What is the Online Safety Bill?
The Online Safety Bill is a regulatory framework that has been drafted with the intention of providing legal powers to an independent regulator to identify and regulate illegal and harmful content distributed online.
In her speech on 11 May 2021,the Queen referred to the Online Safety Bill, stating that it will allow the UK to “lead the way in ensuring internet safety for all, especially for children”. The following day the government published the first draft, detailing its plans to regulate the UK’s internet usage.
Who does the Bill apply to?
The Online Safety Bill applies to all online service providers who provide regulated user-to-user services or search services, including social media platforms, online forums and search engines. In terms of jurisdiction, the Bill is intended to extend to organisations who either operate in the UK or whose content can be accessed by users in the UK.
How will the Online Safety Bill operate?
The Bill will establish a “duty of care” between organisations and their users – something the law has yet to tackle. This duty will take the form of a legal obligation to avoid harm caused to individuals by viewing certain types of content. As a result, organisations will be required to self-regulate by preventing the distribution of, as well as removing, illegal and harmful content posted by their users.
They will also be required to undertake additional responsibilities including reporting and redress mechanisms for their users (enabling users to challenge harmful content viewed online), as well as publishing transparency reports detailing the actions they have taken regarding illegal and/or harmful content posted on their platforms.
What constitutes harmful content?
Within the Bill, guidance has been provided to determine what constitutes both illegal and harmful content. Although illegal content is easily defined, identifying content that is legal but harmful is subjective, and therefore poses a challenge.
However, the proposed Bill has sought to define harmful content, stating that a piece of content will be deemed harmful to adults if the “provider of the service has reasonable grounds to believe that the nature of the content is such that there is a material risk of the content having, or indirectly having, a significant adverse physical or psychological impact on an adult of ordinary sensibilities”.
How far will the Bill go in terms of what it deems as content?
The Bill defines content as “anything communicated by means of an internet service, whether publicly or privately, including written material or messages, oral communications, photographs, videos, visual images, music and data of any description”. Thus, the Bill is intended to apply to content that has been published publicly – for example, content posted on a public social media account – and privately.
What are the sanctions for non-compliance?
Ofcom, the elected independent regulator, will be given powers to sanction companies up to £18 million or 10% of annual global turnover (whichever is higher) for non-compliance. Ofcom will also be afforded powers to seek court orders to disrupt the activities of non-compliant providers, where it is deemed that individuals in the UK are at risk of significant harm. In addition to this, the draft Bill provides the government with deferred powers to introduce a new criminal offence for senior managers, if deemed necessary, in order to seek their compliance.
Potential issues and challenges
On examining the first draft of the Bill, it is notable that its implementation is likely to give rise to a number of issues.
Because the Bill defines content as “anything communicated by means of an internet service, whether publicly or privately”, there may be a conflict with laws concerning individual privacy and freedom of expression. Although the Bill states that certain types of content will be exempt (such as paid adverts, individual live interactions, product reviews, and content from recognised news publishers), determining when it is permissible to access private conversations could be problematic and runs a risk of infringing those rights. The line between compliance with the Bill and the right to freedom of expression is subjective, and this is therefore likely to prove challenging.
Ministers have stated that they have added measures to the Bill to prevent a legal grey area with the potential to infringe upon individuals’ human rights, ensuring that “necessary online protections do not lead to unnecessary censorship”. However, the right to freedom of expression is a qualified right and can be restricted in certain circumstances. Restricting free speech to avoid the publication of illegal content is clearly justifiable, but it remains to be seen whether the application of the Bill in respect of “legal but harmful content” will lead to claims of rights being infringed.
Furthermore, criticisms have emerged from the Financial Conduct Authority, the City of London Police, and the Investment Association concerning the Bill’s clear omission of measures to govern online fraud involving organisations that fall within its remit. With the FT Adviser, the Cabinet Office and Detica reporting that investment frauds account for 25% of all financial losses – with online financial fraud cases costing approximately £3.1 billion per year in the UK – it is difficult to understand why such a prominent issue has been omitted.
The Bill will be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by a joint committee of MPs prior to a final version being formally introduced to Parliament for debate later this year. The proceedings will be closely observed in the hope that they will provide further clarification on the extent of the application of the Bill and the way in which it will govern interactive tech platforms. Until then, although the objectives are clear, some questions remain on the detail.
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We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email webrequests@digitalis.com
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to webrequests@digitalis.com