M2: Legal and Ethical

I am building a website for BDQ I will consider legal and ethical issues that may occur and how I will avoid them. I will need to acknowledge this in order to make sure I follow all the rules, during the production of my website. The legal points which will affect my website is copyright, data protection act and accessibility. Ethical issues which I will need to consider is misrepresentation and offensive comments or videos within my website.

The first legal issue i need to consider when I am making my website is the copyright law. This is when someone creates their own original content, such as images or videos, they then own the rights to this content and has control who can or cant use is. therefore when creating my own website I will need to make sure I take my own images and videos, that I want to include in my website. For example, I will need to take my own images of the DJ'S and hosts of the breakfast show, or even use copyright free images off websites such as Pexels. Pexels have assets that people can use for free.

 

To take my own images for my website I am going to have to use my own models, because of this I will need to have a model release form, as my website will be published on to the web. This is needed so both the photographer and the model know when and where the photos are being used and what content surrounds the image on the website. A model release form gives the photographer the right to have access to images of that specific person.

Another legal problem is the data protection act. This is used to have control of personal information that is used by a certain organisation or company, which protects people and has specific rules about how data about people can be used. The data protection act has eight different principles which needs to be followed in order to follow the legal rules. "Organisations must be open about their reasons for obtaining personal data and what they plan to use it for. They should only use the personal data for the purpose they originally said it would be used for." The 8 Principles of Data Protection & GDPR - VinciWorks Blog. Therefore, as my website has a contact form on my website I will make sure to only get information which I need is relevant and necessary to be entered in for a shout out on the breakfast show. I will make sure that the information which is given is secure and will only be used for the purposes of this website, following all the legal requirements. 

The final legal issue which will need to be viewed is accessibility. This means that companies and organisations cannot be biased against people because of their age, gender, sexuality and their disabilities. 'A visually-impaired internet user can use a screen reader to translate the contents of web pages using speech synthesisers or Braille displays. The user will struggle to understand web pages if, for example, images are displayed on the page without text alternative. In HTML, alt attributes should be added to all image tags.'Disabled access to websites under UK law (pinsentmasons.com) As a result of this when making my website I will make it diverse, therefore everyone can use it easily. To make sure that I include all ethnicities I will include images on my website of people from all different ethnic groups so that everyone feels included. The content on my website will be written in clear sans serif font which has a mid size text, to make sure that is easy to read and accessibly for people who may be visually impaired or struggles to read. My menu bar on my website will always stick at the top of page, when you scroll, and the button stay the same size at a larger font, therefore people who have Parkinsons or don't have fully form limbs can still navigate through my website. People who need to go through websites using screen readers, I will make sure that my images and videos has ALT text, as this will describe what the image is on or what is going on in the video. 

An ethical issue is the offence which could potentially be hurtful content towards specific audiences. In my website I will include bloopers on the BDQ website, however my client will need to make sure that the client doesn't upload anything which could offend anyone. Which will result to members of the public who view the website complaining about the website as it may target people and have a negative effect on them.  I am preventing offence on my website as I am not allowing viewers to comment on the blooper videos which they watch to try make sure that no one is hurt by what is said. Within this, misrepresentation can be a problem as when I am creating my website as I don't want to give off false information about the content on my website. However, when I give my client this website it will be hard to make sure that nothing on it is 'fake news' as I won't have control of the daily content which is posted.  

In conclusion I will be mindful of the legal and ethical laws when creating my website. If I go against any of the rules discussed as my client may be sued and make sure my client is aware of the issues before posting content on the website.