As an online business, operating your online presence within the regulations and law is of utmost importance; for multiple reasons beyond avoiding the wrath of the law… are you taking the necessary steps to protect your company website? Beyond your website looking good there are several considerations which must be addressed for your website to ’stand up in court’.
The Disability Discrimination Act
First and foremost, how accessible is your website? The Disability Discrimination Act makes it unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public; online, this means that businesses must ensure that they make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to their website to ensure that users of all abilities can access it. The Sydney Olympic committee was successfully sued for $1 million in 2000 by a blind man for its failing to provide an adequately accessible website. Although an Australian case it, along with similar cases in the American courts, demonstrates that web accessibility is not an issue to be ignored.
The Web Accessibility Initiative outlines the essential components of web accessibility; providing guidance and best practice standards for creating an accessible website.
Copyright
Along with the website architecture your content and text requires careful consideration. Copyright theft is a common occurrence that can easy happen by mistake, and is a crime which can result in costly legal proceedings. When populating your website always be certain to never copy or incorporate any text, images, videos or music from another website without obtaining the permission of the owner. To do so would amount to a breach of copyright and make your business liable for damages.
Further issues can arise when commissioning third parties to produce copyright work on behalf of your company, for example photography or video; unless specifically requested you will not own the copyrights in that work therefore limiting what you can do with it.
If material on the website is copyright then to inform visitors and to prevent such material being copied notice should be clearly posted on the company website informing users of their rights.





















will turn our attention to B2B, an industry which can be incredibly quiet over the Christmas period we have put together some handy tips and advice on how to get visitors to your website and how to use online marketing techniques to keep your business busy this festive period.




