Home > Web Services > Resources > Our news
PAS 78 Launches
13 MARCH 2006
This week at the Novotel London West Conference Centre the long anticipated PAS 78 was launched to a full house. Speakers included Anne McGuire Minister for Disability, Michael Burton of the DRC, Julie Howell of the RNIB and AbilityNet’s Robin Christopherson and Jon Gooday.
PAS (Publicly Available Specification) 78 launched by the British Standards Institution (BSI) is a set of guidelines on how to make websites more user-friendly for disabled people. It is a good practice guide particularly aimed at the people responsible for commissioning and maintaining public-facing sites.
Since 1999 under the DDA all UK organisations with websites have been legally obliged to make them disabled-friendly. The new PAS 78 guidelines are a practical guide which will help site owners and developers stay on the right side of the law.
PAS 78 covers a number of different areas:
- Commissioning, building, publishing and maintaining a website
- Defining an accessibility policy
- The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Guidelines – why they are important and which ones to follow
- How to check that a site conforms to best practice
- Additional measures that go beyond WAI guidance
AbilityNet’s Jon Gooday was pleased to be part of the panel developing these guidelines. To obtain a copy of the guidelines contact BSI Customer Services on 020 8996 9001 or visit http://www.bsi-global.com/ICT/PAS78/index.xalter
PAS 78 also highlights the importance of involving disabled people in the development process of any website. AbilityNet can help you with this through our disabled user testing service, for more information visit http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/content/webaccess/Accessweb.htm#Disabled or contact us on accessibility@abilitynet.org.uk
An excellent article on the PAS can be found at http://www.out-law.com/page-6713.