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Bruce Maguire vs. the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG)

A summary of the pivotal case regarding inaccessible websites and disability discrimination legislation

In June 1999, Bruce Maguire filed a complaint with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission under the Australian Disability Discrimination Act. His complaint was that he was being discriminated against for not being able to access the contents of the Olympic Games website.

As a highly skilled user of a refreshable Braille display, he was used to being able to access content on web pages, however, he was unable to access important content on the Olympic Games website.

He won the case, but the Olympic Committee did not make the required changes, and he was subsequently awarded $20,000 in compensation.

The Olympic Games website contained the following accessibility issues:

• There were no labels on the images or image maps.
• There was no access to the sports page index from the schedule page.
• The content of the results table was inaccessible.

The defense of the Olympic Committee

SOCOG said that:

• Fixed issues with alt attributes and added tags to all images.
• The sports pages could be accessed through an alternative route, that is, by typing the URLs of the pages.
• The site was not subject to the law because it was ‘promotional’.
• The site was too large and making it accessible would involve “unjustifiable hardship.”
• It would require additional infrastructure, time and resources at a cost of $2.2 million.
• 1,295 templates would have to be modified.
• A person working 8 hours a day would take over a year to fix the problems.

SOCAG reasons were not accepted

All of the above reasons were conclusively rejected by the Australian authorities and expert witnesses.

The Human Rights Committee disagreed that the site was promotional only, saying it was a service provided during the Sydney Olympics.

The Commission concluded that having to access pages by typing a long URL did not constitute equal treatment,

“The proposed alternative is unorthodox and cumbersome and it is not necessary for a sighted person to resort to it.”

Expert witnesses rejected claims that the site was too big to change; that is, it refuted the claim that the cost, complexity, and time involved would create unjustifiable hardship for SOCOG.

The experts concluded that

• The changes would take a developer with 4-10 helpers four weeks.
• Only 394 templates would be needed.
• No new infrastructure would be required.
• The cost of making the site accessible would be modest.
• Accessibility tags are no different from other tags, so it wouldn’t take longer to be added.

Expert witness Tom Worthington expressed the opinion that corrections would take less time than the time spent talking about it.

SOCOG lost the case and was ordered to make changes by adding alt attributes, providing access to Sports pages, and making results tables accessible. They refused to comply and were fined $20,000 (Australian dollars).

The Commission found that Bruce Maguire had been discriminated against and that SOCOG’s attitude, which had not taken the complaint seriously, had caused “considerable feelings of pain, humiliation and rejection”.

The Maguire v. Sydney Organizing Committee case set a global precedent relating to the requirement that websites be accessible in countries with similar anti-disability discrimination legislation.

links

• Nublog Reader’s Guide to the Sydney Olympics Accessibility Complaint: [http://www.contenu.nu/socog.html]
• Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission: http://www.hreoc.gov.au/
• Australian Disability Discrimination Act: http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/dda_guide/dda_guide.htm