PAS 78

PAS 78: Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites is a Publicly Available Specification published on March 8, 2006 by the British Standards Institution (BSI) in collaboration with the Disability Rights Commission (DRC). It provides guidance to organisations in how to go about commissioning an accessible website from a design agency. It describes what is expected from websites to comply with the UK Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), making websites accessible to and usable by disabled people

In December 2010, PAS 78 was superseded by the full British Standard that evolved from it: BS 8878:2010 Web accessibility Code of Practice.

BS 8878 continues PAS 78’s emphasis on providing guidance to non-technical website owners for the whole process of commissioning, procuring and producing accessible websites, updating it to handle:

The principal audience are businesses within the UK, but it is a relevant document for charity and volunteer organisations, as well as local and central government. It is also a useful document for web design agencies and web developers as a guide to what is expected of them. It is written from a business perspective and describes the web standards and usability testing needed for producing accessible websites.

At the PAS 78 launch the DRC's Legal Operations Director, Nick O'Brien confirmed that PAS 78 would be used in supporting evidence in a court case against businesses that run inaccessible websites. Although the DRC has so far been conciliatory rather than litigious towards businesses running inaccessible websites, that approach could now change with the publication of PAS 78.

Julie Howell, author of PAS 78 says, "PAS 78 reminds website designers to consult disabled people and involve them in testing their designs at every stage of the site development cycle. Research published by the Disability Rights Commission in 2004 showed that testing with disabled users may uncover 45 per cent more accessibility problems than testing with software alone."

In April 2004 the DRC (Disability Rights Commission - UK government body) published its findings about the accessibility of 1000 UK websites and found that 81% of websites tested failed to reach basic levels of web accessibility (Level A compliance to the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). To alleviate the confusion within UK businesses about their obligations under the DDA, one of the DRC's recommendations was to establish a best practice in how to commission websites that are accessible. PAS 78 is that set of best practice guidelines.

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