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| accessibility guide intro | legislation | standards | studies |
This part of the Accessibility guide deals with anti-discrimination legislation affecting online services. Like many aspects of regulating the web, 'accessibility' legislation is a matter for individual nations. In practice there is no global agreement to ensure that the disabled (and those on the wrong side of the 'digital divide') can make effective use of your site. Australia is a signatory to a number of international human rights agreements, of which most pertinent are the:
A perspective on those agreements is provided by George Williams' Human Rights Under The Australian Constitution (Melbourne, Oxford Uni Press 99) and the August 2000 submission by the Australian Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission to the Federal Parliamentary Inquiry Into Australia's Relations with the United Nations In The Post Cold War Environment.
Within Australia the major legislation is the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA), administered by the Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). The Commission's detailed guide to the DDA is online. The Australian National Office for the Information Economy has developed an @ccessAbility Online Resource site.
In coming weeks we'll be adding information about overseas anti-discrimination legislation relating to use of new media. In the UK the primary legislation is the 1999 Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), administered by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC). In the US the Department of Justice has a site dedicated to the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). A number of independent guides are online.
Apart from the national Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission, highlighted earlier in this guide, most state/territory governments have anti-discrimination bodies: Anti-Discrimination Board of New South Wales
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Australian law