Web Accessiblity
In 1999 the Web Accessibility Initiative, a project by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 1.0.
Since publication the WAI recommendations have been widely accepted as best practice guidelines in developing universally accessible websites.
In 2006 the British Standards Institution (BSI) in collaboration with the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) published PAS 78: Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites. Aimed primarily at UK businesses, charities, volunteer organisations, as well as local and central government it describes the web standards and usability testing needed for producing accessible websites.
The guideline is largely based the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines with an additional emphasis on the use of structured mark-up, avoiding presentational attributes, and recommending the use of CSS layouts. PAS 78, in essence advocates the use of existing web standards.
Not only does the Disability Discrimination Act now make it unlawful for 'service providers to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide them any service which it provides to members of the public', but there also are many powerful Search Engine Optimisation and business advantages to creating accessible websites.
Quick to recognise their legal obligations and the commercial benefits, many organisations have adopted the principles of web accessibility as advocated by W3C and PAS 78 with accessibility becoming an important contributory factor in website design and development. A quick Google search for web accessibility today returns nearly 31 million results.