While its clear that in the modern web enabled world both business and government must ensure their websites are compliant with a variety of web accessibility standards, what is often overlooked is that the tools to maintain those websites should be equally compliant.
If your website isn't accessible then your clearly discriminating against your users. What's less well known is that if your IT environment is not accessible, then you could also be discriminating against your employees. While cases of discrimination brought by users are relatively few and far between, cases brought by employees are far more frequent and equally damaging to an organisation's reputation.
In Australia, the Disability Discrimination Act ("DDA") applies to all employers. It's aim is to prevent direct or indirect discrimination to disabled employees. If an employer's IT systems have the effect of "disadvantaging a person with a disability" then this may constitute indirect discrimination. Clearly, if an IT system is harder to use by a person with a disability then this may disadvantage that person. If its impossible to use by a person with a disability then the IT system starts to look like a flight of steps to a person in a wheelchair.
The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines ("WCAG") form the commonly accepted standard for web accessibility. Its adoption in October 2012 as an ISO/IEC International Standard (ISO/IEC 40500) was expected to result in "internationally harmonized uptake of WCAG 2.0 by governments, business, and the broader Web community" and this has certainly been the result. Accordingly, it's pretty hard to argue against using WCAG 2.0 as a benchmark for assessing content accessibility.
In addition to the general requirements that flow from the DDA, government agencies are subject to additional requirements in relation to their websites. The Australian Government has endorsed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.0 for all government websites and by the end of 2014, all government websites must be level AA (Double A) compliant.
Non WCAG 2.0 compliant content management systems arguably constitute indirect discrimination as for a disabled user they could have the effect of disadvantaging that person.
It is a defence to a claim of indirect discrimination for an employer to establish that it was reasonable. It may well be hard to establish that the discrimination is reasonable when WCAG 2.0 compliant content management systems that are available.
Our own Kontent CMS is fully WCAG 2.0 AA compliant. What's the point of a CMS that produces compliant output when the admin, author and editor interfaces are not WCAG 2.0 compliant?
GKY Internet is one of Australia's leading internet solution providers delivering innovative and cutting edge web and mobile application development, hosting and integration services to business and government. We supply a total package end-to-end solution which is unmatched in the industry in terms of expertise, responsiveness, reliability and cost.
Our services cover the entire range of web and mobile business applications including web development, mobile app development, interface design, data integration middleware, remote monitoring, web accessibility compliance auditing and web consulting.
Our products include the Kontent modular content management system, Remmon our advanced remote monitoring service, WebISS our interactive mapping spacial system which provides a high speed web front end for geographic information systems (GIS) data.