Maguire v SOCOG — the 2000 Ruling That Made an Inaccessible Website Unlawful Discrimination in Australia

On 7 June 1999, Bruce Maguire, a blind Sydney resident, filed a complaint with Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) alleging that the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) had discriminated against him under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 by failing to provide Braille ticketing information, a Braille souvenir programme, and - critically - a website he could use with a screen reader.
On 24 August 2000, HREOC found that a website constitutes a "service" under the Disability Discrimination Act and that SOCOG had unlawfully discriminated against Maguire. SOCOG was ordered to add alt text to images and image maps and to make the Sports Index and Results Tables pages accessible before the Games began; when the Commission found SOCOG had only partially complied, it awarded Maguire AUD 20,000 in damages for the hurt and humiliation caused.
This was one of the first rulings anywhere in the world to treat an inaccessible website as unlawful disability discrimination, and it underpins Australia's current position that federal digital services must meet WCAG 2.1 AA. But the practice is a single legal ruling, not an ongoing programme: SOCOG's partial compliance even after losing shows that a favourable judgment does not by itself guarantee remediation, and Australia still lacks a published, agency-by-agency compliance reporting framework for its accessibility standard a quarter-century later.

Read the full analysis: https://www.humanrights.gov.au/bruce-lindsay-maguire-v-sydney-organising-committee-olympic-games-respondent-h-99115-2000