Is your intranet breaking the law?

February 10, 2010 at 10:42 am | Posted in application, best practice, governance, intranet, publishing, standards, usability, user testing, web accessibility | 6 Comments
Tags: accessibility, applications, best practice, bt intranet, content, publishing, standards, value

My intranet could be breaking the law! Why? What? How?

Well if you have information or applications that is not accessible to everyone then you could be. Everyone, whether they have any impairment or not, need to have the same experience when using any intranet information or applications.

Legislation and codes of practice based on the WCAG web accessibility guidelines apply in most countries. US Section 508 and UK DDA 1995 being two of many examples I know of.

In BT we aim to achieve WCAG 2.0 standard. This is above the likely legal requirement for UK DDA 1995 and, more importantly, sets best practice for all users of BT’s intranet so they have a good experience whatever they use, whether they are impaired or not.

How are we doing this? Well, apart from my last post on how to use it as a lever for wider improvements, BT:

Prevents web accessibility errors by training, clauses in contracts to buy web services, standards embedded in content templates
Identifies and corrects web accessibility errors using an automated checker tool
Guides users on how to use your browser, computer more accessibly.

Follow the right approach and you won’t get a nasty surprise. It only takes one discriminated user and you could have a really big problem to solve.

Prevention is much, much, cheaper and better than curing a problem like this.

6 Comments »

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I very much appreciate that you giving accessibility some additional attention.

There are several other legal requirements when it comes to intranets though, e.g. most countries have strict laws about the usage of employee photos. As an intranet manager in a publicly-traded company like BT you also have follow laws around investor / insider related information.

Perhaps you could do a follow-up posting with another catchy headline that lists the legal requirements that are a part of your role ?

Cheers, Janus

Comment by Janus Boye— February 10, 2010 #

Reply
- Janus,
  
  Thanks for your comment. Well you know me by now. Anything for a challenge!
  
  I’ll have a think and ask around and try to meet your request. Content copyright and digital image rights come to mind. Maybe others reading this can suggest others?
  
  Mark
  
  Comment by markmorrell— February 17, 2010 #
  
  Reply
Thanks for highlighting this issue. In response to Janus I wrote a briefing paper on legal issues for intranet managers in 2007 and it’s on the home page of my web site at http://www.intranetfocus.com. It is a very popular download. I have to admit it does not cover investor information – time for an update! Despite that I have been working for a truly blue chip client somewhere in Europe and they had absolutely no idea of what I was talking about. One of the best books on the subject is reviewed at http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue56/white-rvw/. It is a subject that is given very little coverage in web design books published in the USA.

Martin

Comment by Martin White— February 10, 2010 #

Reply
- Martin,
  
  Thanks for your comments and links which I will follow up. I may have to write a book too if I start to cover BT’s investor/insider relationship responsibilities and how we comply with OFCOM on all regulatory matters!
  
  One thing is certain, Janus does like to provoke a conversation doesn’t he?
  
  Mark
  
  Comment by markmorrell— February 17, 2010 #
  
  Reply
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Mark Morrell Intranet Pioneer