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When the Government gets down to the detail of defining required accessibility regulations for miniature golf facilities, it's going a bit too far...

"What good is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_device_for_the_deaf

http://www.access-board.gov/telecomm/rule.htm

While the common use of TDD is for deaf, they usually have a speechless mode of data entry that a mute person could use.

Since we're talking about removing rights of free speech from people who have joined a corporation, you're question is actually relevant, but I suspect you were trying to claim that the "right to be heard" is somehow involved in not being able to speak at all. You're right, silencing people is bad, but forcing others to listen to everything someone has a right to say is, if not worse, as bad.

Imagine the laws: "you will watch TV tonight at 7PM so you can hear the free speech from the following individuals. Your viewing will be monitored and you will have to answer a quiz to test your comprehension." The "right to be heard" is not implied in the right to free speech, as much as some people would like it to be.

Awesome. So does this mean that section 508 has to be extended to non-governmental entities, too? (Btw, /., you're in violation; I see at least two non-text elements without text equivalents while I'm typing on this page.)

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/refresh/draft-rule.htm

http://www.access-board.gov/508.htm

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/refresh/draft-rule.htm

http://www.access-board.gov/508.htm

FISMA is only one federal IT requirement. If Microsoft really wants to play hardball, they will point out how much more accessible are their products to people with disabilities who rely upon assistive technology. Section 508 requires the Federal government to procure accessible software when commercially available. Microsoft does a good job with this. Google, only middling (Apps is not even listed).

wow, I had not even considered that. There is a reason for the 508 rules.

You wanted to provide the link to the actual proposed 508 new rules as published in the Federal Register in March: http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/refresh/draft-rule.htm. There are differences from WCAG 2.0 just as the current 508 rules differ from WCAG 1.0.

HOWEVER, those are just the proposed new rules for Government websites whereas what the developer really wanted to know is what rules will be imposed on non-Government websites. As far as I know the process hasn't gotten as far as any committee reviewing the rules for Government websites and deciding which ones are reasonable to impose upon private sites.

That definition was the useless language that created most of the problems. "Includes but is not limited to..."

From this, you get to Casey Martin suing the PGA under ADA that the requirement to walk a golf course during a tournament is discrimination. Yes, ADA requires professional athletes be allowed to change the rules of the game to meet their needs, personally, I'm waiting for a motorized wheel chair in the 100M dash.

But as Sinistar2k points out, I missed the The Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA) that attempted to remediate some of these shortfalls (albeit 18 years too late).

Section 508?

I am not in the habit of responding to ACs, but you ask so nicely!

The technique of implementing a parallel text-only site is one that is explicitly allowed by 508 and WCAG 1.0 and still favored by some experts, advocates, and end-users. For a variety of reasons, but mostly because of failures with implementations, the idea has long fallen out of favor and does not appear at all in WCAG 2.0 as a consequence.

For a web comic, I would recommend longdesc with the dialog. The Java site might be even more straightforward with things like: alt="screen shot of rendered code as described in the next paragraph". The thought exercise I like to recommend is to ask yourself: How would you read the page to an informed colleague over the phone?

Authors new to accessibility tend to get hung up on how hard it is to provide text equivalents when really all that is needed most of the time is text alternatives which "at least provide descriptive identification of the non-text content". This change in language from WCAG 1.0 to 2.0 is quite deliberate. If you make the paradigm shift from thinking of the web as a visual medium to that of an information medium, you will be on the right track.

I don't think blind people could use my computer

but computers exist for the blind to use, and Apple has every right not to compete in that market segment.

Similarly, phones exist which blind people can use. iPhone is not one of them. That's fine.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/ - Result: Failed validation, 20 errors / Failed Automated Verification for Section 508
This page is not Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional!

http://johnedwards.com/ - Result: Failed validation / Failed Automated Verification for Section 508
Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 341, 358, 371, 384-385, 396, 398, 408, 410 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8

http://www.barackobama.com/ - Result: Failed validation, 66 errors / Failed Automated Verification for Section 508
This page is not Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!

http://www.joinrudy2008.com/ - Result: Failed validation, 8 errors / Failed Automated Verification for Section 508
This page is not Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional!

http://www.johnmccain.com/ - Result: Failed validation, 95 errors / Failed Automated Verification for Section 508
This page is not Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!

http://www.mittromney.com/ - Result: Failed validation, 22 errors / Failed Automated Verification for Section 508
This page is not Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict!

If these candidates used their web skills on Federal Websites, they could be exposing themselves to prosecution under the Disabilities Act.
http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.h tm

Using dropdown lists is actually a *mandatory* accessibility guideline when designing a web interface. Yes, even for Yes/No choices. If you don't do it, you will fail the validator. See http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.h tm

Plus, doing databinding on a radio button frame is a major PITA.

In other words, even if I would ever code by hand, I would still use a dropdown.

There are existing standards out there for 508 compliance.
http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.h tm
http://www.section508.gov/

Government funded websites are required to follow these.
The problem is there isn't one set of standards.
There's different levels of compliance and nobody tells you how compliant to be.
It adds development time and testing time which amounts to lots of dollars.
I wouldn't even want to retrofit an existing site that was any too big.
There are tools to test your website but they are not free.

There are several US Government sites which "require" Windows, IE and there is no way to get what you need (e.g. fill forms) if you have other browsers or operating systems.

There are specific legal guidelines covering the accessibility of US government websites under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (usually referred to as just Section 508). What I read there doesn't explicitly mention cross-browser/OS compatibility, but compliance with the guidelines would probably preclude the use of IE-only or Windows-only technologies without some sort of fallback.

Unfortunately, many federal sites still don't comply with the regs.

There are several US Government sites which "require" Windows, IE and there is no way to get what you need (e.g. fill forms) if you have other browsers or operating systems.

There are specific legal guidelines covering the accessibility of US government websites under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (usually referred to as just Section 508). What I read there doesn't explicitly mention cross-browser/OS compatibility, but compliance with the guidelines would probably preclude the use of IE-only or Windows-only technologies without some sort of fallback.

Unfortunately, many federal sites still don't comply with the regs.

Board membership is published at their web site and in the Federal Register:

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/comm-finalnotic e.htm

The board consists of 39 representatives from industry and disabilities organizations:

I think the first poster was maybe confused about the appointment of Public members of the U.S. Access Board itself:

http://www.access-board.gov/news/members06.htm

-- Terry

Board membership is published at their web site and in the Federal Register:

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/comm-finalnotic e.htm

The board consists of 39 representatives from industry and disabilities organizations:

I think the first poster was maybe confused about the appointment of Public members of the U.S. Access Board itself:

http://www.access-board.gov/news/members06.htm

-- Terry

In the United States, ADA website compliance means Section 508.

See:
http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/

How do I know? Before the U.S. Post Office looked at our web-based secure file transfer and messaging product (MOVEit DMZ), they required us to pass this requirement.

You can see a short version of our "yes, we comply" statement online here:
https://support.standardnetworks.com/moveit/doc/en /moveitdmz_generalinformation_federalregs_ada.htm

Among the interesting bits: to meet full compliance we added an option that allows our administrators to add a "skip repetative navigation" link to the top of the page; this specifically allows audio readers to skip directly to the unique content on the page.

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/508standards.ht m

It has been interesting to note the assumptions made by other /.ers about the circumstances related to this request. Some are right on...others are just funny. I wish I could respond to them all to clarify things, but doing so is likely to identify me. Which would be No Good.

Finally, I am responding to seek clarification on what seems to be the most consistent suggestion: looking at Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. That seems like an important site regardless of one's browser. However...I don't see any obvious correlation between the 508 materials and the impact on IE. Is IE somehow non-compliant with Section 508? Is not adhering to W3C standards somehow a problem (relative to 508, that is)?

Any help clarifying this is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/standards.htm#S ubpart_b

  1194.23 Telecommunications products, paragraph j:
-------------------
(j) Products that transmit or conduct information or communication, shall pass through cross-manufacturer, non-proprietary, industry-standard codes, translation protocols, formats or other information necessary to provide the information or communication in a usable format. Technologies which use encoding, signal compression, format transformation, or similar techniques shall not remove information needed for access or shall restore it upon delivery.
--------------------
Sounds like IE to me!! I think this means the gov should avoid products that transmit things in an encoded format just to lock out competitors, but using a nonstandard technology might be applicable.

FYI, I am totally NAL.

http://www.access-board.gov/508.htm

Any mention of breaking the law and violating the rights of those with disabilities will get the attention of any decision maker. (Think lawsuits!!!)

1. You're absolutely right about the 4.01 spec... but the only relevant "non-visual media" output devices I can think of are braile and text-to-speech browsers. And those can deal with tables that are properly tagged...with headers and scope.

2. From: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/synd/20 01/11/30/accessibility.html?page=2

Screen readers read text linearly; that is, they read across the line from left to right. That causes a problem when attempting to render tables meaningfully for assistive technologies. To solve this problem for simple tables, the guidelines call for labeling of table headers.

Use the summary attribute to indicate the meaning of the table and the headers attribute to associate data cells with their proper row or column. In the following example, notice the use of id attribute in the table headers. Each cell in the body of the table then has a headers attribute which relates it to a specific column.

A speech synthesizer might render this table as follows:

"Caption: Web pages Analyzed by Agency Heads
Summary: This table charts the number of Web pages analyzed by each agency head, what kind of media the pages contain, and whether or not the page is part of the Executive Branch.
Name: A. Jackson, number of pages: 20, Type: text, images, Executive Branch: No
Name: B. Franklin, number of pages: 10, Type: text, images, video, Executive Branch: Yes"

3. See also: http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.h tm#(g), produced by The Access Board, "a federal agency committed to accessible design."

This is true. Electronic/IT stuff must be accessible to people with disabilities, especially computers. Check out this page for an overview.

One huge advantage of a fully accessible KDE (or GNOME), is cost. Screenreading software like JAWS costs about $700 a seat. An open source one solution would save the government a bundle. And it could be a huge benefit for blind/visually private citizens, 75% or so of whom are severely underemployed, and can't easily afford $700 software.

Actually, there are some rules to which many U.S. sites must comply, specified in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998 (summary).

By law, all government sites must comply with the guidelines described by Section 508, which are actually a subset of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It is yet to be determined if organizations that receive federal monies must comply with Section 508; if so, that would affect a lot of pages.

Not necessarily true. Genuinely accessible site development consideres features such as this to be add-ons to the core message. The site must be fully accessible without stylesheets or scripting to pass the accessibility test anyway. If you can take advantage of the added feature that's great. Otherwise, you should still be able to get to the information just like everybody else.

Ideally, someone using Links (as opposed to Lynx) gets the same information as anyone else. That's the beauty of having a text only, no frames, no scripts browser around. Test your site in it and you find a lot of the access problems very quickly.

Unfortunately, neither Section 508 or WCAG guidelines really do anything about useability. You can have a completely accessible site that even a deaf, blind, quadriplegic can use but, if it's unuseable due to layout and/or design it won't matter anyway.

The Federal Government won't be purchasing OS X boxes in mass quantity until the operating system is usable by somebody who is blind. E&IT Accessibility Standards

No text version. NPR often doesn't publish one.

Doesn't that go against Section 508 standards for tax-funded institutions? Like NPR cares about that; they don't let their 501(c)3 status interfere with their journalism.

> There is no government organization that you can call and have 508 explained to a luddite, or to a web designer.

Well, one could try Standards for Electronic and Information Technology: An Overview or What does Section 508 mean to You? for starters.

Section 508 mandates that federal and some other types of government web sites fit the guidelines. It is not a rule that has to be applied towards any other site, although it is a really good starting point for non-government web sites. It is often used by webmasters to convince the Pointy-Hairs how to build a web site correctly and keep the Flash and other crud as decorative only... not the whole site itself.

A side benifit is that being Section 508 compliant makes really friendly robot fodder, so the site gets in Google and other search crawler sites faster.

Any high-profile webmaster is going to follow something like Section 508 anyway, just to minimize the chance of getting a lawsuit. You can find out more here:

http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp

and the 508 Guidelines here:

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/508standards.ht m

The Access-Board has some helpful Guidelines on 508 compliance.

W3C publishes a handy wallet-sized quick reference card with 10 quick tips.

I'm surprised that your experience is that accessibility and usability are mutually exclusive. Our experience is the opposite.

Hi, Rafajafar -- I've met some of your web design team in the past, so I feel as if I "know" the JLAB.org folks in a way, and I've spoken with them about web accessibility, too.

I agree with you that this is a complex problem; Section 508 compliance is a major issue facing all federal agencies. The bad news is that if you haven't already been taking steps towards understanding web accessibility, you may be in a bit of difficulty. The issues surrounding access by people with disabilities are not new; this has been discussed for a number of years, and as others have stated, it really is just a part of basic, quality web design, not anything particularly extraordinary.

Unfortunately, while it's not all that hard to do it right, many people don't realize that, and many web sites, including federal sites, have accessibility problems.

Several great resources have already been posted on this thread, such as the Web Accessibility Initiative and CAST's Bobby web accessibility evaluator. Here's some others that might help you:

• The Section 508 FAQ by the Access Board
• Section 508 Unofficial Checklist, by my consulting company, IdyllMountain Internet
• HWG Online Course 201: Accessible Web Design , a 7-week course taught by me through the HTML Writers Guild's online education program

As you can see from the links I listed, I'm involved in helping to solve this problem in a number of ways -- including the work with my "day job" employer, formerly Edapta, now Reef to develop software that adapts a page to the user's requirements. If you need more information on this topic, you can drop me a note (but please, not all of you); full disclosure is that Idyll Mountain also does consulting on this very topic, but don't worry, I'm not going to hard-sell anyone my services.

At Reef recently I was asked to answer an editorial inquiry regarding this very question Rafajafar asked. Here's what I said:

The best strategies are threefold, and are based on past, present, and future:

1. Past: Old data represents the greatest challenge for web accessibility and section 508 compliance. Many thousands of web pages were created in a blatantly inaccessible manner, back before 508 requirements were created and before many people were aware of the issues. This means that there is a huge store of information which is inaccessible, but must be made accessible.

   This is primarily a resources problem; it takes time, energy, people-power, and money to convert those old pages into something which can be read by today's browsers, assistive technology, and database assimilation tools.

   In short, accessibility of legacy information is a problem akin to the Y2K problem. It consists of fixing problems which were caused by ignorance and poor programming practice; it is a simple problem in terms of complexity, but a time-consuming one.

   The ultimate solution is that those older documents must be updated in some manner. The most reasonable solution is to dump them into a database and make incremental repairs; there is no quick fix here to undo years of shoddy web design.

2. Present: Web development being completed now must adhere to the standards laid down by section 508 guidelines, and must include all information required by assistive technology devices. Web authors doing government work must immediately be retrained to understand concepts of platform independence and interoperability necessary to create accessible documents.

   This is an area in which I've been working for a number of years, first by creating and teaching an online course in web accessibility through the HTML Writers Guild (just completed the 11th run of the course!), and then by creating a resource center at the Guild, the Accessible Web Authoring Resources and Education Center. I've also conducted in-house seminars at locations such as Sandia National Laboratories, as well as given presentation at federal, state, and public conferences on web design.

   Education is the key to accessibility for any documents being produced today.

3. Future: In the future, the role of education will be reduced, because we will have tools which produce valid, accessible, usable HTML right out of the box -- something lacking currently in today's crop of WYSIWYG editors. But the web designer of tomorrow will have an even more potent tool at her disposal: Adaptive information delivery systems such as that being developed at Reef.

   Under such a system, web content creators and managers will be able to write once, web design artists will be able to design once per device, and the web morphing service and content edaptation service built into Reef will automatically produce any number of device-specific interfaces, from screenreader output to WAP phones; from interactive TV to braille terminals.

--Kynn Bartlett

If you are creating a webpage for the government or a public company, you cannot create a webpage that is not easily accessible to the handicapped. Federal law requires that you abide by these standards when doing professional web design.

"The ratio of people who are blind to people who are not is just too fucking small to bother wasting my time on the disabled"

Using your argument, why does anyone develop for Linux since it's user base is so minute compared to MacOS or Windows.