UK legislates for Braille porn websites

Webmasters who do not make their wesites accessible to blind users face financial penalty, imprisonment or even transportation or death, we can reveal.

This is the implication of the UK's latest amendment to the Disability Discrimination Act. Reaction for the virtual community has been swift and damning. One veteran cybernaut called it "surreal". Another was more scathing: "What are these wacked-out wankers smoking? They're all barking mad!"

The new legislation makes it a criminal offence punishable by up to 56 years in Bellmarsh prison or a £500,000 fine, for websites to deny access to disabled users. However, trying to find information about the Act on the Net is proving more difficult than locating a WMD with 50,000 troops and 20,000 aerial reconnaissance photographs. We trawled the world-wide-wait for three days and came up empty handed. Two of the most gung-ho advocates for "accessible" websites are the Byzantine DRB (Disabled Rights Board) and the short-sighted RNIVC (Royal National Institute for the Visually Challenged).

When we contacted the DRB, a spokesperson told us: "We have no specific information about the specifics of what websites need to do in order to meet the legal requirements specifically specified in the Act."

"We're not 'denying' access to anybody," snapped one anonymous British internet service provider we spoke to. "If the blind want to watch our movie channel, there's nothing to stop them, but I'll be buggered if I'm going to spend millions knocking together a Braille chatroom where blind paedophiles can groom Home Counties teenagers."

"The Act as it stands is total cobblers so far as the Web is concerned," commented another, unnamed webmaster. "I thought the UK was supposed to be a democracy? Since when have the rights of a tiny minority been grounds to discriminate against the millions who are not — and have no intention of becoming — disabled?"

"Fuc*king brilliant!" ejaculated Greg Foulson, the forthright founder of "Web Watchers Anonymous" — an online organisation dedicated to promoting the human rights of webmasters world-wide. "These guys are so far up their own butts you couldn't prize them out with a fuc*king can opener!" Mr Foulson, 36, a native of Sunnydale, California, was clearly not very happy about the potential impact of the UK's draconian Disability Discrimination Act on the multi-million dollar cyber-porn empire he runs from Britain. He did not mince his words when we interviewed him at his plush office on the 26th floor of the Blair Heights in London's docklands.

"What the fuc*k do they expect me to do?" he snarled in his abrasive American accent. "Re-code my sites in virtual Braille and invent 3D LCD screens so they rub their grubby fingers over my models' tits? What planet are you Brits living on? I left the States to get away from all this shit and now you dumb fucks wanna lock me up? Man, you guys are basket cases!"

Other webmasters we spoke to were equally dismissive of the new legislation. "What next?" said one. "Online Radio for the Deaf? Street signs in Braille?" Another lashed out at the wave of "political correctness" sweeping the nation: "Pretty soon only deaf, one-eyed, legless, lesbian psycho bitches will be left in this bloody country. All the rest of us will be imprisoned on some tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic, guarded by Saddam Hussein. Is that what you want, eh?"

Have to do-gooders gone too far this time? We put our concerns to Lady Camilla Parker-Gossard, the President of the RNIVC.

"The Institute acknowledges that service Providers may face some special challenges in meeting the legal requirements of the Act," cooed the slim, sophisticated, twenty-seven-year old former lady-in-waiting to Her Imperial Majestyness Liz II. "That's why we've extended the deadline for ISPs to 15 October 2004."

"Don't you think seven months is a little short to come up with a way of transmitting digital images in a format that is accessible to the blind?" we asked.

"Not really," replied the ravishing reformer with a radiant smile. "Those television-thingies can be modified, can't they? Or one could have knobbly mouse-mats and special mice that read the knobbles couldn't one?"

"Are you seriously suggesting that webmasters come up with ways to allow blind people to see pictures of naked women in compromising positions?"

"Well — I don't know about naked," said Lady Camilla with a becoming blush. "If we can send men to mars and invent liquid soap, I'm sure webmasters can overcome the trifling challenges that face them in meeting the requirements of the Act."

"And if they don't?"

"Since 2 December 1996 it has been unlawful for service providers to treat disabled people less favourably for any reason related to their disability," retorted the posh President primly. "The Act makes it quite clear that service providers have a legal obligation to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ in relation to the physical features of their premises to overcome physical barriers to disabled access."

"What will happen to service providers that fail to meet the requirements of the law after 15 October 2004?"

"A service provider must comply with the duty to make reasonable adjustments in order to avoid committing an act of unlawful discrimination," repeated the redoubtable reformer."

"And if they don't?" we persisted.

"Fines, community service or prison!" snapped the curvaceous crusader, crushingly.

All the webmasters we spoke to remain unconvinced that there is any technology that would allow them to make images of "cum-slurping sluts" accessible to the blind. When we tried to speak to the UK's Minister for the Disabled, the aptly name Eileen Over, we were told that she was attending a conference in Wacko, Texas on Discrimination Against Short, Fat Bitches with Red Hair.

More of Ms Givings' ground-breaking investigative journalism can be found here.