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Blind User Sues Southwest Over Web Site, Cites ADA
scubacuda writes "According to Law.com, Robert Gumson, a blind man who uses a program that converts website content into speech, is suing Southwest Airlines (with the help of Miami Beach, FL-based Access Now) for its website being incompatible with his screen-reader program. The case has been filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act under the untested legal theory that ADA provisions on the accessibility of public accommodations to the disabled apply to Internet Web sites just as they do to brick-and-mortar facilities like movie theaters and department stores. There have been previous lawsuits alleging that the ADA applies to the Internet, but all have settled without a ruling on the merits: 1999 the National Federation of the Blind sued AOL alleging its service was inaccessible to blind users (AOL agreed to make its sites compatible with screen reader technology);
over the past two years, Access Now has sued Barnes & Noble and Claire's Stores for maintaining Web sites that allegedly violated the ADA (both settled)."
Does this mean all sites have to comply?
what if I write a website that shows one thing, but spits out text telling the blind person something else. Namely, what if I setup blindpeoplehelp.com and it have pictures of chicks with dicks? can't wait to see the blind person in the library with this one.
Ok, tell me this - where do you draw the line between high traffic commercial websites, and (for instance), mine?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Netscape, Opera, IE, mozilla, backwards compatibility.
And now screen readers. It's getting to be alot of hassle to design websites.
If the company doesn't cater to your needs then they don't need your business.
Too many people think suing is the answer to everything.
This would be like me walking into Target (or any other store) and suing them because they don't sell XL-Tall shirts that will fit me.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
This why html standards exist. XHTML requires all img tags to have alt="" attributes, which several images on the southwest web page do NOT have. These images seem to be the only links to any other functions on the first page.
granted that blind people should be allowed to view the internet, but this seems to be more a case of access now taking advantage of the situation to earn money. i wonder how much the barnes and noble and other settlements were. then again, lawyers are just here to serve the people, right?
Does this mean I am going to go out and sue all glove makers because they don't make a right hand glove with no thumb? No. That is plain stupid. The term disability means, acording to Dictionary.com ...
2. A disadvantage or deficiency,
3. Something that hinders or incapacitates.
Why can we not accept that there are things that we cannot do and not sue others while pretending it is someone else's fault that we have a disability.
Are these (the ADA) the people that made it so that there is Brail on Drive up ATM machines?
Only in Lake Wobiegon (sp?) is everyone above average...
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
I just have one thing to say to people whose screen reader software can't read this post and are offended enough to sue:
er....
Oh wait, nevermind.
The US Government and it's judicial system has seen fit to cover international websites in it's law sometimes. When will the time come to sue a webpage from another country because a blind person from the US couldn't read it? It's not going to end soon, unfortunately.
Life is the sport of champions. Those who lose, die.
This strikes me as a matter of simple human rights. Does anyone have the right to force a company to spend money on a minority, or accept customers they wouldn't otherwise accept? I don't believe they do.
If the minority (in this case, the blind) are sufficiently profitable as customers, it's likely the company will spend the time and money to cater for them. Or, perhaps, the owner(s) of the company feel that their public image would be best served by catering to the minority. Or maybe they respect the effort many blind people make to achieve their goals, and decide to assist them.
Either way, it's the choice of the company - what right has any individual or group (including the State) to force a company to accept customers they don't want?
A lot of people assume that the ADA is a farce designed to quiet the disgruntled whinings of mentally or physically disabled people. It's a bone tossed to them in much the same way that senior citezens get discounts and prefferential treatment in businesses. It's annoying for other customers and frequently inconvenient.
After all, how many handicapped parking places does the mall need?
What people who think that this is a joke fail to consider, however, is the fact that without the ADA in place, businesses can and will discriminate against handicapped people.
Consider for a second your state's major university. We'll use the University of Texas for an example, because I'm familiar with it. Most of the buildings were constructed in the first half of the twentieth century. Most of the multi-story buildings have elevators, but not all of them. During class-time, the elevators are so full that if you want to get to class on time, you have to use the stairs. Remember that Austin is very hilly. There are stairs everywhere, even for one-story buildings.
Now lets assume that you were in a car wreck with a drunk driver and lost the use of your legs. Despite your new disability you are a smart individual who can get a job that does not require the use of your legs.
Without all those nice wheelchair ramps and wheelchair accessable elevators at the university, you are shit out of luck for actually getting to class... to say nothing of managing to cross the stage when you actually manage to earn your diploma.
We look at wheelchair ramps and other disability accomodations as commonplace. The truth is that very few businesses and schools had them before the ADA forced them to. It may be unthinkable now to descriminate against someone because he's deaf, blind, or crippled, but before the ADA went into effect, nobody thought twice about descriminating against people like that.
The ADA is not a joke.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
This seems to me to be analagous to demanding that all newspapers are printed in braile. This person does have other access to the information - the telephone for example. While it would certainly be nice of the site to comply with standards thereby broadening access for the blind, I don't see how suing them to accomplish this is in any way reasonable.
Opera resizes images with text... the "whole page" is resized, in fact, not just text. Granted, you'll still get bitmapped blocks on image-based text, but it's a step in the right direction...
Finally I have a good excuse for using good 'ol HTML on sites, especially message boards like Marihemp Network Message Boards I run, other than it speeds things up - which in the world of cable and dsl doesn't fly anymore.
:-)
Personally, I think it's high time for companies that have public websites to strive for universal accessibility regardless of browser, etc - I really HATE seeing blurbs such as "MSIE 5+ required", etc on websites - defeats the whole idea of HTML and universal access.
While it's perhaps unrealistic for sites to work with various ancient browsers, a person with a basic browser that supports tables and other basic HTML (say HTML 3.2) should be able to access any publicly *commercial* website without hassles and plugins like flash and pdf - both of which I personally hate...webmasters who use pdf are too damn lazy to type while those who _require_ flash totally misunderstand the concept of HTML and universal accessibility.
End of rant
Ron Bennett
Someone who is blind needs to sue the publisher of an E-Book that has been locked to not allow the text to be read aloud. And sue Adobe while they are at it.
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
It is retarded to be suing over this. Not to be insensitive to disabled people, but if you are blind and want to fly with Southwest, pick up a damn phone and call them. You can do everything over the phone that you could online. If you are really this angry about Southwest's site not being compatible with a screen reader, don't give them your business. There are plenty of other airlines out there.
The blind are not only entitled to an easy-to-access website, they should also not be discriminated against becoming air traffic controllers and yes, even pilots!
Australia, along with other socialist paradises like Canada and Europe, are way ahead of us -- just look at the link below!
Daily Telegraph: Blind, disabled 'should be able to fly'
Not to be flamebait or anything, but I think we just have to accept that someone who is blind can never get the full effect out of the web, because you can't cut out the visuals and achieve the same result. It would be like cutting out the images in a movie but wearing headphones describing what you are supposed to see. Hearing what you are supposed to see and seeing it use vastly different sense.
Yes, it sucks to be handicapped. I would imagine blindness is one of the least desirable handicaps, but at some point, we just have to accept the fact that blind people can't effectively surf the web.
Are tickets for Southwest Airlines (at the same price) available via other means? Phone, travel agent, whatever. Yes, they are.
Does every avenue have to be available to every person, no matter what the disability?
If you're blind, use the phone. If you're deaf, read (Web).
Try this "Speak IT" site and install the readers...
Then come back to Slashdot, Highlight this whole discussion and listen...
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"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
I think it's fair to set some reasonable requirements for equal access to information on commercial sites.
For blind people with PCs, this means "just the facts, hold the Flash". That's what I want too, just like I want that great front row parking spot.
I wonder which site will be first to require a special permit to visit the streamlined pages.
Please forgive me if I seem a bit ignorant, but I honestly don't understand where this guy is coming from.
I mean, none of the companies listed in the story are exclusively web-based. Nothing is stopping him from visiting a traditional brick-and-mortar store or calling the company's toll-free number to place an order.
And Claire's? I guess I can kind of see where he's coming from with the airlines and bookstore, but why the hell would a blind man want to purchase cute little earrings and hairclips from Claire's?
Internet shopping is probably more convenient for persons with disabilites (as it is for all of us). But the stores have already spent countless dollars making their brick-and-mortar facilities ADA-compliant, what with all the elevators, ramps, special restroom facilities, minimum aisle widths, etc.
And wouldn't it be more productive to simply ask nicely to have the website updated? Immediately going to litigation rarely solves anything....sounds like this dude has an axe to grind.
Southwest Airlines where we fly blind to combat terrorism.
Don't Tread on OpenSource
On the other hand, if this is successful, it might make people fix many of those sites that break when javascript is turned off, and I'd personally like that quite a bit.
[1] Don't get me wrong, I agree with the idea that certain public spaces must be accessable to handicapped people. In particular, I agree that handicapped people must be allowed reasonable access to all government buildings that the general public is allowed access to. What isn't so clear in my mind is that private businesses like restaurants should be required to comply with accessability laws. Personally I think it's certainly in their financial interest to do so, but I disagree with the idea of forcing them to comply by threat of law. In the same way, I don't agree with the idea that a private business like an airline should be forced to change web pages by threat of law. However, they do have what ammounts to a government granted oligopoly, so maybe that would be fair. Of course, that wouldn't be the logic used to justify it, so it would still spill over into places it wouldn't be justified. Sigh.
that what this guy really needs is a better seeing eye dog.
If someone doesn't want to serve the blind why should they be MADE TO SERVE THEM? Isn't forcing one person to serve another a form of slavery?
I suppose the logic is that business people can afford to be slaves.
If the majority (sympathetic public) wants to make a minority (business people) serve a third group (the blind) then in a democracy the public wins.
Another example of how democracy and freedom are not the same thing.
but he's blind. Even if it is a stupid reason, the puppy dog factor will sway the jury that the big bad corporation abused him in some way.
Disco Stu was talkin' to you.
In their terms and conditions "Southwest Airlines" also state that they forbid "deep linking", using robots to spider their site, or just using any program to get their pages.
In fact, their license seems to forbids the use of any HTTP user agent to "acquire" some of their pages. Beware, by browsing their site you are risking to get sued =).
1-800-I-FLY-SWA
Web access is a not a requirement to book flight tix...
About time. I used to be a lead web developer at a US public university and was delegated by my director to provide accessability for all regardless of physically handicaps. After a couple years of doing this, developing in this manner became second nature and even as a nonvisually disabled person, I became more and more annoyed by sites that just didn't care.
It amazing me at the lack of professionalism in the web developer community for not addressesing this issue w/o legal being required to. It takes all of 15 minutes to run your site through bobby and the learning curve for meeting the W3C WAI guidelines is low. To not take the little time out of your unimpaired life to make life easier for others amazes me. Especially when 70% of it is just following good web coding practices (eg non-visual cues, alt tags, not using/requiring javascript/flash, using aural spreadsheets, etc etc). People seem to think that you can't design a site not using these items or that their site will be ugly / not satisfy the client. Both are wrong. Often you can use nice visual ques AND provide a seperate or alternate site for visually impaired people. Or just layout your site so even without visual ques, it is still usable. They aren't asking for amazing aural sites, they are asking for FUNCTIONAL aural sites. As for extra cost and time you spend designing these feature, bet that time is a hell of a lot cheaper that the multimillion dollar lawsuit you can/might get slapped with.
Trying surfing the net with lynx for an entire day, see usable it is. After thinking how bad that is, try downloading / buying your favorite aural browser for a real eye opener. Its not pretty. Now try doing that your whole life.
De Oppresso Liber
Fourteen.
Disco Stu was talkin' to you.
I can't see, hear, or feel anything with my fingertips.
[Ed. I am actually a trained monkey typing this for my master. Man those bathroom monkeys don't know how good they have it. I'd like to see them have to keep up with Slashdot]
Why do these people feel the need to reach for their lawyers before even using common sense? What on earth is the point of voice-accessible websites for an airline when virtually ALL airlines provide 24-hour a day toll-free phone numbers where you can talk to a real person and/or use an automated system to do everything you can do on the Web?
I know that some airlines charge more for reservations not made online, but that could easily be waived for the disabled if they didn't have another option. It just seems nuts to me to try to force a company to spend millions of dollars that will be passed on to all the other customers for something that is a non-problem. The airlines already have voice information - on the original voice communicator - the PHONE! ;)
I'd be thinking this is a good time for one of Southwest's competitors (are there any? NB: I'm not a yank) to do a quick hack and start offering a site accessible to the blind...
'sapientia potestas est'
OK, you've read that little raint, so what's the second bird? I am getting very tired of websites that use flash and images for everything on the page. They take a long time to load, they're slower, you can't copy text from them, and you can't view them is text-only browsers. Many of these sites don't even look right on moderatly new browsers (like the 3.x and 4.x serires of IE). Lawsuits to benefit a small group of people can be good for everyone sometimes.
PS, this is all IMHO. I don't mean to offend anyone with this. Somethimes these things can be touchy subjects. Blah blah blah...
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Thats what I hate about opera.
keanmarine.com
A couple of years ago, when I was in production support, I had to respond to our VP level concerning complaints from our clients who could not use our site with the standard screen readers. This was a novel issue to me at the time and I quickly familiarized myself with screen reader technology and the W3C's accessibility quidelines.
I suggested that it would not be a terribly huge undertaking to bring our site into a minimum level of compliance. Nope, this was deemed too costly relative to the small segment of our clientele who were disabled. Failing that, I suggested that we could simply ensure that all new development going forward implemented the accessibiltiy guidelines.
Well, two years and a new redesign later, and this still hasn't been implemented. I mean, how hard is it to include accessibility in the business requirements for the new development being farmed out?
Here's a web app that validates a URL against the W3C's accessibiltiy guidelines.Most sites will generate a ton of errors, but you'll also notice that this accessibility boils down to simple things like using *correct* html, making sure you supply text in alt and title tags, etc.
I'm not certain, but I think accessibility concerns was a reason that has caused the W3C to want to deprecate the use of framesets: screenreaders have a hell of a time trying to present essentially two different documents at the same time with any level of coherance.
All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. - Johann Sebastian Bach
I don't know how the law is written, but the technology problems to handle in such a case are highly nontrivial.
Consider. We have plenty of trouble now with websites which can only be viewed in one browser. This is visual display, mind you, which the vast majority of browsers are built to do by default. We can't even follow the standards well enough to handle the default access method well.
Now, we add a whole new method of content rendering. We can't even impliment the main standards properly. How do we plan to ensure that an audio interface can successfully read a website, as well? Keep in mind that this is not what the web was originally designed to handle.
Then there is the problem of economnic considerations - without a simple standard in widespread use, implimenting an audio interface becomes costly. It is desirable for handicapped people to be able to participate, but statistically they represent a fraction of the viewership. There won't be money in it, so companies aren't going to be happy about it. This will inevitably show up in the final result.
Finally, and this is perhaps the most difficult point - how do we update the truly staggering amount of content already out there, much if unskillfully written and poorly maintained in the first place?
Total access is a good goal, but the technological tools just aren't robust enough yet to handle it. The law needs to take that into account - this isn't a matter of adding a ramp, lowering telephones, handicapped parking or other straightforward and easily solved problems. Audio internet is a HARD problem, converting content on the internet is even harder, and it's just not going to be happening in the short term.
In the end I think it is a good one to solve, both for the sake of those who need it and the fact that a more robust audio structure on the internet is likely to have many other benefits, as well. But that kind of work takes years and years. I don't know if the legal system will be able to figure that out.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
My dad found a sign at the DMV 8ft in the air hanging with brail on it telling the needed paper work for a drivers liscene. Do blind people drive as much as the public seems to think and who knows an 8ft blind man? also *insert a star trek joke about the black man here*
Second, unlike entry into a building, there are alternative airlines. No one said he had to fly Southwest. Crikey!
Hell, assume I'm completely wrong. Does this mean anyone with a web site has to be in compliance with this cat's text-to-speech converter? While noble, this complaint has no business in the legal system. What happens next? Money changes hands? If this guy wants to affect change and get what he wants, he should 1) write a letter to Southwest explaining his problem, 2) write his congresscritter explaining his problem, and/or 3) fly with somebody who meets his accessibility needs.
This is really not a new thing but it is nice to see that it is starting to come out in to the open. If you have not all ready heard it you should listen to the audio form the "Low Bandwidth Access to the Internet" panel that was at H2K back in 2000. They talked about how most of the web sites are not assessable by screen readers and I am sure that it has not got any better over the last 2 years. Any way if you want to hear it it is still on the H2K website. http://www.h2k.net/panels.html#lowb
-- If there is hope, it lies in the trolls... oh sorry I mean proles.
Is there any way for the free market to supply a solution for the disabled? There are tons of travel sites that aggregate travel options for the non-disabled, one of them would want the additional business if the different disabled communities communicated the market potential to the site owners.
Instead of foisting the cost of accessibility upon all travelers who will not benefit from it, why not let the disabled pay for the added cost of accessibility by supporting a site (or sites) that cater to their needs for a small additional fee? And if enough market demand exists, an additional surcharge would not even be necessary.
Litigating this will simply ensure that the disabled get the lowest-possible cost solution after a court judgement finds in the plaintiff's favor. That translates into offerings that meet the bare minimum legal requirements, and provide no value-add features that the non-disabled might enjoy.
I took a look at Southwest's website. Its not like its Flash laden or anything. OK, what I want to know is why is it Southwest Airlines' fault that the screen reader (what is basically "third party software" as far as they are concerned) can't read their website? Shouldn't it be the responsiblity of the company that produces the screen reader to improve their product?
-- derby
Since when do businesses have to cater to the whims of everyone else?
Just because you're blind doesn't mean I have to waste money testing my site against your specific software.
What if my site works well with program X but not program Y?
What about other disorders like dislexia? Must I make my site easy to read for those that can't read numbers properly too? etc....
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I wasn't trying to make a spoof banner ad that nailed the ethics of the legal profession, but there ya go.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I have nothing against the disabled... but the cases settled out of court are just money gathering efforts... if these people actually wanted to effect change they would follow through with suites to cause real change.
OTOH, the "victim" could potentially donate a large portion of their settlement to charible organizations having to do with helping people with disabilities... and I *suppose* that the threat of being sued and forced to change and get bad PR might scare companies into conforming...
Are the blind going to sue companies that have decided not to put up web sites? This is silly, do they want companies to just take their sites down? The blind should be happy that there are some companies that DO allow them to read.. Hell, there are many companies that I know of that aren't on the web, im sure not going to sue them for it.. Sounds like a great way to keep companies offline if you ask me...
I use the web when interacting with Southwest because I can get the data I need faster visually than aurally.
If someone's blind, it would seem only fair that southwest has the option of providing them with a dedicated, live concierge to help them with all their questions. That's why they can CALL 1-800-IFLYSWA.
The ADA is intended to make sure that people are not disenfranchised by their disability, and in this case the person is not, since they cn accomplish the same task via a means that SWA has provided for them that is compatable with their abilities. The *only* caveat I would make is that if they show they are blind, they should be able to get the double-points and internet-only fares afforded to those who frequent the site.
This particular lawsuit is as ridiculous as a person in a wheelchair suing for there not being a stair-climing inclinator when there's an elevator down the hall.
I'm all for blind readability on sites without an alternative, but if it's a service operation where you can accomplish tasks via phone, then I believe that that is a solution to the mandated requirements.
Kevin Fox
Check the "Phone rates" versus the "Web rates". Then you may understand why. Hell I book every hotel online then call 5 minutes later to make sure it's in their system (saves around 50%). If you don't think the web is becoming a necessary part of life just try living without it for 1 month. I for example couldn't for 1 day because I make my living developing online systems.
Like a previous poster said, I look back on they days of Netscape 2 with envy. One set of html to follow and little fluff. Oh well, now I just sound like my grandfather.
This just a geek-centric example of the way the concept of rights has shifted from meaning "things the government can't keep you from doing" to "things the government must force other people to do for you."
What people who think that this is a joke fail to consider, however, is the fact that without the ADA in place, businesses can and will discriminate against handicapped people.
What you apparently fail to consider is that wheelchair ramps don't grow on wheelchair ramp trees.
If a disabled person can do a job as well and as cheaply as anyone else, no one will hesitate to hire him. To the extent that the disability keeps the person from being hired, it is either because he would do the job less well, or incur costs (e.g. elevators, bathroom remodelling) which would have to be paid by the consumers and stockholders.
If this is discrimination, it is rational discrimination, making a valid distinction.
I wouldn't hire a waiter with Tourette's, and I wouldn't hire a waiter who was just clumsy.
I wouldn't hire a teacher who was mentally retarded, and I wouldn't hire a teacher who was just plain dumb.
I wouldn't hire a firefighter who was too weak to lift a hose, and I wouldn't hire a firefighter with no arms.
Why should half of those I named be set apart as protected groups, guaranteed jobs in which they will hurt the rest of society more than they help it?
I've been talking about hiring, but this is even more true of ramps, remodelings, etc. that are mandated merely for the benefit of disabled customers- those in movie theaters, for instance. If the benefit to the disabled of using those ramps is greater than the cost of building the ramp, it will be worth the theater's trouble to build the ramp, because the disabled customers will be willing to pay enough in tickets to cover the ramp's price. If not, why does the smaller benefit to disabled customers trump the greater cost to able-bodied customers?
Ah... Ever read "Harrison Bergeron"?
Things like this are why there's hostility toward the ADA and those pushing it. It's also why there's a move afoot to amend the ADA to allow businesses 90 days to bring themselves into compliance when there's a complaint, before a suit can be filed. Naturally, the plaintiff's bar thinks this is a bad idea.
If I am giving some private lessons in my house/appartment, do I now have to make it handicapt-accessible? I hope that the law is similar to the tax law, that is I only have to spend some fixed portion of my income to comply with it. I would imagine that airlines are loosing money nowadays. While it might not be that expensive to keep a text version of the website, is it really fair to ask them for a form of charity (something they wouldn't to for business reasons) when they are not turning any profit? Also, are there any sanity checks - do I have to make my 3D game accessible?
How would porn sites comply with this??
Porn in braille...is there such a thing?
Ron
Yeah, so a blind guy is pissed off that he can't "read" one website... one website of many that he can "read".
Quite frankly, the bastard is lucky enough to have technology that allows him to "read" a primarily visual medium in the first place! This kind of thing really pisses me off, because our society goes out of its way to help our defective members.
I think his claims are a farce because because he could have used the telephone to place a call to SouthWest. Fact is, he had alternative routes to obtain the information he desired.
Lets draw a few parallels (or analogies as we call 'em here)...
Would it be any different if a deaf person were to sue the RIAA because he couldn't "hear" his music?
I don't use the Flash plugin... so I can't read a lot of websites I'd like to visit. I also use linux, so again, some websites are out of my reach. Although I don't have a disability, would my situation constitute grounds for legal action?
------
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
"Does this mean I am going to go out and sue all glove makers because they don't make a right hand glove with no thumb? No. That is plain stupid."
Yes, that would be plain stupid. It would also be irrelevant to the topic at hand.
A person with a disability in our nation has a right to access public and publicly provided services under the ADA.
This is about preventing someone from making use out of a given service, a service mind you that they are fully capable of receiving, because of their disability.
Your example is incorrect. You can still wear and purchase the glove. If however (entirely hypothetical situation) the glove makers required that you give a thumb print before the purchase then there would be grounds to sue.
"The term disability means, acording to Dictionary.com [dictionary.com]
2. A disadvantage or deficiency,
3. Something that hinders or incapacitates.
Why can we not accept that there are things that we cannot do and not sue others while pretending it is someone else's fault that we have a disability. "
Again. We do accept there are things that some can't do.
What we don't accept is that there are things that someone *could* do, but isn't able to gain access to because the service is provided in a way that hampers on their disability.
"Are these (the ADA) the people that made it so that there is Brail on Drive up ATM machines?"
No. I suspect that the banks likely did that. As the component parts for one ATM fits for another (and other parts too), and its cheaper to just make one key set for all ATMs, than it is to make one for the blind, and one for everyone else.
For the record I know of one person who uses a local ATM and happens to also be blind.
I'm amazed at most of the comments.
Before people flame the ADA and access to the web for the blind, they should remember that they too could become blind someday.
The web and HTML were created to make information _more_ accessible to people, not less. Good coding for the web is supposed to ensure that people with _any_ type of browser can get your content, not just people with IE+flash. It's not very hard to make your sight accessible for the blind -- just use well-formed HTML or the new flash accessibility extensions.
The more accessible the web is for all of us, the better we all are.
I believe that people should be able to make their website anyway they wan't, even if it is not accessible to everybody. However, websites run by the government must be accessible to everybody. A business should have the right to choose if it wants to add support to blind users, but if it doesn't, money goes to the compertitor that does. I think that it would be great if there was blind access everywhere, but I think it is wrong for it to be forced upon people.
He is being denied access to a store/site because he is blind
This is fairly stongly worded. You might want to s/denied/not able to attain, because there is no active attempt to disallow entry to the site. The company hasn't made provisions for this special group
But, you could also spin it off the be the fault of the screen-reader. One could state that the company designing the screen-reader product did not make it work with the increasing graphic standard, perhaps by adding an advanced OCR, etc. Maybe a brail-reader based on color depth.
It's fine to say that disabled individuals are not able to use this site and are losing out. But this could set a bad precedent making all companies with graphical type sites liable. How many major sites now use flash, can the screen reader translate that? It would also suck if this set a precedent so that even my little site had at to conform to blind-compatible standards (I do, however, try to use text when possible for lynx compatibility etc)
The major point is, while much information is being presented in a textual format, the internet is moving towards towards a more visually stimulating form of presentation. People with vision impairment are going to lose out a lot from this, but not everybody will think to account for all such special cases, especially when gearing towards a more flashy and potentially better selling presentation.
Can we really expect that text-based support is going to be around forever? In a decade, will an increasingly visual medium be forced to retain non-visual support?
A lot of people will probably be tempted to say "I'm sorry, I understand your loss but why should it also be mine." It's in a way a selfish attitude, but it's also somewhat logical in current society.
Well, time to go back to text-based internet - phorm
Those bastards at SouthWest don't hire visually impaired pilots either.
OK, let me throw in my two cents both from the perspective of a blind web surfer and a blind website designer. I actually am a user of the technology mentioned in the article, and yes, some web sites can be extreemly difficult to surf. /. itself isn't the easiest in its default state, although it is usable and making some customizations in user preferences does help a lot. From my experience on the whole, if a web site sticks rather strictly to HTML, CSS and the other standards, they're OK. Problem is, very few sites do. An even worse problem is many web designers design their sites using Dreamweaver or some other graphical tool. This seperates them from the HTML itself, and many times they don't know what's going on under the hood. The common mantra among web designers I've noticed is "if it looks right, its right." It is very frustrating running into one of these sites, and the unfortunate thing is, there are many of them.
Now that I've addressed the technical issues, let's move on to some of the other things that I've been reading about in this thread. I tend to aggree with the common conseption around here that lawsuites are way over used, and many people tend to be way too sue happy, thinking that will solve their problems. But let me ask, in a situation like this, what would you have done? I'm sure this blind person did try to contact the web designer. In fact, as blind people we are instructed to do just that right away when we encounter an inaccessible site. Problem is, very few web designers listen to us. I'm not sure if its intentional, but many of them just do not understand how we surf the web, and are probably under the impression that they have to go way out of their way to modify their pages for a screen reader. Refer to what I said above, that if a page is designed properly, nine times out of ten it will work just fine. OK, so contacting the web designer yeilds no response, so what next? Sometimes there is no other way to get a business to listen other than through its wallet. Very sad, dispicable, but true.
So, again what is he to do? Assuming this person had contacted Southwest's webmasters (which as I said they should have,) what would you do next? And don't say just not use there services. There aren't enough blind people who have access to the internet in the first place to make it make a difference, and that's just like saying that blacks should just not frequent the businesses that discriminate against them. We all have a right to make use of public services, be them brick and morder or online. And considering how relatively little modification it takes to make a web site accessible (following standards is not hard,) I think that this person may very well have a case against Southwest.
But PDF has to be done properly - if you publish a PDF you need to put bookmarks in, so that users can easily navigate to the section they need. And of course take steps to minimise file sizes...
It is retarded to be protesting over this. Not to ve insensitive to black people, but if you are black and want to get a drink of water, go to the damned coloured fountain and drink there. You can do everything at the coloured fountain that you can at the whites fountain. If you are really this angry about Southwest's white fountain not being usable to blacks, don't give them your business. There are plenty of other airlines with fountains out there.
But then, nobody on slashdot is old enough to remember those days.
What the hell has the world come to? First you can actually make a viable case against a restraunt for selling foods high in carbs and fat, and now a blind person can sue a company for comandeering a website whose content does not "work" with a particular piece of software. Why don't we just sue Microsoft because Word doesn't work in Linux? Fucking Christ!!
Didn't George H.W. Bush make a public statement regretting that he ever signed the ADA? I put some key words in to Google but couldn't come up with anything. I for one think things like handicapped parking spaces, building/sidewalk ramps, handicapped restrooms/drinking fountains, public braille signs, and automatic doors are great. But, some of the other stuff trying to be pulled under the ADA (and most definitely this lawsuit) is ridiculous. The guy is gonna need help getting on the plane anyhow, since I doubt he has the floor plans of the airport and plane memorized, so he might as well get someone to help him order the tickets too. Ya gotta have some sympathy for him though because he is missing out on seeing a lot of things, and life is more difficult in general when you're blind (I would guess, although I don't know specifically), so you can't be too negative against him, heh.
In response, Curtis Chung, Director of Technology for the National Federation of the Blind, was asked a bunch of questions by /. readers and I was very impressed with his answers. I went from being somewhat skeptical (but not hostile), to realizing that a great deal of what I want to see in website design is the same things that blind people need. Cut out the flash. Add ALT tags to your images. Stop using images to send text. Keep navigation simple. Concentrate on content.
See Interview: Answers About Blind Computer Use
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
So Gumson and a Miami Beach, Fla.-based disability rights group, Access Now, filed lawsuits in U.S. District Court in Miami in June and July against Dallas-based Southwest and Dallas-based American Airlines under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Since it was founded four years ago, Access Now has filed more than 440 ADA lawsuits in courts across the country, but only now is it targeting Internet sites.
So now it's up to 441+ lawsuits? Are the organizations vehemently denying to provide accomodations for disabled patrons or is this Access Now organization just suing organizations left and right? From the wording but only now is it targeting Internet sites it seems as if it is the latter. I seriously doubt that Southwest and American Airlines said they didn't give a shit about blind people when or if Mr. Gumson and/or Access Now contacted them, forcing litigation.
You know, not everything has to be graphics and flash cartoons. I remember the day (God, do I sound old) when all good websites had a plain text link for people with slow modems and vision problems. Hell, I use to browse the Web with lynx!
Normally I don't like lawsuits but if it will force designers to make pages that not only look nice but are usable then I'm all for it.
Dive Into Accessibility, 'nuff said.
Your banner add, for a satirical website I'm thinking of doing
I'll credit it to you on the contributions page
...is an airline. They are not a website. The primary business activity of Southwest Airlines is moving people around. They run thier website to make things more convenient for their users, but it is not the only way that they sell tickets. The fact that this fella is blind does not in any way hinder him from flying on southwest airlines, he can probably use the phone.
It would be great if Southwest was compliant, but as far as I am concerned, they could be compliant by adding the following to thier front page: Users unable to navigate this site please call XXX-XXXX-XXXX. And it wouldn't even have to be toll free.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I was born with a rare condition that prevents me from viewing Flash objects. Can the crack slashdot legal community advise me about how to pursue my lawsuit against the many abusers of Flash?
Now we'll have corporations pulling their web sites because there's some person with some disability out there who won't be able to use them, and not providing the service will cost less than settling ADA lawsuits. I certainly feel for someone who's blind, but for crying out loud, couldn't he just use the phone? That doesn't even consider the possibility of having a friend order the tickets--of course, this makes the assumption that someone who would sue over something like this has friends.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Do the banks really keep their UI consistent though?
I know for a fact that in St. Louis, Missouri - my bank (Firstar) has changed around the prompts on their machines numerous times in just the last 6 months or so.
EG. One set of drive-up ATMs has a prompt at the beginning that asks if you'd like English or Spanish. I've never seen this on their ATMs anyplace else in town (and I know this was just recently added to these particular machines). Other times, they seem to play around with enabling and disabling prompts that ask "Would you like a receipt for this transaction?" after your card is inserted, but before you select any other options. They've also made changes to some of their ATMs so they ask if you'd like a deposit envelope, after you tell it you wish to make a deposit. (It used to be, they all just spit out an envelope without asking.)
All of these small changes seem like they'd cause major havock for blind people who had the sequence of prompts memorized.
I was under the impression the law only applied to federal or state web sites.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
This whole handicap compliance thing is getting carried way too far.
I heard a radio interview from a guy in the north east US who owned a small video store. There was a heavy snow and he was barely able to shovel a path to the main door of his store. Needless to say, he did not bother to shovel a path to the side wheelchair ramp, and sure enough the gov Wheelchair Nazi's came by and cited him with a huge penalty, something like 25 grand.
It would have been far cheaper simply to keep the damned shop closed.
I believe in *reasonable* accomodations, but not hellbent expensive ones.
Table-ized A.I.
To have the govt set up a service with humans that read web sites to any blind web surfer? Could be linked via a collaboration program so both would be seeing the same site. Overall, this seems cheaper to the US economy than forcing every business in the US to redesign their web site.
The problem I see here is the existence of internet only specials on the SouthWest web site. By making the site inaccessible to blind users S.W. is excluding a class of consumers from certain discount fares on the basis of their disability.
Aren't website's private property? If so, why should we legislate what people have to do with their private property. I mean yeah, the designers ought to make them accessible, but why should the government tell them what they MUST do with it?
Derek Greene
Web sites are primarily designed for a particular, limited audience, in most cases. If someone *chooses* to make their site easily accessible to everyone who comes across it, that's their option -- but it certainly doesn't need to be legislated as mandatory.
That's as ludicrous as saying every author writing a book needs to have it translated and published into every foreign language in common use, so those not speaking English are ensured "equal access" to it!
The fact is, many sites right now are quite browser-dependent, even if they opt not to touch any additional "plug-in" technologies such as Shockwave or RealAudio. If we didn't have Javascript, web sites would be much less useful. (As just one example, I recently found a site that calculated your speedometer error based upon changing your car's tires out with different sizes. If this had to be presented as pure HTML, I suppose we'd be reduced to looking through a huge list or table of every combination, to find relevant data for our particular car and situation. How is that a *better* way to build the site?)
Sure, some of the ".bomb'ers" are out there drawing up poor quality sites, and don't deserve a job designing web pages. That's not what this discussion is really about, however. This is a question of whether we want to let government dictate requirements for every site we build. If this becomes law, many people will take down sites completely rather than pay to do major revamping to meet ADA requirements, and then *nobody* benefits.
South West Airlines website is not an accessibility nightmare. Looks like Bobby has been slashdotted.
Nobody is entitled to use a webste. A blind person is not entitled to use a website either. It is up to the blind person to obtain the technology needed to access a website. If their screen reader software is not capable of doing the job, then they ned to get better software.
The disability laws were created to stop disabled people from being discriminated against, NOT to make their life more comfortable at the expense of the public.
Well i guess the good side is that it migght make Front Page and Dreamweaver cowboys obsolete and raise salaries for professional developes who know how to write HTML.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
Is this by chance the same Southwest that charges fat people for two seats?
In that case, they deserve this lawsuit. There should be seats of different sizes. The variation in human size is quite great. One-size-fits-all is dumb and insulting.
If so, sue the bastards out of sky!
Table-ized A.I.
In fact, their license seems to forbids the use of any HTTP user agent to "acquire" some of their pages. Beware, by browsing their site you are risking to get sued
Yes, I see this idiocy a lot. My ISP T&C if taken literally, forbids web browsing as well. It's clear to me that nobody actually understands HTTP or HTML at all.
So, here's a deep link into these fuckwit's site: Refund. And another: Cancel
So sue me.
What do you mean by that? I love that feature. It lets me resize ANY page. Not just text that doesn't have style sheets. Why would you dislike that?
"Terms and Conditions of Use
Southwest's web sites and any Company Information is available to you only to learn about, evaluate, or purchase Southwest's services and products. Unless you are an approved Southwest travel agent, you may use the Southwest web sites and any Company Information only for personal, non-commercial purposes. Except in connection with your authorized use of the Southwest web sites, you may not copy, modify, display, license, distribute, transmit, display or download the Company Information without Southwest's written consent. Do not use the Southwest web sites to make any speculative or false reservation.
You may not use any "deep-link," "page-scrape," "robot," "spider" or other automatic device, program, algorithm or methodology which does the same things, to access, acquire, copy, or monitor any portion of the Southwest web sites or any Company Information. Any use of the Southwest web sites which results in the depletion of web site infrastructural resources is not authorized. When you use the Southwest web sites or Company Information for an authorized purpose, you should include all proprietary notices without changing or hiding them. As a condition of your use of the Southwest web sites, you promise that you will not use the Southwest web sites or Company Information for any purpose that is unlawful or prohibited by these terms and conditions."
Dude! No surfing their site, now, folks; it depletes "web site infrastructural resources"!
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
Denying serverice to customers based on their race isn't the same as certain customers not being able to use their service. If you can service people of one race, there's absolutely no logical reason why you couldn't provide service to someone of a different race.
A better comparison might be immigrants and tourists who don't speak a single word of English and may not be able to receive the same services as someone who does speak English. The way I see it, applying the ADA to websites is like forcing all websites to have translations in every single language. Making website operators liable is like allowing non-English speakers to sue websites because their favorite translator failed to accurately translate the content to their native language, rendering them unable to receive service.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against society making conscious effort to allow people with disabilities to become more active and independent. It's just that I don't think this case makes a lot of sense.
---
Open Source Shirts
Web sites are primarily designed for a particular, limited audience, in most cases. If someone *chooses* to make their site easily accessible to everyone who comes across it, that's their option -- but it certainly doesn't need to be legislated as mandatory
But it's so easy for anyone with half a brain to get right!
The fact is, many sites right now are quite browser-dependent, even if they opt not to touch any additional "plug-in" technologies such as Shockwave or RealAudio
It's not hard to provide an *alternative* that simply contains the information. Most of this stuff is useless eye candy anyway.
If we didn't have Javascript, web sites would be much less useful
I have Javascript off, and have never noticed the lack of it.
(As just one example, I recently found a site that calculated your speedometer error based upon changing your car's tires out with different sizes. If this had to be presented as pure HTML, I suppose we'd be reduced to looking through a huge list or table of every combination, to find relevant data for our particular car and situation. How is that a *better* way to build the site?)
Sigh. Another Javascript weenie. Why couldn't you just enter the information in a form?
This is a question of whether we want to let government dictate requirements for every site we build. If this becomes law, many people will take down sites completely rather than pay to do major revamping to meet ADA requirements, and then *nobody* benefits
It would depend what those requirements are. I'm sure something sensible could be worked out, and needn't be more that what is already available, and it would have the nice side effect of pushing people who have trouble with reading out of the industry.
If the blind are such a small portion of the population that they do not make a sizable enough dent in someone's wallet, the why care?
Humans are the only animals that coddle their sick and old; the rest avoid them. I think there is a lesson in practicality here, and no one of decency.
Alas, Babylon.
If we took the time to mark things up properly, there is absolutely no reason that all the information and services out there should not be available to the visually impaired.
Now, we add a whole new method of content rendering. We can't even impliment the main standards properly. How do we plan to ensure that an audio interface can successfully read a website, as well? Keep in mind that this is not what the web was originally designed to handle.
Actually, this IS what the web was developed to handle. Take a look at any HTML/1.0 page and you will notice that it can be read perfectly. Everything became screwed up when the <table> tag was introduced and people started to use HTML as a substitute for PDF, and later Flash. HTML is a markup, not a layout language.
As far as the internet being "hard to convert": no it isn't. Some businesses just need to get hit with a couple of lawsuits to figure that one out. Yes, websites do need to take that into account, so some webmasters will have to change their ways. But, you can make a perfectly functional audio website by using a content management system that supports it, without too much effort. Audio internet is not a hard problem unless you are an amateur trying to do a professional's job.
Obesity is not a disability in and of itself. Yes, there are medical conditions, such as poly-cystic ovarian syndrome in women and giantism in men, which can make fitting into a sardine-sized airline seat difficult. However, the majority of people in the United States are obese because they made themselves that way--and I feel no remorse for someone who's charged for two seats because he ate himself into occupying 1½.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Getting back to the plaintiff described in the article, I'd think an easier solution would be to call 1 800 555-1212, get Southwest's toll-free number from them, and then call that number. I'd think the same information is available that way as is available through their website (probably more info, in fact, such as information on what flights are on time/delayed/etc.). This has to be easier than filing yet another lawsuit. Then again, I suppose the ambulance chasers wouldn't make any money off of such a common-sense solution.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
"Everything became screwed up when the tag was introduced and people started to use HTML as a substitute for PDF, and later Flash. HTML is a markup, not a layout language."
A very good point. Unfortunately, most business sites seem to prefer to make their own layout decisions, rather than let the browser do it. That's actually a very interesting idea - a pdf based web. PDF has hyperlinking abilities - with expanded animation support it might actually work well.
Audio internet is not a hard problem unless you are an amateur trying to do a professional's job.
That's just it - a lot of smaller companies and non-profits can't afford to hire a professional web designer. Meaning a real pro, not just someone trained in Dreamweaver or Frontpage. Some of the most interesting stuff on the web is offered by smaller companies. Also, what about individual pages? A casual stamp collector, for example, who lists a few stamps for sale but is not really a full time dealer? Where is the line drawn? That's what makes things tough.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Except that there is one crucial difference here: in your example, you have to go out of your way to discriminate between blacks and whites: you have to set up a completely separate drinking fountain.
In the case of Southwest's web site, it's exactly the opposite: they would have to go out of their way to not "discriminate" by accomodating the blind person.
My view on this is almost purely practical: is it easier and faster for someone to surf a compliant web site to get at the ticket information he's interested in, or is it easier and faster for him to call their toll-free number and speak to someone directly?
And the answer is that if you're not blind, it's probably easier and faster to surf the web site and get at what you want (depends on how adept you are at operating the computer. Should we now talk about discrimination against people who can't use a computer??), but if you're blind it's easier and faster to call no matter how accomodating the web site is. And that's because visual scanning of information is orders of magnitude faster than audio or tactile scanning of that same information.
Bottom line: it doesn't matter how blind-friendly Southwest makes their web site: it'll still be harder for a blind person to use than the telephone. As long as the rates, schedules, and special offers are identical between the two, the fact that Southwest's web site isn't blind-friendly should not matter.
So no, you can't use the black-versus-white comparison and get away with it. That discrimination is foul because it is based on superficial differences that don't make any real difference. Blind versus sighted is very different, because here we are talking about a true difference in capabilities.
And if you don't believe that, then you must believe that blind people should be allowed to drive, or that they should be allowed to fly personal airplanes. That we don't allow the blind to drive a car or pilot an airplane is "discrimination" of the same kind we're talking about, right?
You have to draw the line somewhere, because there is a real difference between a blind person and a sighted one, and no amount of legal wrangling will change that basic fact. At some point, the disadvantaged (in whatever way, from being physically disabled in some way to being unable to speak or read the commonly-used language) person has to take some responsibility for dealing with his condition. To insist on anything else leads to absurdities such as requiring all businesses to hire people who can read, write and speak every human language in use on the planet today.
So: you seem to be in favor of forcing Southwest and any other business to make their site "blind-friendly". Are you also in favor of forcing them to do their site up in Cantonese? Arabic? Czech? Finnish? The only reason a blind person can view a web site at all is that he can get his hands on technology that does the translation for him. Are you going to insist that the technology involved be made available for free? Are you going to insist that everyone limit their web site designs to only those that said technology can handle? How far are you willing to go here? At what point do you draw the line? If the translators that blind people obviously use didn't exist, would you then insist that businesses not be able to put up web sites just because blind people couldn't then make use of them?
Enough of all that. The blind person can pick up the phone and get exactly the same results. It's only if he can't get the same deals that he has a legitimate gripe. Otherwise he should convince the vendor of his translator to produce something that can read Southwest's web site.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Your making it sound like a big task, that's going to mean 2x the ammount of work need to create a site, and creating new standards and new protocols. It's just not nessesary. The tools are already there. And you don't have to do much to make a big difference.
Nobody is asking us to make the experience perfect for dissabled people, just usable. It's not an unfair or hard request.
It should also be noted that the "white" and "colored" drinking fountains were, for the most part, government sponsored, while the ADA is the government sponsored part. I also agree with what you said that blind people truely are different than someone with sight, while there are no (real, but perceived) difference between races.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
It isn't really clear if it did break the law... that's what this case is about....
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
I see no problem making web sites like the airline in question accessible to impaired people. The issue is where the line gets drawn, and by whom. The web encompasses more than just simple services like airline tickets-- it is also an artistic medium, a place people throw their diaries, a good way for a grad student to post their research quickly, or a way to make stupid jokes to share with the world.
Without very careful consideration, a law as thorough as our current physical-world rules would make large pieces of the web illegal. For example-- that funny flash movie with no vocals your friend sent you (frog in a blender, anyone?) is now off-limits. How could you possibly make that accessible? A page showing a montage of photographs? There are a number of things that are purely or significantly visual on the web that would be impossible to make accessible to the sight impaired.
A law is needed-- blind people make up such a tiny percentage of the population that they don't make up enough of a group to have any impact on the market financially. But the law needs to be a masterpiece of careful thought and planning, or it will strip the web of purely visual artworks, and make information exchange via quick-and-dirty sites a thing of the past.
You are the one who doesn't understand how a corporation works. The corp is an entity onto itself. The CEO is *not* personally responsible for the actions of the corp unless there has been some serious misconduct on his/her part that would "pierce the corporate veil" Do a google search on the phrase for more information. As for the web page, of course there is someone responsible for it. But that person is not getting sued, the corporation is.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In the name (.com vs. edu.)
However, if your site is a class, professor's or a departmental site, your edu may be liable (more likely any suit would go after the edu anyway).
In fact, any edu that is not making at least a 'good faith' effort to comply is being rather non-educated about the ADA.
But if your a student, I don't think you really have much to worry about (although moving toward compliance would be good practice:-).
These services are available to anyone who has enough money to purchase a computer. That's a huge difference. This means that there is a whole section of the population who does not have access to the services. These people are limited to calling Southwest's toll-free customer service line. That service, which *is* available to everyone, is fully accessible to the blind.
Not to be cold about it, but what makes you think that a blind person is more entitled to some web service than some person on welfare who has no possibility of even owning a computer?
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
I agree it's not unfair, but I'll believe it's not hard when I see it happen.
That may be overkill, but let me explain.
You probably know more about the technology out there for this, so if you say the tools are sufficient I'll accept that as a basis for discussion. (Aside question - I wonder about support for multiple languages, though - are there tools to address that?)
Many commercial sites use all sorts of tricks to add visual effects to their pages, and many did/do not consider the audio side of things. This means re-evaluating their page from the point of view of a blind user. Consider that a larger company may have hundreds/thousands of pages needing evaluation. That's a job in and of itself. Then site wide corrections need to be made. Or, alternately, a parallel site specifically designed for audio may be developed, which would also be a large task. If the webpage writers don't know the first thing about audio display, they have to learn about it. More time and money.
If the tools and protocals do in fact exist, that will help a great deal. But the sheer amount of content that needs to be re-evaluated will make it a huge task. Maybe not for well designed and implimented sites using largely standard protocals, but I guess I'm too cynical to believe that most commercial websites are implimented that way.
There may be an underlying assumption I'm making that you're not - companies will undertake this solely and only to reduce their legal vulnerability. I.e., the want to make it very hard for anyone to even bring a lawsuit, since any legal action at all costs money. I suspect they will worry about people saying that because the site doesn't have feature a or b they are treating blind people as second class citizens. I don't know how you or the law define usable, but unless this law is different from most other legal matters it will need to be interpreted in court. More time and money for companies. So if they reason it out and decide that they will likely get sued in any case, and since so many of them settle out of court even when they could win, they may conclude that the effort it would take to do a good audio presentation of their poorly written site isn't worth the extra time and money.
This is just my take on it. I hope I'm wrong and you're right - it would be better for everyone. And indeed a small effort would likely make a big difference. But in my perhaps overly cynical view it's a lot of work for a dubious monetary payoff (helping blind people use the web better is worth a lot, but doesn't show up on quarterly profit reports) since they likely will be sued by someone regardless.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
..if there wasn't the price differential between phone and online.
..unless you really do think that the blind should pay more for the same service?
Unfortunately, the online version is often cheaper (because it doesn't take up the time of a human). With this in mind we can see that someone *is* disenfrancised by their ability.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
...because companies don't give a rats ass about accessibility. Now the ADA DOES apply to web sites.
If you provide a service in the States, then you are liable.
Besides, the sort of thing that you are asking for is a very simple thing to implement. For instance Alt tags for images.
I've seen a lot of commercial sites that don't have the alt text.
Talk to a lawyer, I know one who could tell you that this is an open and shut case and Southwest won't win.
On an unrelated note, a lot of theaters STILL don't carry open captioned films even though they are required to by law. I'm getting sick of it enough that I MIGHT sue a theater.
To quote you out of context:
How many major sites now use flash, can the screen reader translate that?
Not only might the screen reader not be able to read this, but chances are my PDA can't either!!
Sites that use only flash, or make important data require flash to access, are not a good thing. There should always be some way that someone with the most basic browser can get to information they need. Furthermore they lock themselves away from many wireless or small device users.
Companies, think carefully before thowing away future customers! Text is simply the best way of transmitting most information that humans want to see (even text directions can be better than a map at times!!), and as such plan for a future that integrates text with diagrams, rather than throwing it away.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
are lawyers. Why does the US have half the worlds lawyers? It really makes no sense.
Anyways. The clear answers to this blind persons problem is that instead of suing a company for not supporting their method of access, use your power as a member of a capitalistic society, and send a message with your money.
Find another company that supports you better, and spend your money with them.
Why does common logic like this escape so many people?
Casual Games/Downloads
I think the line is very clear. What you described is obviously fine, and blind people would have no problems with something like an art site that used Flash or movies of any sort.
The line is in my mind lives about where it lives right now in the physical world, and as with so many things needs only slight clarification instead of major overhaul. If your web site is for a commercial entity to be accesses by the public than you need to make any pages external customers might access in the course of doing business with you accessible.
If you're smart then you'll also make internal pages accessible as well so that when someone who does fall under the ADA guidelines gets hired, you wont have any problems. Even better, how aboput making sure your crucial internal app is not the reason the company has to turn somebody away because they will not be able to run it, who then sues you as a result (only a step away from this story).
I really can't believe all the people here pushing back on this issue. I like to think that, god forbid, something really bad should happen to me I'd still be able to work AND use the internet for leisure. A lot of people here seem to be fine with the thought that the internet as a body should cast away anyone without two hands, great reflexes, and 20/20 vision.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We can all agree that when the ADA was passed it didn't have the internet in mind. The defense will agrue that it therefore doesn't apply to the web. The procicution will argue that the internet has become a normal part of life for most people and that it should therefore be covered under the ADA. Would you be able to function "normally" if you couldn't use the net?
I don't think the facts of the case are in dispute. the plantif clearly can't use the sight and sence you've been there you know why. (You have been there right) The question then becomes could the plaintif have recieved the same service by some other means. (The telephone seems to be mentioned alot) the answer is here clearly no. In order to get the discounds for some of these programs you must use the web interface. To give and analogy in the brick and morter world, what would happen if you got %50 off movie tickets provided you only used the stairs?
Here things get a bit trickier. SW must provide the same services offered on the web to ADA protected people. This could simple mean a note at the bottom of some pages stating that people with visual impairment may receive web only offers by phone. If on the other hand it is ruled that there is something intrinsically serviceable about SW's web page then they very well may have to change there sight.
First off this part will depend a lot on how the previous questions were answered. Second it will depend on what gets ruled as a service. To give an example, I'm fairly sure Hotmail doesn't work with the web reader. There is also the issue of what standards will have to be met. Wheel chair ramps must be wide enough to accommodate a standard wheelchair, and everyone knows how big that is because it's in the code. On the other hand there is no standard for web readers. Establishing one (if necessary) will be a long and painful processes with lots of lawyers involved.
In the end, I (and IANAL) believe that the ADA will apply in a very limited fashion to the web, simply requiring that ADA protected groups be able to access services availably on the web either directly or through alternate means (telephone). Ialso think it will apply only to those buisnesses that offer non-web based services through web interfaces. It will take another case to clarify what happens to sights sell goods, and sights that offer only web based services (like slashdot).
In a closing note I want to remind readers that the ADA protects people from unequal treatment which they could not otherwise aviod. If every blind person in the US were to boycott SW it would not make a dent in SW's revinew. The ADA is the governments way of providing a leagle insentave to accomadate dissabled people for whom a finiantial incentive is not availible. This is not to say it isn't used like a club by scum sucking lawyers, nor is it to say that it couldn't use some fixing and clarifaction, but it is an important piece of law with it's place in our society.
JFMILLER
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
You probobly just asked as a joke, but here is my take on the ATM thing. ATM manufacturers have to put brail on the walk up ones. Therefore they are already making tones of brail key's and such. A customer (bank) want to install a drive through ATM, the manufacturor has 2 choices, they can either make a different set of keys without brail, or they can just use some of the keys they already have. Which way do you think would be cheaper?
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
Fine. How about ATMs that only white men can use?
As for "If SW Airlines doesn't want blind people for customers, so be it," replace with "If SW Airlines doesn't want black people or women for customers, so be it."
You will probably reply that it's different.
You bet it is. It isn't even technologically feasible to make an ATM (or web site) that only white men are capable of using. Even if it was, that would arguably take more effort than just making an ordinary ATM or web site (for example, you would have to add some way to detect whether the user was a white man or not). In those cases, I think it would be reasonable to prohibit such "features".
But this case is different. In this case, the user actually lacks the ability to see, which is a prerequisite for functioning normally in our society, and Southwest simply hasn't added support for such users. They haven't deliberately denied access, as in your hypothetical case. Whether they should be required to add such features is certainly something that can (and should) be debated, but don't try to equate it with anti-racism and "fairness".
There is nothing intrinsic to travel on Southwest airlines that precludes access to blind passengers.
Yes, but what do travel on Southwest and access to Southwest's web site have to do with each other? I assume that Southwest has some sort of telephone center, which should be more than sufficient to make reservations, purchase tickets, and do anything else necessary. Even if you do argue a "right" to ride on Southwest, that doesn't equate to a "right" to use Southwest's web site. Those are two distinct actions, with different prerequisites.
For what it's worth, my personal opinion is that Southwest shouldn't be forced to make such changes. People with disabilities ought to realize that they can't participate fully in society, and accept that. (Or else find a workaround--like the text-to-speech devices--but failings of that workaround shouldn't be made the fault of society!)
And before you ask, yes, I would still hold the same opinion even if I was, or became, blind. (And I likewise don't go screaming ADA at companies because I happen to use Lynx a lot. I realize that by using Lynx I may not be able to use some sites--and I accept that.)
That wouldn't necessarily trip up a text reader if they properly put in 'ALT' tags.
IMO, requiring businesses to provide accesibility measures for the disabled is a justified restriction to place on the non-disabled. Consider that without the accesibility laws, businesses don't provide them on their own good will, and the disabled are unable to function even if they are capable. [emphasis added]
So what, in your mind, makes a blind person "capable" of using a (visual-oriented) web site?
Now, we add a whole new method of content rendering. We can't even impliment the main standards properly. How do we plan to ensure that an audio interface can successfully read a website, as well? Keep in mind that this is not what the web was originally designed to handle.
Keep in mind that this is exactly what the web was originally designed to handle.
It's easy - follow the standards, and if you want to add "extensions", do so in a way that your site does not rely on them.
No, section 508 just covers government and businesses that want government money. ADA covers non-government services that are essential and public like air travel and supermarkets.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
Next I suppose we will have a lawsuit from a visually challenged person that they cannot get proper access to a pr0n site. The court will rule that the site must provide blow-up dolls hooked to the web browser and controlled by Javascript for the poor guy.
Long ago, a science fiction writer (I don't remember who, unfortunately) wrote a short story about a society which tried to equalize everything for everybody. If you were too fast, you wore weights to slow you down. If you were too smart, you wore a device that randomly made a loud noise and startled you out of your train of thought.
We are headed that way!
The only good weather is bad weather.
I haven't used Opera (I'm on Mozilla), but reading the description of this "feature" - that is, resizing bitmaps - perhaps because resized bitmaps look like shit? Especially if not done by a factor of 2?
I think that the problem with the SouthWest site is simply that they use graphics links that don't specify their alt tags. At least when I ran it through the w3c's HTML validator that's the main complaint. This isn't rocket science, nor is it very hard to comply with. We're not talking about a lot of money and if their web guys had followed standard industry best practices there wouldn't have been a problem.
As a bonus, you make your site accessible via Lynx so it wouldn't just be a benefit to the blind.
I don't know who did the SW airlines site but they weren't served very well.
Will they be suing pr0n sties next? Is goatse.cx accessible?
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
do you drive a car? should we make the streets blind accessible?
Rights do not impose burdens upon others. Laws like this, which can be easily be carried to extremes, can be stifling. For example, I am a public school teacher. We are being killed by special ed. There is no limit to what can be asked for, and gotten. Parents get "advocates" and lawsuits kill the schools. Most of these kids are totally fine, just that the parents abuse the laws.
Remember what Barry Goldwater said, "A government big enough to give you everything, is big enough to take it all away".
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
The web designers who created the website seem to have no understanding of either DTDs or image alt tags. If they went back and filled in those values, I think SW wouldn't be inaccessible to the blind.
It's just a very dumb situation that never should have gotten to the lawsuit level. SW's shareholders are being ill served by the situation.
Okay, AOL I can understand. Online service is their sole business. There is no other way to access AOL except online. Southwest Airlines on the other hand is out of the question. This PC crap has got to go. Why doesn't blindy CALL THEM ON THE PHONE?!?!?!?!? This really torques me off. There is no guarantee of equal access to the net in the Constitution. And even if there were, I think the fact that they have alternative ways to book flights should cover that. I'm not sure what's involved in making a site comlpiant with screen reader software, but if it interferes in any way with the look, feel, or functionality of the site, I say screw the blind guy. This is almost like sueing a musician for not making his music accessible to deaf people. Or a visual artist for not making his paintings accessible to blind people.
Those aren't instructions. Learn braille! It says:
Warning: You are currently standing in front of a drive-up atm. Please move out of the way before you are run over by a careless driver intent on withdrawing $20.00.
Southwest airlines has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders to maximize its customer base so that every profitable customer who's going to behave responsibly (no terrorists please) gets served.
This maximizes profits and makes the shareholders happy. If Southwest management had either followed w3c standards and filled in their alt tags or Southwest airlines legal had put a requirement for their web consultants to follow best practices or at least current law, none of this would have happened.
In short, there's a perfectly free market way of looking at the situation and coming to the conclusion that Southwest has screwed up.
The major problem is that Southwest management (and every other corporate mangement under the sun) has decided not to make use of technology so that shareholders can exercise meaningful control over their companies. Thus you end up with an expensive, embarrassing lawsuit that would have been much more quickly, efficiently resolved if the owners could meaningfully manage their employees.
They're just taking their cue from the largest group of American's with disabilities: Window's users (Henceforth, WUs).
Sure, they're disabled. But they were born as WUs, so it's not their fault. Besides, sometimes that sort of thing just happens. However, when groups like the ADA look at WUs, they feel like they're not doing their job. When one disabled group gets everyone to cater to their needs, but none of the others do, it puts honest disabled defenders such as the ADA in a bad light.
What can we do to fix this? Obviously, we need to stop catering to the WUs as much. Maybe give them second or third place consideration. That should make other honest disability defenders back off, since there isn't such a successful archetype to emulate.
Karma: Not Particularly Funny.
Haven't spent to much time on that web, myself. The web I use tends to be composed of information, usually in the form of little magnetic bits aligned in one direction or another. As I'm unable to access info directly from magnetic media, I prefer to get that info in the form of written words. But this web I use isn't inherently visual- I could get the same information aurally, just not as quickly. A SQL query on a database to retrieve a ticket price-- nothing inherently visual about that, except the purely personal aspect of me reading the results rather than hearing them.
But then until 1997 or so I did most of my web browsing in Lynx, and I'd be happy enough to be able to do so again. When I want a pure reading experience, all the "inherently visual" aspects of the web get in the way: text is quick to download, unlike all the gifs and flash bouncing advertisements. So I'm not unhappy about people pushing for ADA and accessability standards for web pages: what makes for better access for the blind also makes for an easier, faster, and less stupid-blinking-ads experience for me.
I've always thought people who think you have to be able to drive to use a drive-up ATM are complete and total gits.
If someone invented a technique to graft a person's ass to a bucket seat, Americans would be lining up out into the street to get it done.
What is up with people spreading that link around. the wtc2002.org design has been soundly rebuffed by anyone with any esthetic sense whatsoever.
In other words, it's butt ugly.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
if anyone's loosing money I'll catch it
however if they are losing money then I'll just stay out of it thanks
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
All you have to do is have your content be available in plain text format. In otherwords, plain HTML. If you do this, your page will be compliant.
It actualy takes work to make webpages incompatable.
You don't have to translate you're page into 300 languages at all.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The government's been requiring almost all IT products including web sites be accessible for years. If you do design for anything government-related, you're used to this by now. And you know how government self-regulation has a habit of leaking out to the country at large.
If you need to make a site accessible quickly, or develop an accessible one from scratch, get InFocus from SSB.
To have the govt set up a service with humans that read web sites to any blind web surfer? Could be linked via a collaboration program so both would be seeing the same site. Overall, this seems cheaper to the US economy than forcing every business in the US to redesign their web site.
.gif files or something it won't be.
Have you ever heard of this thing called "HTML"? If you use this "HTML" stuff to design your website, it will be able to be read by blind people. If on the other hand, you use flash, or put all your textual content in
In other words, you actually have to work to make a website that can't be read by blind people. Since these companies already put so much effort only to exclude people, they might as well put in a little more to fix the problem.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
In 1998 the companies I worked for were all (At some point) charged with violating the disabilties act. None of it went to trial, ever, because the "web" is not covered by the disabilities act any more than space travel is. Customer service for silicon valley companies have all gotten "charged" with this sort of thing and it has no merit. I'm surprised it's making the news today. Must be out of stories about the danger of backing up quickly in parking lots (thanks NBC for real journalism).
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
We can do so, a trained monkey could almost do so, it's quite easy to do... the problem is instead of trained monkeys we have so-called web designers that refuse to learn the basic facts about HTML. I don't know if you're one of them or not, but your post is a perfect example of the ignorant arrogance I'm talking about.
By using HTML. Very simple. If your website is readable with lynx, it's readable for the blind. If it's not, you need to learn HTML and fix it.
No, this is exactly what the web was originally designed to handle. Ever wonder why it's so difficult to control page layout exactly with HTML? It's because HTML is a content language, not a layout language. It was designed from the beginning to leave 'layout' decisions up to the browser, for precisely the reason that it was designed to be accessible via every disparate 'viewing' device imaginable, explicitely including teletypes and voice-readers!
Here go educate yourself.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Out of curiousity on how much work would be involved to populate the ALT tags on the www.southwest.com airlines website, I discovered the following statistics:
According to the HTTP header for requests on port 80 and 443 (SSL), SouthWest is using Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 SP3. Since the latest version is 6.0 SP4, I would not trust their website to be secure (SSL does not matter if the dated web server has security holes).
The website was retrieved using "wget -r -l 1000 http://www.southwest.com/" Although wget honors restrictions stated in the robots.txt file, it only disallowed cgi-bin.
The recursive fetch of the website contains the follow file make up:
811 html files
571 gif files
258 jpg files
18 pdf files
5 other file formats
The html files contain:
14 unique cgi-bin references
34,713 total IMG tags
682 IMG tags with ALT attribute (less than 2%)
The remaining 34,031 IMG tags without an ALT attribute contain only 364 unique references.
Hence, I believe I could write a sed script to update each HTML file to contain the approbate ALT text for every IMG tag in less than 7 hours. I would be willing to do the work for $500 provided that I was also contracted for another $500 to install a licensed copy of Netscape-Enterprise/Sun ONE Enterprise Web Server v6.0 SP4 ($1,495) and install the latest Solaris 8 recommended patch cluster (although the web server update is a seprate issue, I don't like to leave a job/situation half done). I would have to be able to see the 14 cgi scripts before deciding how much to charge to modify them to also output approbate ALT text but I would imagine that would be under $1,000.
In the end, I believe that SouthWest airlines has saved approx. $3,500 by violating the HTMLv4 specification requiring ALT attributes for every IMG tag and by continuing to run an outdated version of Netscape-Enterprise web server. Considering that a lawsuit will probably cost them over 30 times that amount, hopefully they will learn to be willing to spend the money in the future to keep their files and software up to date.
I just looked at your page, it's fine... any page that's written in real HTML is fine. So why the concern?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Why would you dislike the feature again?
If you want, you can resize in 10% increments. No-one is forcing you to resize to 267% or anything weird like that.
If you don't want to resize the pictures, you can define you own style sheet and use "user mode." That way you can see the images in their original size, and use whatever fontsize you want...
Please, if you haven't used the feature, don't criticise it.
I have read a lot of negative comments about not supporting the ADA on this one... But then I thought, why not use this as an oppurtunity to have web sites forced to be compilant with standards? No more ActiveX sites that don't work with Mozilla... No more sites that say: "Your Opera browser is not compatible with this site. Please use IE 5.5 or 6" Wouldn't that be nice? Now I hate legislation too, but if there is going to be legislation on this, let's use it not only for the benefit of blind people, but also us nerds! Yeah, Go ADA!!!
If you have a disability, why is it the world's job to cater to YOU, instead of YOUR job to adapt to the world?
If someone is blind AND deaf, will they insist that every movie theater provide someone to do that Helen Keller style sign-language-inside-your-hand-so-you-can-feel-it to tell you what's happening on the screen and what's being said?
I'm all for companies voluntarily making their sites/buildings/whatever more accessible, and I believe that government sites might have a greater reason to be "required" to be accessible, but to make it mandatory is just cost-shifting the expense of "being handicapped" from the person who actually is handicapped to "lots of companies who are rich and can afford it".
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
"That's as ludicrous as saying every author writing a book needs to have it translated and published into every foreign language in common use"
We provide the translators. It's equivalent to saying you can't publish a book which prevents people from reading it aloud to their blind friends.
"The fact is, many sites right now are quite browser-dependent"
In that case, I find it extremely useful that ADA is forcing such sites to sort their act out and get a professional site that actually works.
"If we didn't have Javascript, web sites would be much less useful."
Javascript is obsolete for exactly that reason: it hardly ever works. back in 1998 when IE was king, everyone had to disable javascript completely because of security risks. Now that we have mozilla, most people allow javascript to run with restrictions on it (no popups...). However, anybody who needs active content has already updated their sites to use server-side scripting which works regardless of browser.
Simple example: a javascript website will not only look like a p.o.s. to anyone with scripts turned off (try it sometime) but won't even show up on google.
"If this had to be presented as pure HTML... (rant about difficulty)"
Give me your javascript source, and I'll show you how easy it is to convert to PHP.
"This is a question of whether we want to let government dictate requirements for every site we build."
Okay, final analogy:
"Voting today will be done with touch-screens. Our apologies to blind people, but we do not have the resources to test our machines with a wide range of people. This voting machine is optimised for eyeball explorer(tm)."
... in which way "visuals" improve the experience when buying a plane ticket?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I am still waiting for the first commercial site that uses "visuals" only to do business.
He, how are they going to describe their products? Or take your name and credit card with "visuals"?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Funny, the same argument was made about the ADA's effect on small businesses having to install ramps and accessible restrooms. Yet not a whole lot of small businesses went out of business because of this.
Funny, isn't it.
Southwest can afford it, and so can the other businesses being targeted here. These suits are not frivolous. They are trying to expand the civil rights of a minority that has been ignored too long.
--"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think."
comes from where?
Somebody in this thread calculated the cost to fix all this (plus other nasty issues). Total: less than 4000.
Moron.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... then come back and tell us the same.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Companies that want to make their sites more accessible, but don't want to build their own standards could always adopt the 508 standards and perhaps pick up some legal cover in the process.
Most of the rules are basic. It does hamstring you out of some of the more sexy things (flash is difficult) but it also keeps you true (you tend not to waste taxpayer's $$$ having to make silly flash intros).
If you have diehard GUI html designers in your shop, there are several plug-ins for Dreamweaver (and others) that force the code to be 508 compliant. Vi can write 508 code just fine.
Many COTS vendors now also have 508 compliant versions of their s/w, otherwise they can't sell to government.
To learn more, good place to start is the Section 508 homepage.
..., to force them to do what is perceived by their electorate as the right thing to do.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Common sense would say that a hollowed out tree would propbably make a very bad spaceship. Not to mention dangerous.
Is there any "common sense" reason to not like Opera's resizing feature?
Yes, the images might look like shit, but so what? You don't have to use the feature if you don't want to.
Would someone please give me alist of the top three or so screen readers? We have been working on 58 compliance but without an example of a screen reader it has bee very difficult.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
obviously YOU are not a web designer. ...and if you are, you spend way too much time translating...
How many people in the US are going to use NON-ENGLISH braille readers? Last time I checked, the ADA is a law in the US...
(Of course, that hasn't stopped the RIAA & MPAA before...)
I've saved your email address, if & when things get up & going, I'll check with you again, in case you change your mind.
Thanks again.
Us non-blind people can see a version of *insert-random-geocites-site-here* that's not dark blue on purple with animated backgrounds!
I would love to see your reference to the code on that one.
The law excludes PUNITIVE damages, but not damages. The entire purpose of the civil justice system is damages, the idea that one party was wronged by another, and to make him whole by collecting damages. What also follows is that the loser pays the winner's attorney fees.
Punitive damages are damages that are above and beyond what is necessary to make the plaintiff whole. They are punitive, in they are intended to discourage others from behaving in a similar manner. These are not allowed under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
If damages were disallowed, one could not file suit. There are many examples of these kinds of laws. Instead of filing a civil suit, you make a complaint to an administrative board, and they hear your case.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
The idea behind the web is that the server presents the information with simple tags and the client makes rendering decisions (hopefully) based on user preferences
Most of the terrible sites out there are the result of 4 foot tall pointy headed analy retentive control freaks who can't stand the possability that your client might render the page with a single pixel 'out of place'.
While part of the problem is clueless companies, the real problem is clueless web designers. Companies often outsource these things to 'experts' because they know that they don't know what to do.
I am also a web user who is disabled, though not blind. I can definitely understand what it's like to come to a web site that is nearly unusable due to very poor design decisions. I believe that any site that hopes to be accessable by anyone other than the author should at least have an idea of the ADA and Section 508.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
...as they are peddling a product which forbids them to read the site correctly. It's not Southwest's fault that the product cant handle their site, is it? We can't expect to have to QA our sites through some 3rd party 'web to spoken word' utility, to keep this disability watchdog happy. That's as pathetic as having to translate every web page to Spanish, as its discriminiating against the Spanish speaking community.
A casual stamp collector does not have the need for a complex layout. It is not difficult to make sure that a page gets rendered properly (or is usable) in Lynx unless it's a very sophisticated/hackish layout. People will need to learn to use ALT tags and the validator, but it's not such a big deal for a personal/small website.
Also, keep in mind that if the court agrees that the ADA applies to web sites, every HTML writing program will probably include ALT tag capabilities. Legislation like the ADA is a good way to ensure that software makers write programs that generate standards-compliant code. Standards compliance is always a good thing.
And if you'd done any 508 work by hand, you'd know to appreciate the link.
/.
AC, you might as well yell spam for the thousands of other software recommendations on
Not to kick disabled people in the junk but ADA requirements on web sites is absolute bullshit. My state recently required it on all state-agenct websites. It's a God Damn nightmare. You can't use half the shit you used to use for web pages and be compliant. It's damned near impossible to build a useful site for a Unv that's completely ADA compatible unless plain text floats your boat. I don't know what the solution is but I DO NOT BELIEVE that ADA requirements should be forced on the Internet. Installing a wide door and a ramp in a bulding is easy. Building a website that works in the top 3 browsers on the major platforms AND be ADA compliant is just not possible IMHO.
God I get pissed every time I hear this shit. What about airplane cockpits, cars, guns, nuclear test facilities, operating rooms for blind doctors, etc...? What about bicycles for quadraplegics? Gymnastic equipment for leppers? Dictionaries for braindead? Toilet paper for amputees?
HTML Validators only check that your HTML validates according to the HTML Recommendation. It does not test accessibility requirements that are not part of the HTML recommendation.
There are tools for testing the accessibility of a website. One of the best I've come across is Accessibility Valet - a much better tool than Bobby
Its cases like this that scream for the ADA to be struck down. The ADA was enacted so that the disabled had access to public (meaning government) facilities so they could actively participate in democracy. This law was not enacted so every business had to go out of their way to support less that 0.01% of the population in EVERY aspect of business. This gentleman no doubt could have picked up a phone and received the same services that the website offered. If that was unacceptable to him, then he could exercise his rights as a consumer and taken his business elsewhere. I hope this airline has the guts to fight this nonsense.
Instead of making websites write extra code to conform to some obscure conversion program, why not make the conversion software read HTML correctly?
Web pages are an art-based, audio-based, text-based medium depending on the designer's whims. Blind people can't read newspaper advertisements and can't order by catalog, deaf people can't hear radio advertisements and can't order by phone. Why should the web be any different?
Why can't a designer make an all-Flash webpage if he wants? Why can't a designer do as he pleases with his site knowing that there are other means to sell items to his customers?
Anyone reading this may think I'm harsh but I'm at a point where I grow weary of unnecessary adjustments. This is NOT handicapped parking. This is NOT denial of employment. This is an effort to limit an audio-visual medium to suit certain people's needs. I wish more people wound understand that the web is audio-visual.
I'm not trying to be snarky with this question, but I have to ask: What would constitute a business site (and thus be subject to ADA policies)? Obviously Southwest would, but would smaller sites that sell t-shirts and hats to subsist be included?
A good blog for (an admittedly skewed) look at ADA lawsuits go to disabled rights at overlawyered.com
That's not the fucking point. Why in the hell is it within the government's power to force someone to build their website a certain way?
The ADA has GOT to go. It's the most vile and disgusting piece of legislation I think we've ever seen.
Can a pressure group for blind people sue a book reseller for not having a voice reader friendly website.
What they going to do next ? sue a book reseller for selling books you have to be able to see to read !
As long as the rates, schedules, and special offers are identical between the two
But they're not. SW (and all of the other airlines, now that I think about it) offer special "web only" fares.
Plus there's the whole wait time thing. Sometimes I get through to a human right away, sometimes I have to wait fifteen minutes to book a flight. The web site site is always about the same amount of time.
In the case of Southwest's web site, it's exactly the opposite: they would have to go out of their way to not "discriminate" by accomodating the blind person.
So? Accomodating ADA needs almost always is an added inconvenience to the brick and mortar places. In fact, I can't imagine it being *more* expensive to ADA-enable a page than it would be to add an accessability ramp or make your store dog-friendly.
It's not malicious on SW's part, I agree, but it's not like it takes a lot of work to change ALT="" to ALT="Login".
A book publisher is not forced to publish his work in braille. And internet site is comprised nearly entirely of text and graphics. It is simply one of those things which makes it suck to be blind.
If a government service was available only on the web, then of course that web site must be accessible. But in general, a web site should only have to provide alternate means of access if they value the market they are locking out by not providing that access.
Similar to Playboy publishing a braille version (which it has). They don't have to do it, but when they want to sell to blind people, they realise that blind people probably don't get much out of their normal issue.
Why should Southwest.com be forced to provide an accessible web site? Does Southwest have to send out braille versions of all their newsletters? Sure, apply financial pressure with your business, but what in the world does the government have to do with whether or not Southwest values having blind customers able to visit their web site?
MORTAR COMBAT!
After reading the article, I don't see where it was addressed that the plantiff ever actually asked them to make their website compliant with his reader.
The way it reads from here, he just decided to be offended and sue.(Or did I miss something entirely?)
Furthermore, what exactly wasn't compliant, and why didn't he address it with the company that makes his reader?
I find it hard to believe that Southwest balked at implementing a few lines of code.
Hey.. The Southwest site isn't lynx friendly either. Maybe lynx users should sue.
The collapse of the common good is taking place all around us through ridiculous litigation.
He who snips comments from another's article without including full context...
I didn't say that this is the way things SHOULD be, I said it's the way things are going. And while your PDA or cellphone can't at this time handle the graphical content in all of it's super-flashy often-crapulant glory, they are becoming increasingly capable. A while back most cellphones didn't have *any* graphic support. Now the bloody things are coming out with colour (shudders).
Rethink my arguements? Perhaps you should re-read them. I'm stating what IS happening, not what I think it should be. I happen to enjoy being able to read articles via lynx/links.
Points: Companies want to do what costs them the least money. Adding blind-friendly content on top of the graphic hoopla costs more time
A counterarguement will likely cost them more. Yes, true, quite possibly true. However, have you ever heard of this law or these standards before?
How many web-developers do you know. Ask them if they've heard of this law. Also also them if they use alt tags (probably no, this is due to poor education or laziness). In this and many cases, it's an act of omission through ignorance, not through intent. This court case will probably make the law more visible, and that's likely part of the intent.
As for the law itself, I'm not sure on the specifics. If it applies to corporate sites only and takes heed of target audience, it's fine by me. If it's like a lot of crappy laws, it will be made too broad and can be made to apply to those for which it really isn't needed by lawsuit-crazy money-grabbers (again, above, this may not be true in this case).
Can a blind person use this law against any website? How about even any corporate website? I'm building an anime-fans site. For a large part it's a personal venture, and the purpose of the site would be completely lost without graphics anyhow (anime is generally a graphic medium). I hope this won't apply to my site. How about a site that is for picture galleries, etc. Could a blind person sue on the basis that it's not blind accessible (and would an ALT "boy in wheat fields with...." tag really be meaningful in this case).
Laws and lawsuits often affect not just the target, but are often reinterpreted via precedent into subsequent cases. Thus, it's always good to step lightly around setting such laws, there's almost always some idiot looking to take advantage of them.
Lawyers: Who do you want to sue today - phorm
The "special provisions" that designers usually make are not to enhance accessability, but to reduce it
Really, you have proof of this, or perhaps saw it on X-files? I thought they were an attempt to make the sites more enticing or graphically pleasing.
I suppose these companies are intentionally aiming to shut out the blind.
Don't confuse affect with intent. And when you post, click "preview", re-read your comment, see where it scores on the I-am-not-a-troll-'o'meter, and then perhaps hit Submit.
I try to be nice, but some people have a fantasical ability for idiocy that overcomes me - phorm
Bullshit.
Several years ago, waaaaaay back in the 90s, we decided to install a ramp at our church. My dad, myself, and a few men from the church spent a weekend and built a ramp that sloped from the street to the sidewalk, about 4 feet away, and it was about 3 feet wide, wider than the wheelchair we had available to us to use as a guide. None of us had any problems getting up the ramp, and none of the congregation had any complaints either.
However, a few weeks after it was built we had a very irrate woman stop by and bitch about the ramp. I happened to be there at the time, and as I had helped build it I was asked to talk to her. She informed me that the ramp did not meet ADA specs and she was going to sue. I asked what the specs were, she said the main thing was that it was not painted red, and there where no grooves cut into the ramp to aid in traction. I didn't see the big deal was with the color, wheelchair people aren't sight impaired, the grooves sounded like a good idea, so I told her we'd make the chages. She got even more upset and said she'd sue anyway.
The next weekend went went back out and cut grooves into the ramp about an inch and a half apart and about an eigth of an inch wide. Afterwards we painted the whole thing red.
Sure enough the next week we were sued.
Both our attorney and the opposing one said that the fact that we made changes indicated that we were aware that we were at fault, and indicated that we'd loose the trial because of that. So we settled out of court. The opposing attorney wanted a outrageous amount for his time and wanted us to tear down the ramp and build it again, this time correctly from the start. They gave us the specs to use, don't remember them off the top of my head, but I do remember we couldn't have a vertical wall on the ramp, it had to blend in smoothly with the grass. Why, I don't know, who wants to roll their wheelchair into the grass?
So we tore the ramp down and rebuilt it. But, since we rebuilt it before the agreement was signed, it didn't matter. We had to tear it down and rebuild it again after we signed the settlement agreement. It was, to me, utter bullshit, but the lawyers on both sides agreed that we had to do it, so what could we do?
All in all we spent around $100,000, between our lawyers and theirs, the cost of the materials was basically nothing, and labour was free, although jackhammer rental was kinda expensive, but compared to lawyer's fees was nothing. And all this because we were trying to be nice and build a ramp in front of the entrance, so that those in wheelchairs didn't have to use the service entrance in the back (nice wide ramp, sturdy handrail, been there for ages)
So don't tell me that "Get the shit done and don't put it off as something to do later, and you won't get sued. "
Now, as to the article in question: "We are quite tired of being shut out of some areas of life,"
Are the blind people unable to use the telephone to make reservations? Are they forced, somehow, to use the internet? I looked in the phone book (I assume that braile version are avialble) and found this number for Southwest Airlines: 1-800-IFLYSWA (1-800-435-9792)
I called the number and they said they could answer any flight information questions I had and you could make a reservation there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (I did not think to ask if they were open on holidays)
-gandalf23@work
These all strike me as "active attempts to disallow entry" - the only question is whether it is negligence or ignorance.
Negligence or ignorance does not indicate attempt. It generally indicates lack of attempt.
attempt : to make an effort to do, accomplish, solve, or effect (attempted to swim the swollen river) [m-w.com]
Oh, and again, the above are perfect examples of crap websites and the way things should not be (but often are). They don't indicate a attempt to disallow users but rather just (as above) ignorance.
Considering more books are sold today than before the advent of television, the obvious answer is YES.
Apples, Oranges? How is text-based internet support related to books, other than the fact that both contain literary material? Books are not the internet, nor are the two mutually exclusive) and internet is still an evolving medium. The internet may in fact become the successor to TV though, but that's something different again.
Oh, and books are a *wonderful* example of something that's always blind accessible. There are audiobooks and perhaps brailbooks, but I'd expect the selection to be somewhat less than what I find on a shelf in Chapters' written section.
One of us may be tasting toes right now? My breath still seems minty - phorm
If someone is blind AND deaf, will they insist that every movie theater provide someone to do that Helen Keller style ... [snip]
According to ADA Title III, Commercial facilities are subject to provide "reasonable accomodations" to their primary place of business. According to the Southwest website, Southwest reported that approximately 46 percent, or over $500 million, of its passenger revenue for first quarter 2002 was generated by online bookings via southwest.com. Therefore, the WWW MAY COUNT AS THEIR PRIMARY SOURCE OF REVENUE, AND BECOME SUBJECT TO ADA Title III.
And this isn't flamebait
By even having to resort to that statement, it already is
The ADA always annoyed me
We'll see how much it annoys you if you or your children ever have the misfortune of becoming blind, deaf, physically disabled.
Blind man's lawsuit under ADA of SouthWest Airlines is valid, because the W3C standards of ALL web sites dictates plain text, plus alt tags for photos. http://anybrowser.com has lots of links and how-to's. What kind of a business limits the many PDA users and the legally blind, from becoming their customer? A STOOPID one! SouthWest Airlines needs to fire the web author, certainly! Prooves there is no competent management outthere...
Yes, following the HTML 4.01 standard is not a guarentee that your site will be ADA complaint. However, I believe if you follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, also published by the W3C, then you should be fine. In fact, the Australian government enforces the use of this standard on all their sites.
If doubling the cost of creating a website is your idea of "smart".
Flash is often the expensive part, especially in reference to time-consumption. Throwing a nice HTML layout to get things started would be smart in general. If somebody really wants to add flash, then it should be an addition but not replacement to HTML.
Scripting is a nice way to keep things updated, so the flash page and the HTML page can learn to get along with each other nicely.
What's the point of accessible Flash if all you are going to do with it is piss off visitors?
Because on some sites the presentation effect does look nicer in HTML. Sites used to promote multimedia (games, etc) often use multimedia for that promotion. Again, flash isn't for every site (it's often an overused bandwagon), and it's not good as the only method of presentation, but it does have places where it is an improvement over semi-static HTML.
Looking at this site,however, the case is likely about ugly JavaScripts and missing ALT tags. They probably had a crappy web-developer (or an office person who just filled the role) who didn't know much about standardization and visited JavaScript sample sites too often.
If you are a licenced business then yes, the government has a bit to say about what you need to do in order to stay a business for the public good. They already to that to some extent in hiring, and of course these issues primarily affect larger businesses and leave smaller places alone. Even if you just own a subway you need to make sure a wheelchair can get in. Businesses have dealt with issues like these for years, why should online places be excempt?
Remember, the site does not have to "not suck". The site only has to be accessible!! Alt tags might be all it takes in ths case. As long as a business makes a reasonable effort then everyone is happy.
The thing that gets me about this whole issue is that in reality, a site almost has to spend MORE money to make a site non-accessible!!! Basic HTML and alt tags is easy, it's when you start doing lots of fancy stuff with Javascript or layers or Flash that people might have issues. I already hate all that stuff ayway when I'm using a site, so frankly I have no pity for businesses that can't take a time to make a simple site that works before slapping on a thousand layers of crap. Business everywhere, for god sakes lookat Amaazon and Ebay before you think about adding that Flash front-end!!
I'm a libertarian but this is one of those areas where the government can and should do something to help where otherwise there would be no motivation to do so. Obviosuly you have to be careful but with a minimum of effort every site could comply with standards that already exist and have no trouble, keeping everyone happy and the web easier to use to boot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The last web shop I worked in made extensive use of dreamweaver, and had little problem with accessibility. Macromdia actually provides a suite of excellent tools for checking ADA compliance of the code it writes. This feature is well advertised, and was one of the features that led us to choose it for use by our artists.
As an aside, our HTML programmers used a different program, HoT MetaL Pro, which checks HTML validity every time you save. Mostly it was just the artists causing accessibility problems (flash animations and the like), so by the time they handed their code over to the HTML jockeys it was ADA compliant and just needed to be dropped in place. Not a perfect solution, but we've never had any complaints.
Back to the point, if the editor you're using doesn't support validation features, get another one, or use a couple that give you the features you need. For anyone who is selling things on the web, the cost of Dreamweaver and HoTMetaL Pro licenses is negligible compared to the rest of your operating costs. Suck it up, and do the job right the first time.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(As just one example, I recently found a site that calculated your speedometer error based upon changing your car's tires out with different sizes. If this had to be presented as pure HTML, I suppose we'd be reduced to looking through a huge list or table of every combination, to find relevant data for our particular car and situation. How is that a *better* way to build the site?)
Sigh. Another Javascript weenie. Why couldn't you just enter the information in a form?
Although I'm generally opposed to using Javascript when form submission/manipulation would work just fine, there are two good reasons to do the above via Javascript. The first is server load; the server may be relatively busy, whereas it's a fair bet that the client can handle the extra cycles to calculate the tire size without blinking; this is even more true with more complex calculations. Second, the site in question might be sitting at Geocities or somewhere of the like, where having real forms is either a major PITA or just not allowed.
(Now, as to sites like ussa.org that require Javascript to be enabled so that I can type in a value to look up data in their [server-side] database, that's a wholly different animal and borderline on just plain stupid)
One can make a valid point that all airlines beneift from huge government subsidies on a general basis; however, as far as the 9/11 airline bailouts go, Southwest was one of the few airlines making money before 9/11 and to my knowledge is the only major making money after; I don't believe they availed themselves of the bailout loans this time.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
What prevents this guy from suing the major television networks because he can not see his television? This is ridiculous. If he has a phone, then he has a means of getting flight information and booking a ticket. He already has access! People with disabilities are not entitled under ADA to having exactly the same means of access, just that they indeed have access! For example, a ramp to a side entrance suffices for wheelchair access. The ramp is there to get you into the building, you can't complain that you aren't still going in the front door.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
>>Is there any "common sense" reason to not like Opera's resizing feature?
No, there's experience resizing images in photo editing programs (MS Photo Editor, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, the Gimp).
>>You don't have to use the feature if you don't want to.
That's why I included the statement that I haven't used Opera, and merely said that my assessment was based on the description.
true, but by sticking to a standard(in this case HTML) people who write software that allows blind people to use the web have a standard to start woith.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is about several issues.
1.freedom of travel.
Not all airlines go to all places. Airlines are a neccessary mode of travel. Being forced to use other modes is unreasonable.
2.It is a large company in an industry that is a very important part of peoples lives, so somebody needs to help the minority be able to handle basic needs for a productive life
3.it doesn't apply to you personal site.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
He should just pick up the damn phone. I hear blind people can use those things to make reservations and its quicker too.
The WWW is a privilege, not a right. (Just ask Kevin Mitnick)
It's just like driving. Are blind people suing car makers for not making a car that is operable by the blind?
No, the whole issue of the ADA requiring ramps and handicapped accessible restrooms was a bit different. That directly affected the ability for handicapped people to go to work each day.
Not being able to purchase airplane tickets online is a much different situation. The web is *not* the only way tickets can be purchased. As long as Southwest offers alternatives (like calling up on the phone to order your tickets), this isn't preventing the blind from boarding their airplanes!
My point is, from the beginning, the web was not really supposed to be a "blind friendly" environment. It's designed around the whole concept of adding photos and colors, plus asthetically pleasing text formatting to content. None of this has any relevance to a blind person.
Now, I agree, it's great that there are ways to design a site so voice synthesizers can read the content for blind users - but IMHO, that ability should be viewed as a nice "bonus", and certainly not a legal requirement.
Once again, there's simply no basic human right to use the Internet. Internet access itself isn't even considered a basic necessity. There are few things it offers that aren't really more than "convenience features". (AKA. Online bill-pay is almost *always* just one more of several possible ways to get a bill paid. In fact, my local electric company *used* to let you pay your bill online each month on their web site, but discontinued it due to "lack of interest"!)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
By my definition, the web automated site has to be accessible as well. It's as simple as that. That's reasonable and fair, and if they had done so they would not be sued.
Anyone can sue anyone for anything. If a business makes a resonable effort than most people wouldn't sue because they wouldn't win. Because SW has chosen to ignore usability in an automated system with a public interface, they are being sued AND will probably lose (in my opinion).
I don't want the government to mandate technology, just that companies make a resonable effort to make all points of access for the company be accessible. I then yield the tangible side benefit of sites that suck less, admittedly a selfish goal. Companies can even use Flash if they like - after all, as others have noted there are accessibility guidelines. They can even use Javascript in a helpful way. But companies using only graphics for navigation without so much as a good alt tag are already unusable and incomplete as far as I'm concerned. We have building codes, this is similar.
I am a libertarian. In my mind the law is quite clear - make some effort to make public points of access to your company in the course of doing business accessible. Leave further clarification up to the courts. I really don't see the problem when in fact practical compliance for web apps is as simple as following W3C standards for crucial pages in the process of doing business. Companies that don't follow already accepted standards get milked until they wise up. Very clear, even if the law seems vague for all practical purposes it is not.
Sorry for the rambling train of thought, I'm in a hurry.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
See this post that I just made.
Although I agree that devices can be made to aid one to read the text, it's still a visual medium just like how phone is an audio medium yet has utilities to help the deaf use it. However, the web is a much better medium for a deaf person, just like the phone is a much better medium for a blind person.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
We'll see how you feel about it if you ever lose a leg or something...or go blind.
I think you'd be suprised at the number of disabled people that contribute to comerce in this country, let alone the world. How would you recomend that these people continue that if the ADA is repealed?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I don't get it.
In my eyes all it takes is Southwestern to fire their stupid, work-avoiding or incapable webdesigners.
In my eyes, all it takes to follow the ADA is to compile a set of pages without all the fuss - make a script to strip all jpg and gif links, remove FLASH and oher crap and recheck the site with lynx. Two hours of work, instant compability.
If this is too much work for Southwestern they clearly deserve the lawsuit. If this is too much work for the admins they need to get fired as it's trivial to anyone not mistaking webdesign with the usage of Frontpage or Flash.
Face it, the Internet was seen as a saviour of free speech and the possibility to integrate those with disabilites even closer into society by means of technology. Lets make sure we don't lose the 2nd fight as well.
+++ath0
I, in no way, mean to offend anyone with these comments, but this is ridiculous. I have a couple of dear friends that are blind and are laughing at this latest attempt to suck tax-payer money. I have developed plenty of websites in my time and those friends have been kind enough to make sure I am completely compliant with their screen-readers. With the 5 billion plus websites out there how the hell is everyone going to be able to comply with this? What I see coming next is that association suing the auto industry because they are inaccessible to the blind. I don't see myself suing a company because I am too short to reach the top shelf in a kitchen. My wife is legally deaf, and has been from birth, but wouldn't even think of suing the record industry (although they should be for other reasons) because she can't enjoy Mozart with me. She thinks that would be insane.
Since Southwest has an 800 number for getting tickets, isn't this a bit like a parapalegic suing to make the stairs accessible when the elevator is right around the corner?
If this goes to trial, it seems like that would be a good legal theory to try out.
What is their defninition of readable?
Is there something wrong with:
"less than-aich-tee-emm-ell-greater than-carriage return"?
Why do you think of text as something visual? Texts can also be read aloud. For example in church there are passages of the bible read by one person and all the others are listening.
Or in the theater: The plays exists as texts, or the lyrics for a song.You can even buy books as audiobooks, but there is only the text read aloud by some person on it?
And with Braille blind people can read, too.
use Bielefeld.pm
Let's see if I can articulate the points where we agree.
Any disagreement on any of those points?
First, let's consider the 'death by a thousand cuts' arguement.
If point 1 says it isn't fair to force someone out of business for a single social good like wheelchair access does it follow that it is also unfair to force someone out of business by requiring them to comply with dozens or hundreds of seperate requirements, each for a social good?
Is it acceptable to raise so many requirements that the effective barriers to entry prevent people from starting businesses in the first place if each of those seperate requirements is for a social good, and each of them has a relatively small cost?
Obviously, if each of the requirements only takes effect once a business is a particular size, it is possible to start really small businesses without being subject to the requirements. Don't let that distract you. These questions are still important.
Next, let's consider peoples natural tendancies to avoid things they don't like.
Generally, people avoid pain, they avoid coercion, and they avoid situations where they are penalized for doing something they want to do. Sometimes they do what they want and attempt to avoid the penalities by keeping secret the fact that they've done something that they could be penalized for.
Almost all people act this way, almost all the time. It's perfectly natural, and it should come as no surprise that people in businesses want to avoid taxes and legal requirements like wheelchair access.
What isn't obvious (it's actually a bit counter-intuitive) is that coercing someone into doing something makes people avoid complying, even if they might have been inclinded to do it on their own in the absence of coercion. When someone is told they must do something, they generally won't want to, even if they would have done that very thing if they hadn't been coerced.
When we think about the overall effect of creating a requirement in order to create a social good (such as wheelchair access), it is worth considering the fact that some people to avoid satifying that social good who would have otherwise done so on their own, without the requirement.
The overall effect of the requirement then is that some number of people will be successfully forced to meet the requirement and some people will avoid doing so as a direct result of the existance of the requirement. If we wanted to measure the effect of the requirement, we would only count these two groups, as people not meeting the requirement who already wouldn't have done so and people meeting the requirement on their own even though they aren't required to do so don't count. The group of people who would have met the requirement but don't because of the requirement is unmeasurable, and the overall result is potentially negative.
Given that there are a large set of requirements that kick in once a business is a particular size, and people seek to avoid things they are forced to do, businesses often seek to avoid reaching the particular size where the requirements keep in. People seek loopholes because they don't like coercion.
If requirements are based on number of employees, and business owners will seek to avoid unwanted requirements, there will be some (perhaps many) businesses who actively choose not to hire additional people as a direct result of the fact that this would force them to comply with additional requirements. To the extent that this occurs, the requirements have contributed to unemployment.
Yep, prior to 1990, these people all starved to death in the streets. Neglected, shunned by society, turned out by their families, and unable to turn round doorknobs, it's a wonder any survived at all.
Luckily, our fearless government stepped in and solved the problem by forcing us to spend billions to comply with frequently arcane regulations.
Thank god our valiant government has moved to make sure even quadriplegics have access to lap dancing, mean people can't be fired, 400 lb porkers can be stewardesses...
It's a damn good thing that the feds stepped in and fixed this for us. I know local governments, churches, families, friends, etc certainly weren't up to the task, despite handling it for thousands of years.
I'm also glad that we eliminate all sorts of things in the name of fairness. We couldn't climb to the top of the torch tower from the 1996 Olympics - why? Because there wasn't any way to make it handicap accessible. Better we should all suffer than to let some suffer alone. Then there was when Greenbelt, Maryland was forced to remove a portable toilet from the city park, because when it rained, the toilet wasn't wheelchair accessible anymore. I guess we all need to hold it so we can appreciate that.
Anything short of the ADA would've been akin to concentration camps!
PS: What kind of selfish piece of crap forces everyone around him to shell out hard earned money to provide for him?
Ok, than I stand corrected on exactly when HTML got such things as the img element....
Still, it doesn't really change my core arguement. (AKA. If HTML didn't grow out of simply presenting text content, why really use it instead of "Veronica", "Gopher" and other such tools?) IMO, the "web" really took off only because it started allowing multimedia content.... not just text. We had perfectly good computer bulletin board systems, IRC chat, email, Usenet news, and many other ways to convey information otherwise.....
No, they didn't starve in the streets, but they also were not able contribute nearly as much as they can now.
What other public programs do you have a problem with? Only the ones that somehow 'burden' you and don't provide you with any benefit? Right, because how selfish would THAT be?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I happen to agree with you that the ADA should be changed. Until it is, people should comply with it. Southwest should have complied with the request in any case because
1. They have a duty to maximize profits. By turning away text browsers like lynx and blind people who can't use their textreader browsers, they fail in that duty
2. They have a duty to create a positive image for the company because that affects point 1 above. Being mean to blind people in a petty way when they could have just developed to international standard and have everything just work is also a disservice to the shareholders.
3. The problem is that today, shareholders have such little practical control over their corporations that management is being reigned in by less efficient methods like the ADA which is constitutionally dubious at best.
The solution is to fix shareholder oversight. Then the ADA can quickly fall into that category of law that is bad but irrelevant. I can live with that.
I am a little hesitant on my response to this.
On one side, I strongly believe that our court system is an absolute mess because of frivolous lawsuits and judges that are NOT willing to stand up and put a stop to them. And this case is a perfect example of U.S. liberal groups trying to make technology accessible to the smallest groups at the expense (in money and more) of everybody else, similar to a former USPS contract I had where we had to build intranet sites for ALL legacy versions of IE and Netscape when Netscape 4.x and IE 5.x were already commonplace (which limited our production time and possibilities).
On the other side though, as bookstores and travel booking sites become two of the few successful online industries, replacing the need for brick-n-mortar stores and using the phone to book an airline ticket, respectively, I guess we do need to consider the implications of blind people online, considering that buying books and tickets may become an online-only business in the future.
I just have these important questions:
1) What does it take to make a website compliant for screen-reader programs? What is the cost in money and time, and what is sacrificed in making a website compliant (design, added features, multi-media, etc.)?
2) Is there a screen-reader standard, or would websites have to code for several different readers, much like my IE vs. Netscape scenario above?
3) Major online stores are one thing, but what about mama-n-pop stores with online fronts? What about news sites? What about larger, popular personal websites? What about Slashdot or P2P sites? How far does the compliance have to run, who is liable, and how do you regulate such a compliance procedure?
4) Shouldn't the screen-reader programs be the ones being sued, not the websites? As childish as this may sound, but "Which were here first?" Shouldn't the screen-reader programs be modified to accept new web technologies? My fear is that websites will spend so much time and money creating accessibility for the 1%, that the 99% will never see any advancement in design, functionality, "webtricks," multi-media, etc. Are browsers themselves an important element in affective screen-reading?
If you are a website owner and/or web developer, this case could have longterm implications and in a negative way.
Reposting an AC for everyone's benefit:
"Not that anybody will probably see this as the article is at the bottom of Slashdot, BUT - a group of individuals in my hometown (who were hearing impaired) had a lawsuit against a movie theater for not close captioning all of the films that they show. The films are not printed with close captioning embedded on them, so how did they plan on one theater being able to do this? In my opinion, this is just another example of somebody taking advantage of large businesses."
How did it turn out?
What legal basis did they use, in regards to the ADA certainly, but what specifically?
What comments did the judge make about it?
Just because many people buy tickets online does not mean it is their "primary place of business" as you say. Their primary place of business is in their airplanes. People don't go the the website and pay money just to visit the website after all. They go the website and pay money to be allowed to get onto the planes.
And I am partially disabled. My wife will probably be disabled within a decade from scoliosis. Our kids may become crippled, blind, deaf, or whetever in the future. Still doesn't excuse the infringements on my rights that the ADA presents. Or the infringements on your rights either.
Besides would a blind and deaf person feel that the Helen Keller style of communication is "reasonable accomodations" for them to enjoy a movie? There have been court cases about it.
.. and not only physically impaired people. Why? Because accessibility measures means several things:
1. There has to be at least a minimum measure of structure.
2. The sites will work better with alternative browsers.
3. Accessibility-issues often lead to convenience for everyone. The drive behind the GNOME-accessibility has made the desktop more keyboard-friendly which is a boon for everyone.
4. We're not in our physical prime for our entire life. Just about everyone will get some quirks eventually. Not everyone will go blind, but most people will have their eyesight weakened, and a site tweaked for accessibility will be easier.
Instead of vainly trying to get all webmasters to comply, why not change the reader software? The easiest way would be: if there's no ALT tag, read the image name. This would have solved the whole issue with Southwest, look at the image names of the menu... things like email_updates_m01.gif... it could read that out. Of course, ALT tags are ideal, but if they're not being used, a backup plan never hurt.
According to this cnet story, the judge ruled that the ADA doesn't apply to the web. The full opinion can be read here (pdf).