A summary of the pivotal case related to inaccessible websites and disability discrimination law
In June 1999, Bruce Maguire filed a complaint with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission under the Australian Disability Discrimination Act. His complaint was that he was being discriminated against because he could not access the contents of the Olympic Games website.
As a highly skilled user of an upgradeable Braille display, I was used to being able to access content on web pages, however, I was unable to access important content on the Olympic Games website.
He won the case, but the Olympic Committee did not make the required changes and was subsequently awarded $ 20,000 in compensation.
The Olympic Games website contained the following accessibility issues:
- There were no labels on images or image maps.
- There was no access to the sports page index from the schedule page.
- The content of the results table was inaccessible.
The defense of the Olympic Committee
SOCOG said that:
- Issues with alt attributes resolved and tags added to all images.
- Sports pages can be accessed via an alternate path, that is, by typing in the URLs of the pages.
- The site was not subject to the law because it was “promotional”.
- The site was too large and making the website accessible would imply “unjustifiable difficulties”.
- It would require additional infrastructure, time and resources at a cost of $ 2.2 million.
- 1,295 templates should be modified.
- A person who works 8 hours a day would take more than a year to solve the problems.
SOCAG reasons were not accepted
All of the above reasons were conclusively rejected by Australian authorities and expert witnesses.
The Human Rights Committee disagreed that the site was only promotional and said it was a service provided during the Sydney Olympics.
The Commission concluded that having to access the pages by typing a long URL was not a fair deal,
“The proposed alternative is unorthodox and cumbersome and it is not necessary for a sighted person to resort to it.”
Expert witnesses dismissed arguments that the site was too big to change; that is, they refuted the claim that the cost, complexity, and time involved would mean unjustifiable hardships for SOCOG.
The expert witnesses concluded that,
- The changes would take four weeks for a developer with 4-10 helpers.
- Only 394 templates would be needed.
- No new infrastructure would be needed.
- The cost of making the site accessible would be modest.
- Accessibility tags are no different from other tags, so it wouldn’t take longer to add them.
Expert witness Tom Worthington expressed the opinion that the corrections would take less time than the time spent talking about it.
SOCOG lost the case and was ordered to make changes by adding alt attributes, providing access to the Sports pages, and making the results tables accessible. They refused to comply and were fined $ 20,000 (Australian dollars).
The Commission concluded that Bruce Maguire had been discriminated against and that the attitude of SOCOG, which had not taken the complaint seriously, had caused “considerable feelings of pain, humiliation and rejection”.
The Maguire and the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games set a global precedent for the requirement that websites be accessible in countries with similar legislation on disability discrimination.
Links
- The Nublog Reader’s Guide to the Sydney Olympics Accessibility Complaint: [http://www.contenu.nu/socog.html]
- Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission: http://www.hreoc.gov.au/
- Australian Disability Discrimination Act: http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/dda_guide/dda_guide.htm