One Year Since the Enforcement of the Revised Act for Eliminating Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities

While today marks the beginning of a new fiscal year for many organizations, it is also, as mentioned in the title, exactly one year since enforcemnt of the Revised Act for Eliminating Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities (hereinafter referred to as the "Revised Law") (in Japanese) commenced.

In previously published Columns, I have covered the Revised Law multiple times - so, some readers may feel they have already read enough on the theme already (however, I hope that they continue reading until the end).

As far as I know, there have been no quantitative survey results published on the degree of website accessibility improvements in Japan over the past year. So, and despite knowing that there’s little correlation with actual website accessibility, I checked Google Trends data to view the tendencies in "web accessibility" searches over the past 12 months.

When viewing the charts, numbers are around half what they were compared to the peak in May to June 2024. This trend reflects the number of accessibility-related consultations received by our company, which, after the spring and summer of last year, has generally stabilized (for reasons unknown).

Additionally, as part of my activities with the Web Accessibility Infrastructure Committee , I have been sharing, on social media, accessibility policies and test results based on JIS X 8341-3. Through a simple investigation using Google Alerts , I do not feel that efforts to improve web accessibility have increased compared to before the enforcement of the Revised Law.

Therefore, and although this is a personal and subjective impression, I haven’t felt that Japan’s web accessibility-levels have clearly advanced due to the enforcement of the law. If we assume that the enforcement of the Revised Law has not been a driving force for progress and that accessibility is viewed more as a passing trend, what might be the cause of this?

There are many possible hypotheses, but the most plausible one in my view is that there is still a misconception in both the industry and society that web accessibility is required only for people with disabilities or the elderly.

Indeed, people with disabilities and the elderly (not just in the web context) need accessibility - and they are likely to benefit more directly from accessible websites. However, to assume that other users do not benefit from improvements in accessibility is completely mistaken.

Regardless of a user's age or disability status, and regardless of the hardware (PC, smartphone, tablet, etc.) or software (OS, web browser, etc.) they use, the web is supposed to be accessible to everyone. To achieve this, high-quality accessible content is essential. Therefore, I believe there is still a need to continue raising awareness about this basic notion.

Before I end, a final note on related seminars. From April to June this year, I will be hosting (re-running) three online seminars on various aspects of web accessibility. These seminars are perfect for those who want to learn more and start enhancing web accessibility.

Please note that the above seminars will be in Japanese. Thank you for reading, and I sincerely look forward to your participation.