The British Standards Institution (BSI) has just published a new "Publicly Available Specification" that has been developed by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) in collaboration with BSI. According to BSI the specification is:
- applicable to all public and private organizations that wish to observe good practice under the existing voluntary guidelines and the relevant legislation on this subject;
- intended for use by those responsible for commissioning public-facing websites and web-based servicesoutlines good practice in commissioning websites that are accessible to and usable by disabled people;
and gives recommendations for:
- the management of the process of, and guidance on, upholding existing W3C guidelines and specifications;
- involving disabled people in the development process and using the current software-based compliance testing tools that can assist with this.
You can buy the specification on line from BSI for £30. Although this is much cheaper than most standards from BSI, and although people who work for organisations with a direct or indirect subscription to BSI publications should be able to access the specification free of charge, I am certain that uptake of the specification will be far smaller than if it had been made freely available on the web.
Last point is spot on. £30 for an online document - how accessible is that! Let's stick to the international standards that are publically available and free. This is yet another standards document that's destined to be ignored.
Posted by: Donald Clark | 30/03/2006 at 15:11