Disability Discrimination Legislation

The Disability Discrimination Act, which came into force in 1999, makes it illegal for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide them any service which it provides to members of the public. The Code of Practice for the act, published in 2002, makes it clear that this includes websites, so if you are creating a website, you must ensure that it is accessible to disabled users, including those with visual or hearing impairments.
Many visually-impaired users make use of screen readers to view web sites. The screen reader reads the text of the web site aloud, but unfortunately it does not cope well with graphics. This can be overcome by creating an alternate tag for each graphic image, giving a brief text description of the image. When the screen reader encounters this, it reads the text of the tag, letting the user know the content of the image.
Hearing-impaired users are unable to hear sounds on a web site, but once again, an alternate tag can be attached. If the mouse is moved over the link to a sound file, a brief text description is displayed.
The RNIB (Royal National Institute for the Blind) have considered taking legal action with about inaccessible websites, but companies have generally been prepared to make the necessary changes, rather than face legal action. In 2000 a blind user successfully sued the organisers of the Sydney Olympics over their inaccessible web site and several American companies were successfully sued over the accessibility of their websites in 2004.