The SENDA 2001 Act applies to web pages as well as other information resources. The Freedom of information Act is more general. Here is a list of useul links.
| Kent-based information | Externally-based information |
|---|---|
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Changes in the law in September 2002 require web sites to be accessible by disabled users.
Under the Special Educational Needs and Disability act 2001, which will be in force from September 2002, educational institutions have a duty not to discriminate on the grounds of disability. This places duties on educational establishments (including HE)
- Not to treat disabled students or pupils less favorably without justification;
- To make reasonable adjustments so that students or pupils are not at a substantial disadvantage compared to those who are not disabled.
In the case of online resources that take the form of intranet/departmental web sites including audio/video and web pages, it is expected that Part 3 of the Act is applies.
adapted from TechDis Briefing Paper: E-Learning and Legislation
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) have produced guidelines which have been generally adopted as the accessibility standard for web pages. In order to meet the requirements of the SENDA legislation, conformance at priority levels 1 (level A) and 2 (level AA) are required. Unfortunately these guidelines are very detailed and rather lengthy so we have generated our own Guidelines for Publishing Accessible Web pages which, we hope, provide a helpful summary of these WAI guidelines.
There are tools available to help support and validate an accessible web site but, at the time of writing, they are not very advanced and are best applied to individual web pages during the authoring process rather than being applied to an entire web site.
All the web pages published on the Computer Science web site must be published to a good standard to enable accessibility and usability to a wide range of users and user-agents. This means designing web pages which can be accessed by users with various disabilities who require concise information clearly presented. Such users may wish either to alter the way a web page is displayed, or to read pages via a variety of devices such as browsers, screen readers and page magnifiers. Similarly, improved access to user-agents such as search engines is desirable. Compliance to level AA in the WAI scheme is desirable, but not always possible, However, level A compliance should always be possible.
To improve the accessibility of the material you publish on the Computer Science web site you should