Personally I think the fact that this report costs £30 is a huge mistake and borders on the disgraceful. It's a little ironic perhaps that guidelines for creating accessible websites aren't accessible to everyone, especially small businesses who perhaps require the most help in undertsanding the legislation.... Grrrrrrrrrr! 

Regards,

Andrew Allfrey
e-Prominence Limited
Search Engine Marketing Services

www.e-prominence.co.uk
info@e-prominence.co.uk

O: + 44 (0) 870 550 0046
M: + 44 (0) 7970 607 197

On 15:18:00 10 March 2006 RosieSherry wrote:

The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) commissioned The British Standards Institution (BSI) to develop a set of guidelines on how to create sites accessible to all users.

The result has been a guidance document called PAS 78 - Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites.  It is designed to help any organisation comply with accessibility guidelines and therefore achieve Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) requirements.

Web accessibility and DDA is often viewed with scepticism.  Though guidelines exist from W3C, it is hoped that the new PAS 78 guidelines will bring more awareness to the importance of implementing accessible websites.

There has been some controversary surrounding obtaining a copy of the guidelines, as they are not freely available.  In addition to this, it has proven difficult to obtain copies of the document.  This brings about more sceptiscism about this document and the approach of implementing these guidelines.

These are initial teething problems where the online community can only hope that the PAS 78 guidelines will help organisations achieve accessible and usable website for all.

Source:
http://www.bsi-global.com/

Rosie Sherry
QA Consultant
http://www.drivenqa.com/

I attended the PAS78  launch conference and received a complimentary copy, which I'm still digesting.

The document does not offer replacement or additional accessibility guidelines.  It is meant as a consolidated reference to existing policies, guidelines and standards, as well as addressing the commissioning process,  web technologies, usability and testing. It is not a technical document, but has plenty of references for developers who are new to this topic.

It is supposed to "provide clear and unambiguous guidance to all that commission websites", but I am not yet totally convinced of this.

It also strongly emphasizes the involvment of disabled users on the whole project lifecycle, rather than,  for example, relying on automated testing, or only addressing one type of disability.

I believe that involving disabled users is a web project is a challenge in itself, not just for single developers like me.  This is something the conference panel acknowledged, but was not able to offer any solution, other than perhaps defining it as "an opportunity" - but a cost that, IMHO, small businesses are unlikely to be able or willing to meet..

Of course, the accessibility business case for larger companies is a no-brainer and an ethical/legal imperative, clearly demonstrated at the event.  At £30 the document is a snip - SMEs may well have a different view.

To answer your question, it doesn't have much that isn't freely available elsewhere - however I am pleased to have a copy for reference and would recommend it to all self-respecting web agencies and developers.  Having read other comments with regards to the cost of this document, and if the intention is to really make it as widely read as possible,  I feel  the price should be reduced/subsidised, at least for the downloadable version.

Caterina Carola
carola.co.uk