IT Matters July 2010 

Open to all - is your website accessible?
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (“DDA”) outlaws discrimination in the supply of information against anyone with a disability. Any information held on websites should be accessible and usable by people with visual, auditory or other disabilities, and by older web users who may have particular accessibility needs. Organisations who fail to make their websites accessible could face legal action from affected users.

The Equality Act 2010 is  expected to come into force later this year and will require website owners to take steps to ensure that any information on their website is provided in an accessible format, and will also allow any person who cannot access information on a website due to his or her disability to complain to the website host and require that the website is taken down.

Website hosts are likely to err on the side of caution and comply with a request to take a potentially discriminatory website down rather than risk further action from the complainant. This could be particularly damaging to people who sell goods or services online. 

 
Website owners can use existing technologies to improve accessibility for those with disabilities or special accessibility needs. For example, accessibility for the visually impaired can be improved by making available facilities to increase font size or to utilise text to speech technology.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (known as WCAG) help web designers and developers create websites that better meet the needs of disabled and older users.

The current version 2.0 of WCAG applies to different types of web technologies and is designed to be relevant to evolving technologies. WCAG 2.0 includes 12 guidelines, each of which can be tested at three levels: A, AA and AAA, the latter being the strongest level of compliance. Websites may be tested for conformance with the guidelines using specific criteria, and there is extensive documentation to help designers test their websites against such criteria.

Website owners should check compliance with WCAG 2.0 in order to avoid any claims that their website is inaccessible, and reduce the risk of the website being taken offline.  Any website owner whose website complies with the previous version 1.0 of WCAG should check again since the website may not comply with the current version of WCAG and their website may not meet the required standards. 
The relevant documents and resources relating to WCAG 2.0, may be obtained from http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.php
 
BSkyB v Electronic Data Systems
HP Enterprise Services UK Limited (formerly known as Electronic Data Systems Limited) (“EDS”) has agreed to pay BSkyB Limited (“Sky”) a total of £318m in settlement of a long running legal battle in which EDS was found liable for deceit, misrepresentation and breach of contract.

In 2000, Sky awarded EDS the contract to design and implement a customer relationship management system following a competitive tender process. Sky claimed that EDS had lied during the tender process by describing the system as "proven" when it was not, by overstating its capabilities in relation to resources and implementation methodologies and by understating the amount of time and cost required to implement the system. This led Sky to select EDS in favour of other bidders.

The judgment, which was handed down in January of this year, upheld Sky’s claim that EDS had lied in respect of the amount of time required to complete the project. As a result the £30 million contractual cap on damages in the contract did not apply.
The £318million settlement figure covers damages costs and interest and includes the £270 million interim payments which were paid by EDS during February of this year.

Although there is emphasis in the judgment on the dishonest conduct of the person who led the bid team and confirmation that only one of five allegations of fraud against EDS succeeded, suppliers of IT systems should take great care in writing tenders and making sales proposals – to ensure that they do not mislead prospective customers.

In particular, suppliers should learn from the decision in Sky v EDS by taking the steps to guard against any risk of fraud. These may include:

• Vetting people engaged to take up senior sales roles, taking up references and validating qualifications and experience. If an applicant is willing to lie during the job application process, he may lie during the sales process particularly where there is financial incentive linked to volume or value of sales.
• Reviewing of any sales / bid team training programmes, flagging up the risks to the business if any member of the sales team makes fraudulent misrepresentations during any part of the sales process.
• Reviewing bid templates and checking representations or claims made in the standard text within them.
• Instituting an independent review process to check and seek validation for the claims and representations made in bid documents prior to submission.