#ZachsLaw: world leading legislation

What is Zach's Law?

The Online Safety Bill is legislation which includes measures to keep UK users safe online. It will make social media companies more responsible for their users’ safety on their platforms and will tackle issues including promotion of self-harm and cyberflashing. 

For many years, people with epilepsy were targeted by internet trolls sending malicious flashing images with the deliberate intent to trigger a seizure. We understand the emotional and physical harm this caused for people with epilepsy. One of the people targeted was a eight-year-old boy with cerebral palsy and epilepsy called Zach.

Zach was doing a sponsored walk - his first unaided - for the Epilepsy Society when he was targeted by online bullies. The Epilepsy Society has campaigned since 2020 for the Online Safety Bill to criminalise the sending of flashing images and GIFs aimed at causing seizures and harming people with epilepsy. We have called this campaign #ZachsLaw. In December 2022, the Government agreed to include Zach's Law in the Online Safety Bill. In September 2023, the Bill passed and became the law of the land.

We were also in contact with a number of social media platforms to work to reduce risk to people with epilepsy online, including Twitter, TikTok, GIPHY, Tenor and Facebook.

The campaign 

Prior to the Government's announcement in December 2022 that Zach's Law would be enacted, the Epilepsy Society enjoyed a number of other campaign wins, including:

• In July 2021, the Law Commission backed Zach's Law in their report Modernising Communications Offences (PDF opens in new tab). This was a crucial step in securing Zach's Law. Once we had the backing of the Commission, which reviews existing law and recommends new laws, we knew that politicians were more likely to listen to - and understand - our campaign. The report stated:

"We recommend that the intentional sending of flashing images to a person with epilepsy with the intention to cause that person to have a seizure should be made an offence."

• Following this, the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill, an important cross-party parliamentary committee set up to scrutinise online legislation, also backed Zach's Law. And in January 2022, the Culture Select Committee gave Zach's Law its seal of approval.
• We hosted an online safety roundtable (video below), attended by both Conservative and Labour MPs
• We were featured in national newspapers including the Daily Express and Metro (opens in metro.co.uk)
• To cap it off, in June 2022 the Zach's Law campaign won both a Mark of Excellence award at the CIPR Excellence awards and Best Advocacy Campaign at the Purpose awards. And, in September 2022 we won Campaigning Team of the Year at the Charity Times awards. 
• In October 2022, Zach met with 11 MPs in Parliament, all of whom were thrilled to meet him and thank him for his tireless campaigning 

The campaign was mentioned several times in Parliament, including by MPs Suzanne Webb, Dean Russell and Kim Leadbeater.