenever possible)
Some generic discrimination examples:
Different performance of the accessible version
Outdated accessible version

Terms of use
Some generic discrimination examples:
Forcing users to use specific software
Forcing users to use specific data standards


Exceptions
Health and safety
Incapacity to contract
When the provider would otherwise be unable to
provide the service to members of the public
When the different terms of use reflect the increased
costs
Examples of exceptions
Avatar building web site (faceyourmanga.com): would be
hardly possible without using Flash or Ajax
Google Maps: can be used with the keyboard and with
the mouse, but street names or any map labels cant be
read by text recognition software (hard to think how to do
it otherwise)
Aviary.com audio editor (hard to think how to do it
otherwise)
A number of Eclipse-based editors: they are complex
and typically unusable for non-disable users


Test question!
Service providers are required to always
redevelop websites or Web applications which
are not accessible
True or False?

25
Test question! (2)
Service providers are required to always
redevelop Web applications which are not
accessible
True or False?

Test question! (3)
Websites cannot provide a lower
standard of service to disabled users
True or False?


Test question! (4)
Lack of text description for videos in a
web site can be considered as
discrimination against disabled users
True or False?


Test question! (5)
A website which is designed very poorly
and is unusable infringes the Disability
Discrimination Act
True or False?


Test question! (6)
Developers of a UK website must correct
accessibility problems when the
adjustments required are reasonable
True or False?


Test question (7)
Ebook repositories as OReilly Safari must
provide ebooks in formats as PDF to
ensure that disabled users can use screen
reading software as JAWS effectivelly
Bad treatment vs. less
favourable treatment
If a website is not usable and generally
inadequate for use by abled users, it is
obvious that its not accessible
An accessible version is, in such cases,
not a legal requirement
The web developer might not be able at all to
do anything better than what s/he has done!
It is not a definite legal
requirement
it still cannot be said that there is a
definite legal requirement under the UK's
Disablity Discrimination Act for Web sites
to be provided in an accessible form
(Sloan, 2002)
References
Sloan, M. (2002). The Updated Code of
Practice for Part iii of the Disability
Discrimination Act. Available from
http://www.dmag.org.uk/resources/legal/dd
acode.asp

Readings for this week
The Disability Discrimination Act:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1995/ukpg
a_19950050_en_1
ISO 9241-171:2008:
https://bsol.bsigroup.com/en/BsolHomePa
ge/ (you must be using a UEL computer to
download it)
The Sloan article