“British Standard” for accessibility to launch 8 March
This post is obsolete. See post-launch report instead.
The long-awaited PAS 78 from the British Standards Institute and Disability Rights Commission will be released on March 8th. It’s the first formal guide to commissioning accessible websites, and is pitched at business people.
I got an invitation to the launch bash as I was one of the team who reviewed the draft of the document. This involved teams of earnest people following me around for weeks with a clipboard and microphone, like Boswell following Doctor Johnson, recording my every utterance on matters accessibility. Well, OK, not really; I added my comments to a Word document and sent it back a couple of weeks later.
I recommended not being so hard on Flash and PDF, putting the glossary at the back and having better jokes, so I’ll be interested to see whether they’ve taken notice of my comments or incorporated the joke I sent them (the one about the blind man, a deaf man and a man in a wheelchair in a brothel).
So, if you’re off to the bash, I’ll see you there! Then, when the hangover’s gone, I can start reading it to see what it really recommends. Hopefully it’ll be concise, non-partisan and clear, so that business people can commission more inclusive websites, and be armed with enough information to quickly spot the snakeoil salesmen and show them the door.
(The venue’s web site is a triumph of shiteness. How much does it cost to stay the night before? Buggered if I know. Think I’ll stay somewhere else ….)
15 Responses to “ “British Standard” for accessibility to launch 8 March ”
will be interesting to do a comparison of your proper british standards to the other standards that are out there.
Hello
The PAS isn’t a British Standard.
You can probably most accurately describe it as ‘guidance’ or even ‘code of practice’.
I’m reasonably confident that were there to be any UK Disability Discrimination Act cases in the courts regarding websites the guidance set out in the PAS would be taken into consideration.
But the PAS is not a standard nor is it the law in itself. Standards and laws can take years to produce. A PAS is a very different beast (not least because it is non-consensus).
Julie
Bruce - I’ll be there (just found out now). Might see you there - or have another episode of “half-a-row-away” syndrome.
Mike
I may well be there, provided work see the usefulness of it. If they don’t, I may even do it by taking some leave (although I’d hate to waste the few days I’ve got left)
Mike, don’t listen to Bruce. The person with the wonderbra will obviously be me. No, hang on a minute, I don’t need my wonderbra… and of course, I don’t have it any more, I lent it to Bruce, that’s right.
And no Bruce, I will not share a hotel room with you so please stop asking me.
It promises to be a really interesting event. Anyone who calls the PAS ‘a standard’ will be going over my knee, though, in a Kill Bill vol.1 style…
And the codeword is ‘PAStastic’.
Bruce, Julie, oookay. I’m not that good with super secret pass phrases… but sounds like fun.
Redux, will be great to catch up with you again. PS. The YumYum girl is coming along too. 
PAS 78 is great news, but unless you’re a BSI subscriber, it’s only available as a £60 hard copy.
Net result: very few people will read it.
Any chance the BSI could make an exception for this document and publish it online?
Hi Bruce
>> the price has been reduced to £30 > Any commercial organisation that isn’t prepared to shell out that small sum isn’t the kind to spend the time making their site accessible, anyway Don’t Make Me Think. Something a project manager can digest in around one minute and find difficult to forget.
Whatever — thanks for this site and congratulations on producing the PAS 78 document.
Sam
Oops — look like my last replied got messed up.
Gist was…
- the “barrier to entry” to accessibility documentation needs to be very, very, very low
- organisations reluctant to shell out for PAS 78 are (paradoxically) the ones that need to change
- a simple, compelling website (along the lines of Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think) might be better.
Cheers
Sam Dutton
Great to see PAS 78 is now free:
http://www.drc.org.uk/library/website_accessibility_guidance/pas_78.aspx
My hope for this document is that it does actually address the issue of the client wanting the site to sing, dance, ride a bike, make the coffee, fry eggs and still expecting us to make it all lovely standards.
In short I hope it doesn’t add to the ‘you’re a web designer, perform me a miracle’ way of thinking.