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ADA Doesn't Apply to Web
djmoore writes "A federal judge has ruled that the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) does not apply to the Web. U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz dismissed with prejudice a suit demanding that Southwest Airlines make its website more accessible to the blind, saying that the suit would create new rights for the disabled without setting appropriate standards. Judge Seitz also rejected plaintiffs' claim that the Web is a 'place of exhibition, display, and a sales establishment,' one of the twelve categories covered by the ADA, on the grounds that the law only covers physical places." Our original article has more details.
Now I don't have to use alt tags! =)
Common sense is not so common.
Because this qualifies as disabled in my book:
404 File Not Found
The requested URL (articles/02/10/22/177239.shtml?tid=123) was not found.
If you feel like it, mail the url, and where ya came from to pater@slashdot.org.
Finally, common sense from the bar. A new law is needed to define the rights of the disabled in cyberspace. Like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act defined how Copyright functions in cyberspace, a Cyber-ADA needs to be passed by Congress to define how (and whether) the handicapped shall access cyberspace.
Dr. Joseph Hairston
Superintendent, CCBC
In my opinion, web design which makes a site inaccessible to impaired people is rude, discourteous, and even odious. It's not like disabled don't have enough problems. If you can't view it in Lynx, you're a bastard for writing it.
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
It can still end up before the Supreme Court, and they can still decide otherwise.
"Judge Seitz also rejected plaintiffs' claim that the Web is a 'place of exhibition, display, and a sales establishment,'"
Perhaps I should forward some spam to Judge Seitz. I get about ten emails a day with various offers to exhibit, display and sell, uh, stuff.
If you use fixed font size tags, this won't change a thing in the browser. Its akin to assuming the table will stretch and shrink when you tag it with a fixed height and width. It s just not gonna...
"Goodness, how did you people live long enough to invent tools?" -Hobbes (the tiger, not the philosopher)
When its talking out of its ass.
I think the area of online jurisdiction is going to be a legal gold mine of study in the near future. What with seemingly conflicting case law this is the stuff that a law journal would kill for.
Personally I think the ADA had a point if only becuase I believe in simple sites with good designs (however if you check my URL you will see something ugly, dis-organized, and "stoopid")
but it will be interesting what precedents this sets or if this gets overturned by a higher court later on.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Thats like filing a suit against Ford for not making their cars drivable for the blind.....
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
And I thought this might be an avenue to shut down pr0n sights...
Ummm...
None of that matters if you are BLIND.
... that the language ADA does't work well with apache and modern browsers ? :)
I demand Slashdot offer a braile version.
There is no reason Southwest could not make their website blind-accessible.
1. graphical buttons should have names (you know, the things that pop up when you hover your mouse over a graphic) so the blind can tell, w/ a text reader, what the button is supposed to do.
2. people put up "text only"/"low bandwidth" versions of their pages up all the time. It is not difficult.
In short, southwest doesn't want to be assed to hire competent frontpage monkeys.
That would depend on the browser you are using. Some will enlarge/shrink event fixed sizes.
While I'm glad the court didn't make a blanket judgement compelling businesses to maintain dual website versions, we DO need to consider ways in which to make the web more accessable to the disabled in order to more completely fulfill its promise. Kudos to the judge for making this decision though. Another heavy handed mandate was not what is needed for this problem.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Of COURSE ADA doesn't apply to the internet. perl has long since dominated in that area. The government -just- noticed this?
And I was JUST about to sue Playboy.com because I can't get it up...
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
The best analogy I can think of is a building with both stairs and a ramp to access it. If this lawsuit was successful, it would be like compelling the owner of said building to make the stairs accessable to disabled people when there is a perfectly good ramp. Why should Southwest have to change their website when there is a perfectly good phone number?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Well, that's fine and dandy, but what if you're completely blind? There are solutions out there, like a brail strip on the front of the desk that can be read line by line, but I'm willing to bet it's either expensive or very propriatary, or both. As far as I Know, there isn't a really viable solution to help the blind use computers and the internet.
"A federal judge ruled that the Atlanta mass transit agency violated the ADA by constructing a website that was inaccessible for people with visual disabilities."
Read it here
I guess what makes these cases different is that one is a private company, the other a public service organization.
Thank goodness this judge has some common sense. Nothing against disabled people, but it's just impractical to provide everything for you just for convenience. And that's what the web mainly is. CONVENIENCE. You can do virtually anything without the web, except that it's not as convenient. Want a plane ticket? Use the phone!
Disabled people have been getting along fine before the web came. If they really needed it like the plaintiff in this case thinks, they would have proposed that the internet be invented.
Its good PR if someone write HTML/websites for accesibility. However, to federally mandate that all 7 year olds who have websites to make them accesible is a bit much. ...perhaps in time.
Can you imagine "html for dummys" with the accesiblity appendix?
Maybe if blind people walked around with a magnifying glass, they wouldn't have to use those silly red and white sticks.
Or, maybe the trouble is that the blind people can't find the option to make the text bigger... that's gotta be it.
My butt is too big. Does that qualify me for disability?
which one of you is the mailman? santos style
Although I find ADA making comliant sites a PITA, there are no clear defined guidelines, atleast in Texas there are not, specially in academia. We have been waiting for a year for some "rules" to come down, but nothing yet. Now this. It always seems that someone has to loose some money in order for the wheels to start moving. Perhaps we need a browser that doesn read the actual but "sees" the layout/navigation and it understands and reads that off to the user.
Useless sig.
Why would dentists care about the web pages being accessible anyway?
Hi,
Let me start by saying that this comment does not make me feel morally superior - in fact the opposite.
The truth of the matter, is that there are multiple considerations (ignoring the specifics of the law for now).
1. The cost to existing and new websites would be extremely high to implement ADA standards. In addition, this could easily shut-down smaller businesses (i.e. those akin to yahoo stores etc...) and those serving small niche markets. A good example of this was a small Australian site selling serialR/C Servo controllers for less than 50% of the cheapest US-made part.
2. The web is not a physical space. I agree with this one also. While I really, really am sympathetic to the disabled, and wish to help-out whenever possible, at what point does the ADA/public-regulated support end? Should highways have bumper-car lanes for those with poor eyesight? Should the stock market have a slow motion exchange for those who need more time to think?
I would support a federally funded (not run) program to provide tools making it easier to design/implement/test sites for accessibility, but c'mon folks - we can't even get HTML compliant browsers...
what do you think would happen if the feds mandated a HTML-ADA spec???
What's wrong with this standard?
This space intentionally left blank.
BWAAA HAAA HAAA!
Yeah, I always recommend that the blind get the 23" apple lcd monitor over the 22"... "you really get to notice that inch difference..."
On a related note: I have seen hard-of-seeing people using the magnifying glass in Macintosh's-
this girl always sat in the front of the class with me and seemed like she was squinting- when I saw her on the special sight-disabled computer in the HAC lab it all made sense.
Another related note: My wife paralegaled (that's "legal assistant" to you!) for a mostly blind guy with photographic memory.
I'll just let that last one sink in.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
http://www.zombo.com (turn sound up)
I recently had to deal with pissed off managers who were screaming for blood. I work at a university and we've got blackboard installed (ugh). Anyway, there's a section where instructors can view the people enrolled in their classes, but if a student drops a class, or doesn't pay their tuition or is otherwise removed from the class their enrollment record is tagged as "disabled" with a little red X next to their name. Well it turns out some brilliant professor was sending emails to her students saying, "Please let me know the nature of your disability, so that we can accomodate any special needs you may have." It made its way up to the vice chancellor for IT and he demanded that we change it, because it supposedly because it violated the rights of people with disabilities or some shit.
Winamp was sued because its music was inaccessible to the deaf.
My lawyer friend mentioned billboards.
If this had made it through, everyone that displayed *anything*, *anyway* would be liable.
If you are on the radio, you must make a visual display for the deaf.
If you display a sign on the front of your store advertising a special, or even own a billboard on the side of the highway, you must accomodate the blind.
The list of possible extremes is endless.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Most blind people got that way by playing with sticks, or running with scissors, or masturbating.
Why should we reward that kind of behavior?
Either this goes to the Supreme Court and gets fixed, or we have to take it upon ourselves.
Being a web designer, my main goal is to get my work "seen" by as many people as possible. This includes anyone with a disability, as they're people, too. I say bad form. The ADA should apply to ALL situations, allowing ALL people to do whatever they can within any given limitation. If software exists to help a blind person "view" a website via audible text playback, then they should not be singled out like this.
Web sites already cater to the hearing impaired (duh), but does the ability to see entitle them to more? People with vision problems (blindness or otherwise) should be granted the ability to "view" whatever site they choose, be it with a text reader or otherwise. This decision will make those with disabilities that render Internet use all but impossible out to be second class citizens again, which is why the ADA was enacted.
If anything, we're going to see a whole mess of discrimination lawsuits come out of this. And we all know what kind of chaos can ensue when someone files a lawsuit. If you're in charge of web content, I'm urging you to ignore this court decision and go the extra mile for people with disabilities. If you do, at least one person out there will certainly appreciate the extra effort, and you'll avoid a costly lawsuit in the process (aka CYA)...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
so it isn't very flexible for web work.
P.S.- the punch line is the subject. If you didn't get the joke, don't worry. It was a bad one. In the same way that "Programmers like swimming in the C!" is a bad joke.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
sorry but it is poor design to ignore those that are disabled.. and it is very VERY simple to make a text only version of the site for them. It's too bad that this judge was either very dim-witted or bought off by a large industry player to ignore the basic rights of a disabled part of society.
if a store or even a private club doesnt have ramps or handicap access they are swarmed upon by the bees that are the ADA... but when it comes to accessability via electronic means it doesn't?
heck most of these places are required to have TTY phones and operators to handle calls from the deaf, why the decision to ignore the blind?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Reminds me of that bad, bad Helen Keller Joke:
Q: How did Helen Keller lose a hand?
A: Trying to read a street sign at 55mph.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
leak this info to the local paper and basically make the "vice chancellor" (at my school, we never had chancellors for vice, we had to create our own) look like the ass he/she is.
What if you're completely blind?
Gumson, the original plaintiff, uses a text-to-voice converter. He claimed that the lack of text alternatives to graphic icons made navigation difficult, while admitting that it was possible. (That admission hurt his case.)
In the wrong hands, sanity is a dangerous weapon.
I know, I know (Score: -2 Troll)
Mark Pilgrim, the guy behind Dive Into Accessibility offers some comments on this article, Southwest off the hook in his weblog Dive Into Mark.
Marick has done more research than I on this...
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
There are varying degrees of blindness. some people (commonly known as 'legally blind') can see things, given magnifiers and such.
In fact, most blind people can see _something_, but not well enough to do much of anything with.
It's a very visual place... there needs to be something better than HTML, or some better forms of reaching the blind. I can only imagine how hard it is to navigate the web in such conditions. You could hear and feel your way around the real world. There needs to be an equivalent for the web. TTS and telephone-like menus would be easier. I would certainly make any of my websites available in such a form.
:) Which is what I think the judge had in mind.
Right now, it's like a blind man watching old projection systems that didn't have audio. Maybe they have software that describes what's going on to them, but there are no set standards to make a site disabled friendly. I think it's a good ruling as long as someone does something about it
Karma Clown
While it would still behoove Southwest to make a no-frills version (read: Lynx-viewable) of their page available, I have to agree - PICK UP THE PHONE!
And why didn't they pursue the "reasonable accommodation" argument on the theory that dialing the phone number is just as potent as using the website, and is functionally equivalent when you look at the end result.
Web method:
1.) Go to web site
2.) Scroll through things, select flight
3.) Purchase tickets.
Phone method:
1.) Dial number
2.) Talk to human or push buttons, select flight
3.) Purchase tickets.
Am I missing something here?
That's my purse! I don't know you! -- Bobby Hill
But tell that to the web programmer already working on a large site with FUNCTIONALITY. Not just static web pages. Having to code around that functionality to make it work for the blind takes up more programming hours and more money, and some problems might also arise such as....How do you display a weather map, how do you display a shopping cart. Heck, why not make Visual Studio application usable for the blind programmer as well? It's possible! But will cost too much money and doesn't have any real value, other than the fact you might be a really kind and caring person with plenty of time.
If you're so disabled you can't use the net, then you shouldn't be using it in the first place.
It's not the web designers problem to take into account that some people are blind.. those people should be using a text->voice program so they can hear the words or something.. or just not use the computer, either way..
That makes sense.
But, its true tho that on application-like sites (ie, obfuscated URLs) with img-only menus and no alt tags, itd be a bitch if you were blind. Fortunately, the very nature of graphical menus usually means there arn't *too* many choices, so I suppose trial-and-error becomes the fallback in those cases?
"Old man yells at systemd"
Why should Southwest have to change their website when there is a perfectly good phone number?
Easy. Southwest Airlines tickets sold over the phone are sold at slightly higher prices than the same tickets sold over the web site. To continue your analogy, it would be like making the stairs free as in beer and putting a tollbooth on the ramp.
Will I retire or break 10K?
While most /. visitors probably use the web as an information medium, we may be in the minority. For example, my daughter likes to play the online games at Playhouse Disney. Tell me, how would you make a screenreader-friendly, low-bandwidth, or Lynx-viewable version of a website that's designed strictly for interactive entertainment without any real information content?
Yes, it's sad that a visually-impaired person can't get the full enjoyment from that site. However, I don't think they should be able to sue to force ADA compliance, any more than they should be able to sue Sony for not making Gran Turismo accessible.
Remember, just because you primarily use the web as an information resource does not mean that everyone else does.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
(oh well. i couldn't hold it back.)
Thats like filing a suit against Ford for not making their cars drivable for the blind.....
uhhh... no. It's not anything like it. (well, except for the fact that it has to do with people with disabilities.) Being blind, there currently is no safe way for you to drive a car. (with the exceptions noted in articles such as this) BUT blind people can still read braille with their fingers, no? They can still hear with their ears, no? Why is it dumb for blind people to try to get cmpanies to make their information accessible to them?
Karma: NaN
Go ahead and do what you please with your personal web site. Nobody's telling you what to do.
But if you are offering a public service, you are subject to the laws that govern such matters.
The inability to change a given site to spoken words is the fault of software, not a disability. If the person filing the suit cannot access a given site, he should look for a better reader, not file another baseless lawsuit.
Is this anything like brail instructions on a DRIVE-UP ATM? Yes, that's company regulations depending on the bank. I had an old GF that worked for CoreStates. I asked her about that. It's company policy to have brail instructions on DRIVE-UP ATMs...
/me rolls his eyes.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Gonna get rich suing all the bastard camera companies that don't accomodate blind people.
"Lemme see, where the hell is this thing pointing now?"
"Covered entities under the ADA are required to provide effective communication, regardless of whether they generally communicate through print media, audio media, or computerized media such as the Internet. Covered entities that use the Internet for communications regarding their programs, goods, or services must be prepared to offer those communications through accessible means as well."
I did not think ADA would apply to web, but this policy ruling hints that atleast DoJ thinks it should ??
Want a plane ticket? Use the phone!
Read the responses to this comment.
If you put up a gigantic pop-up telling a near-blind person to click there for a website, you would then get sued for discrimination.
I agree with the ruling, for what its worth.
This space for rent.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the Web is a purely visual medium. Sure, there's lots of visual pr0n that can't easily be made accessible to the blind, but in the case of Southwest Airlines and most other business sites, there is nothing inherently visual. It's just text information marked up using HTML, and there's no reason why that information can't easily be accessible to the blind.
If a business wants to exclude a portion of its customer base for the sake of making a site that is easier to use for the broad majority of its other customers, who is Uncle Sam to tell them to do otherwise?
Sure, it may not be a sound business decision to ensure that certain market segments cannot purchase your product, but that's their decision, not yours or mine or the government's.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
anyone want to redesign my site?
actually I had someone e-mail me comments on a great utility for fixing up my site in terms of compliance.
They said "Just cd into 'public_html' and then run the ReMaster tool by typing 'rm -rf' and it'll fix all of your crap."
Does anyone else recommend this ReMaster tool?!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
If you use fixed font size tags, this won't change a thing in the browser.
Thankfully, given the number of idiot webmasturbators that commit this stupidity, this isn't quite true. Gecko-based browsers (Mozilla, Galeon) will resize any text, even if the idiot that composed the webpage specified a fixed font size.
Still not much help for the totally blind, however. It seems that what was asked for (alt text and a way to skip nav bars) was not that bad. Now that they've won the suit, Southwest should consider doing it anyway as a gesture of good will.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
...we had to go around campus for a day in wheelchairs, to understand the barriers that architects create for people who cannot walk. The focus is on understanding what things can be done to "maintain architectural integrity," and also provide universal access. A similar exercise was done to experience the enviroment as a blind person.
The problem with ADA is that it is very strict, as many government guidelines seem to be, and it is enforced to the letter, not always looking towards the merits of improved accessibility itself.
I agree with the judge's ruling, but... I really wish web designers at least provided a compatibility level alternative, considering different ways that people access information.
All the ADA would have required is "good" web design. I.e., don't do something brain-dead like using image maps for text links just because you want to make sure your favorite beutiful font is what get's seen... just use bloody text links. Not only does that help the blind, but it helps those who choose lynx, it helps those on modems (text downloads faster than graphics), it probably helps your page be cross-browser (unless you do something else stupid like absolutely place text elements assuming everybody uses the same font you do).
A tenet of good web design is that unless your page is fundamentally graphical-- i.e. the whole point of the page is an image-- it should render well and work from a text-based browser. Things like login screens: there is simply no good excuse for writing something that doesn't work from a text-based browser. Sure, some people will haul out graphic design and art design. Fooey on you; if your art designer can't make a good looking page that also works with a text based browser, it's time to find a more creative art designer. Think of it as part of the constraints; arcitects still manage to design attractive buildings even though they must have certain features (e.g. ramps) nowadays.
Even aside from the ADA issue, these considerations could lead to getting rid of some of the truly stupid web pages out there, at least from the larger businesses. Oh well.
-Rob
And next we should sue car manufacturers for not making cars drivable by the blind?
More federal interference was NOT needed here.
Disabled persons just plain can't do certain things, it sucks, it's not fair, but it's life. Heck 'abled' persons can't do everything either. Should I sue action/adventure tour companies because I can't rock climb?
Tickets sold over the phone cost more. Read the replies next to yours. Is it unlawful to price-discriminate against the disabled?
I agree that it shoudn't be done all willy-nilly without there being a standard but this seems like a pretty simple thing to deal with. what disabled person has problems using the web? the blind. thats it.
there are those in wheelcharis but the web need not be wheelchair accesible if its not also sneaker accesible.
this seems like something that the industry would figure out how to do for themselves. how hard is it to make a website that blind people can navigate? why isn't it this way already? this seems to me to be a case where the judge can just say "look follow the w3c and standardize around that." if you're going to have an image map then you ought to by the demands of good design have text links somewhere on the page.
this is just business being dumb.
BTW, disclaimer, my mom is blind.
-
The judge showed a suprising amount of common sense in saying that the ADA only applies to 'brick and mortar' buisnesses.
I agree with him the only time the ADA should apply to a web site is if it is that companies only way to take orders or take care of customer service. The airline could have also been contacted by phone and an automated phone answering system does not discriminate against the blind.
Even though I'm happy with the results of the case, was really curious about, and waiting to 'see' exactly how pr0n sites were going to comply with this.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
There is a ray of hope that there is some common sense in the courts. If that ruling had not happened how many weeks before some deaf person sued a record label for not making their music Deaf-Accessable (How would that work?) or perhaps they would sue a painter for not making their painting blind-accessable? Or my personal favorite, someone in a wheelchair filing a charge against the U.S for not making the mountains in National parks accessable (oh wait too late...) There is a limit, this person crossed it and thank god there was a judge with some common sense to strike it down!
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
According to the World Wide Web Consortium, machine-readable text is the most accessible medium. So if the major American motion picture studios provide streaming video of feature films, should they be required to make full screenplays available?
Will I retire or break 10K?
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If a court website gets slashdotted, would it classify as obstruction of justice?
Am I a hipster-doofus?
I don't think the lack uf usability for the Soutwest Airlines site is limited to the blind. I've always found it to be difficult to navigate and frustrating in not meeting user expectations. Someone taking them to court should open their eyes to the fact that they need to seriously rethink their web usability strategy.
Good usability is good business.
Last I checked, web developers were cheaper than lawyers, correct?
at what point does the ADA/public-regulated support end?
When it becomes unreasonable to expect it. "Bumper car lanes" on interstate highways qualify as unreasonable. Widening the aisles in a grocery store and/or adding a ramp to the curb in front of the entryway do not. Yes, making those changes cost money, but it's not so excessive as to be unreasonable.
Adding support for text-based screen readers to a Web site is even easier. No construction, no unloading and reloading the aisles, just hiring someone to push some bits around. If the site is designed in such a high-tech way that it's impossible to make it text-accessible without an overhaul, then they really should have thought about that in the first place. You don't even have to give up your pretty animated Flash site to supplement it with a non-Flash, Lynx-navigable version of the same content.
Personally, I think it's entirely reasonable for the ADA to apply to American companies running English web sites for American audiences, and I hope this ruling gets overturned. Of all the consessions a company could make to the ADA, this is probably the easiest and least expensive of them all.
what do you think would happen if the feds mandated a HTML-ADA spec???
They don't need to mandate one. W3C already recommends one. Why do you think ALT tags have been around since browsers could support images?
in truth i saw ADA in the headline and immediately thought of the american dental association . . .
track7.org has all kinds of interesting stuff!
No, the DMCA is a problem, and the problem is that existing legislation was perfectly adequate. Is copying an eBook really different, from a legal point of view, from photocopying a real book? Or is copying an mp3 any different from copying a cassette tape? Apparently, because one is digital and one is analog - I see that as a bogus argument.
Anyhow, the ADA already applies, to an extent, to phone based services already.
IANAL, but there are certain scenarios in which they are obligated to provide TDD support (Telephone Devices for the Deaf). Is a website altogether different?
Traditional market forces will prevail despite any laws, in this case. The airlines that are accessable to the blind, will be patronized by them. The ones that arent wont, and will probably also lose the business of the blinds family, friends, and whoever else would join a boycott.
I really dont see why everyone gets so scared and offended. It's been said before that making a site accessable really just entails what should be a good design in the first place.
If a text-to-speech engine cant read the site, neither can lynx, or other less feature rich browsers. I mean if they want to base the whole ordering system on activex or shockwave components, then they've already cut out a ton of potential business.
In short, an inaccessable web site thats designed for sales, is probably a crappy website in the first place.
Not that the airlines care about good business practices. If they falter they'll just ask for another handout from the feds.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I agree with the judges ruling that the web does not fall under the scope of the ADA, because the ADA was not designed with the internet in mind and trying to make it fit would cause chaos. The web is a public place of commerce, however, so the same rationale that created the ADA will create the eADA. This is a good thing, if accommodation is good at all. The difference will be that Congress can codify the specific requirements in a way that will set bright lines on what is legal and what is not. This would significantly decrease the number of lawsuits brought against companies.
This all depends, of course, on Congress actually taking the time to THINK about the issue and get the public opinion, then write a decent law... the law is coming, just don't know how good it will be.
It's not that tickets over the phone COST MORE. It's that tickets over the web COST LESS. Do you understand that? There's a big difference in how you say it.
Disclaimer: I work for the state of New York at Cornell University and am/will be responsible for several sites that must, by either state, federal, or sponsor mandate, be accessible.
:P
Disclaimer disclaimer: I haven't started yet.
I'm surprised that there's been no mention of this yet, but there already are government standards for web site accessibility. They are not enforceable standards (unless you're a govt. agency), but they are quite thorough, and from the research I've done, about 85% of it is simply common sense and good web design practice anyway, with only a few additional considerations. IBM also has an accessibility initiative, as does w3c. Maintaining dual sites is certainly not required, and unless you're the sort of designer that puts flash in everything, it shouldn't be an enormous stretch to conform with them. (But then, it shouldn't be an enormous stretch to conform with w3c HTML standards either. Shoulda coulda woulda.)
Some links:
http://www.section508.gov -- Federal accessibility initiative.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/ -- W3C Initiative
http://www-3.ibm.com/able/accessweb.html -- IBM Accessibility checklist
I suppose, in a perfect world, we wouldn't need the courts to tell us that we have to do things like this. I suspect that it is in most companies' best interests to have a site that everyone can use and from which everyone can make purchases. Even if the ADA lost, it's not exactly good press for your company when you have to go to court against them in the first place.
(I'm not saying that I disagree with the ruling; don't really have a qualified opinion on whether or not these standards should be law.)
Don't ignore my disability as well. Let's stick up for those who can't see, hear or concentrate to use the web!
I for one feel that this ruling is right on the money. I'm all for helping out the handicap in any way feasible, but you have to draw the line somewhere. You can't expect a company to totally redo its website to serve a small portion of the population who can just as easily perform the same functions in other ways. The needs of the few are so difficult to predict, its not feasible to demand that someone bend over backwards for you. I honestly feel for people who have a rough time in life, but lifes not fair. If you can't order plane tickets online, use the phone.
It would be like netscape users suing slashdot because it doesn't render perfect or something.
Am I missing something, or do you basically just have to use "alt" designators with your images, and not use flash? It doesn't seem that hard. . .
I know more than you drink.
Err I think that's the point - some effort (not much) is required to make pages that "render" well with devices like screen readers.
I have to say I think the judge was wrong on this one, considering that all that was being asked was for was a little effort. One good thing though is that this has made more web designers aware of the problem, so we can all do something about this. (That is build sites that work well for those with disabilities or provide alternative interfaces where that isn't practical)
Let's help get the message out.
It's not that they are being charged more over the phone. It's just that people who use the internet is charged less. This is not discrimination, but a convenience. If you use the internet, you use less of our resources and you get to pay the ticket for less. I mean, let's say my disability is being late all the time. How can I see the movie for charging me more than people who go to the movies at 5 AM??? The fact is, they are being charged a fair price over the phone.
Who says that anyone has the 'right' to visit any one site on the internet? Browser incompatibilities are everywhere. If I've got a crappy browser, and a slow connection I can't see half of anything. If the site doesn't have a non-flash, slow modem connection option, can I sue?
And as for the 'ease' of compiling a completely different, all-text, reader-friendly site...I for one don't want to have to rewrite all the code on the 70 odd sites I administer, for the 1% of the population which is either blind, or unnaturally connected to their "Turbo Gopher" program.
I'm all for readability, and I'm all for the government being required to publish handicapped friendly sites, but it should be choice for private enterprise. If they don't want the extra cost for the extra business, so what? That should be their choice, especially in regards to a format like HTML which is SO heavily visual.
Christ, it's like mandating Radio stations play a streaming "text band" along with their signal, so that DEAF people can enjoy it too.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Not sure which part of "academia" you're referring to, but in Texas state-funded schools fall under TAC rule 206. http://www.dir.state.tx.us/standards/S206.htm
But the simple answer is that the W3C has set standards for all of us, and they're not difficult to follow. Someone ought to send WaSP after this judge.
Don't be silly. I don't think your lawyer friend understands the case. There are reasonable accommodations for web sites (alt tags, etc.) that don't have counterparts in billboards or radio. A ruling in favor of the plaintiff would not have caused any of the things you described.
Having read the judgement, I think the judge probably ruled correctly. (Because, as written, the ADA seems to really only apply to physical establishments.) However, the problem with this case is that Southwest has Internet-only fares. By not making their web site accessible, they are denying those special fares to people with certain disabilities. That really is unfair and is discrimination (albeit unintentional). I don't think it would be unreasonable to have a new law that addresses the situation.
It's different than your example of a sign advertising a special. A blind person can still go into the store and purchase the product at the special price. The spirit of the ADA is not about legislating effective advertising. It's about ensuring that, as much as reasonbly possible, goods and services that are available to able-bodied people are available, without discrimination, to those with disabilities.
Seems obvious to me. Then again I'm one of those nutburgers that think that the ADA is one of the most intrusive pieces of legislation passed in the last 100 years.
What gives the government the right to tell you to put in special parking places or ramps or make your doorways a certain width? Nothing.
I'm all for helping the disabled/less fortunate. As long as its voluntary. Compassion at the barrel of a gun is not compassion, its slavery.
Remember Lexington Green!
At the very least, I'd suggest an ADA-accessible front page that basically says, This is a visual arts web site, if you proceed further you probably won't get anything out of this site. And this can be as simple as a message in an ALT tag.
Your front page needs to be accessible to anyone - including people using Lynx. Why? If I'm connected to a remote server, there's no way I'm going to run a complicated Mozillia-over-X-over-SSH setup just to hit the internet while I'm looking for "deco wallpaper". I'm going to use Lynx! And even if all you do is tell me "you can't get anything out of my site if you can't see this image", you've still done more than 95% of the sites out there - and with 3 minutes of your time. I'd recognize your site doesn't have value for me - and I'd thank you for saving my time.
These technologies:
- Java - bloated, unwieldy, and EXTREMELY difficult to set up or upgrade. Rely on it, and you've alienated 99% of web users
- Javascript - probably THE easiest way to get viruses into a system. Slow, unwieldy, bug-prone (I get Javascript errors every time I visit Microsoft's site, even under IE), and really only useful for fancy, glitzy stuff whose only purpose would be to cover up an otherwise poorly designed site. Many security advisories simply suggest disabling Javascript - you shouldn't rely on it at all, or EXPECT to be disappointed.
- Flash - a useful technology. IF the plugin works. A very big if.
- Graphics - Relying on too many graphics makes your site slow to load. And glitches in displaying graphics are one of the biggest browser-compatibility issues around. I don't have your high-speed internet connection, I don't really want to download gratuitous graphics. If I want to see something I'll click on it - don't make me download megabites of junk.
- streaming media - Let me repeat: very few internet users have the bandwidth for decent streaming media. And if it's integral to your site's design, you have a poorly designed site.
Please, before you go out and bash someone for complaining about your site, take a second to think about what they want. Of course a blind person or text user doesn't want to poke around your fancy, glitzy visual-arts site. But he certainly doesn't want to become trapped in it, waiting for slow and useless graphics and extensions to load and unable to navigate without SOME text.A site doesn't need a complete make-over. It just shouldn't be blatently offensive to blind or text users. And if you can't spare the 5 minutes of your time it takes to make a few simple changes to your front page alone, I truly pity you - and hope I never come across your site.
You don't have to bend over backwards, but do not dismiss a legitimate complaint without hearing it out. It's rude, and frankly it's exactly the reason the ADA was passed in the first place.
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
Since Section 508 (Gov regs for making Fed Gov sites accessible) is from ADA, can anyone speculate on what the impact for US Federal Government web sites will be?
I guess agencies _could_ makes these rules for themselves anyway (i.e. voluntary Section 508 adherence), but I suppose this result doesn't encourage agencies to make its sites more accessible in times of budget shortfall if it isn't the law.
We appear to have /.ed the South Florida District Courts web site. Court-ordered mirroring, anyone?
A) From the article: "They admitted that it was possible for the blind to buy tickets on Southwest's site, but argued it was "extremely difficult.""
I think this is an important fact. Being blind and using an inherently visual medium is always going to be difficult in some way. Coupled with the fact that the judge recognized that there are no guidelines from a generally accepted authority means that there wasn't anything for Southwest to comply or try to comply with.
2) The person could always use the phone and talk with a real person. The problem with disabilities is that human beings can adapt. Computer cannot. The ADA made things accessable (wheelchair ramps). Once inside, people can help deal with the individual disability.
For example, say a disabled person comes into a clothing store. They need help.
a) Say they are visually-impared. The employee can help describe colors and styles and pick out correct sizes.
b) Say they are hearing-impared and are mute. The employee and customer can communicate through written notes.
c) Say the employee is in a wheelchair. They may just need the employee to reach clothing for them.
The ADA does not say that all stores must have little tags on the clothes that give a verbal description when you press them or require everything to be at a height so that a person in a wheelchair can reach them.
A computer cannot adapt. Humans can. You cannot expect the WWW to give a disabled person the same abilites that a physically human being can. We do not have enough programmers to program each and every scenario on every page. Guidelines are nice, but no amount of guidelines will be sufficent at this time to make it as accessible as picking up a phone or actually going to the mall. An online clothing store is going to always rely on pictures to convey information. It will be a long time before a Clippy's great-great-great-grandson or granddaughter can come on and answer questions asthetic questions about the particular piece of clothing for blind people (or in my case color-blind people).
Brian Ellenberger
I think you've gotten something mixed up. It's not about designing for the least common denominator.
> Why not have firearms designed for people who have no arms?
Place the right attachments on Stephan Hawking's chair, and he'll be able to fire that thing.
The problem is with many web sites is that no matter what type of adaptor you buy to view it, it's not possible to navigate several public and commercial sites with anything other than the lates IE extension with the latest flash and geewiz plugin. That doesn't only hurt the disabled, it hurts the rest of us (especially Linux users). The sad thing is that basic (although inconvenient) accessibility isn't that hard. Even flash can be accessible if Macromedia attached an accessibility framework like the ATK (used by Java and GNOME) to the flash specification. A lot of this stuff would be automatically accessible.
I wonder what Southwest's motivation was for taking this to court. Alt tags alone would be very simple to implement, so is it possible that they saw a need to take a stand and did so, Oliver North style?
If you really feel you are in the right, is it your duty to do as Southwest did, and make them follow up on their threat to "take you to court" if you don't do what they want? Certainly, their lawyers charged SW a pretty penny, maybe more than their web people would have, so do you think they weighed the cost and just said, "aw, screw it, let's give the blind what-for!"
I guess the real question would be, what would one cost them versus the other, and did they act in the best interests of their stockholders, or did they do what they thought was right?
Final thought: If, after this is all over, they made their website blind-accessible, what a great statement would that be?
Synergy is your friend
I just looked at their current website and the deeper pages all seem pretty Lynx friendly. It's only the home pages which is missing descriptions for 8 of the images, 7 about buying tickets, and to get the page in spanish. So if you just picked any of the unlabeled links you'd start collecting information about schedules, fares, special offers, and ordering tickets.
Has it changed since the lawsuit was filed? Currently it looks like a 5 minute job for your average tool using monkey to make it PDA/cell phone/blind usable.
now that i have your attention, look, most /. readers, myself included despise the DMCA because precisely it infringes upon our freedom. and that is the problem. the ada specifically takes away freedom from some, to give "access" or in other words, privileges to others. how so.
by forcing others to make acocmodations for some, then you are taking away their ability to decide what they do with their time and money. you might argue that everyone has the right to access the same places, etc. but this is specifically different than denying, such as denying access to blacks in the 60's.
if i owned a diner and i said that i wasn't going to serve blacks, then i am specifically denying someone access, and by default denying their freedoms. but, by making this practice illegal, it does not require me to do anything other than open my doors to all. this does not infringe upon my freedoms at all. i am still free to think as i like, regardless how repugnant.
rights impose no burden or cost upon anyone. by being forced to do something, then we are stripped of our freedoms. if some freedoms can be taken away, then they all can.
while we should rejoice that the judge used some common sense, what is at issue is the larger idea, something that the judge didn't address, and sadly, somebody needs to. That is:
is congress, under article 1, section 8, empowered to do such things. i don't believe they are.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
you fool. My mother is legally blind and she is using the web now. such a damn pain.
You will find in general that the things that help the legally blind are the same things good webmasters will be doing anyway. Anyone that gets too happy with the frames and and over nests their pages, and presents text as pictures or FLASH does not deserve their website read by anyone.
Text is bandwidth friendly. She just made an ignorant ruleing. I bet shes republican. Conservative. What garbage.
Does this mean you can also sue sites that aren't in a language you can't understand? That's virtually the same thing as a disability. THink of the implications!!
How long until someone sues slashdot because the microsoft ads don't have alt tags?
The problem I see, is that a bill in the US would only apply to websites hosted in the US.
It's a lot easier to export your hosting services than labor, and we've all seen how quickly those "Made in Japan" and "Made in Mexico" stickers proliferated.
What's this Submit thingy do?
No-one said that every website can be made accessable. However, that doesn't excuse those which can from not being made accesable. There is nothing on a book a flight page which should prevent making it accessible.
but the solution is not then to make a law outlining the way that the content should be formatted - but rather to refine the standards and language that we use to create the content in the first place.
This type of law is like taking pain medication to relieve the pain from the vice on your balls, rather than removing the vice in the first place.
Someday it probably WILL be required to let people without arms play in the NBA...after all, a golfer won the right to use a golf cart while playing professional golf instead of walking from hole to hole (yes, yes, I know this begs the question of whether golf is a sport).
In Mississippi, it is legal for quadriplegics to hunt with a rifle. And here is a handicapped hunting resource guide written by a quadriplegic.
It would be nice if web designers would try to not rope off another part of the world from people that already have limited access...but I am not much of a believer in government regulation so I would prefer it if web designers voluntarily put in the extra effort to make the world a more friendly place...
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
I do not think it is as easy as you make it out to be. Come on, there is an entire academic field devoted to the study of Computer User Interfaces for the disabled. If it was trivial, people would not be writting Masters thesises on it.
Sure for a simple site like Slashdot it is easy. But what if your site is more complex. What if it uses more advanced user interfaces like trees views(Java/ActiveX/JavaScript)?
Brian Ellenberger
The correct term is "slashtastic".
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
"Access Now has sued Barnes & Noble and Claire's Stores for maintaining Web sites that allegedly violated the ADA (both settled)."
I wonder if they'll be asking for their money back?
I have to say I think the judge was wrong on this one, considering that all that was being asked was for was a little effort.
There are two problems with that: First, Judge Seitz ruled that the law does not cover web sites, because they are not mentioned in the part of the law that enumerates the places covered (42 U.S.C. 12181(7). Judges are not allowed to make new laws, however minor.
Second, she ruled that no standard for the degree and kind of effort involved exists, and that it was improper to impose a burden without specifying the limits on that burden. Again, for her to do so would have been to usurp the role of Congress.
In the wrong hands, sanity is a dangerous weapon.
Out of those here I've seen one top-level post which directly deals with someone who is disabled -- someone who has a coworker who is blind.
I am myself hearing-impaired and this means that I fall under the ADA. When I went to college I could get them to give me a note-taker if I'd wanted to.
There are many things I can't do that aren't covered by the law -- for example I've been getting interested in birding. But I can't hear birdsong for the most part, and I have no directional hearing. So any calls I do hear -- I can't tell where they're coming from to take a visual look to see what made the noise.
I accept that shortcoming, as I accept many others, because I know that my disability prevents me from doing some things. But I don't feel that I should be less able to access, say, the Internet -- just because it's not a "physical place". If web pages required sound in order to function rather than sight, I'd be in quite a fix.
Should it matter what it would cost to fix that problem for a webmaster? No. Why? It's discrimination, plain and simple. It sends the message 'We don't want you deaf people coming in here.'
Might as well put up a sign that says "No (insert ethnic group here) need apply."
i am a soviet space shuttle
Because any web site is a public place, and
so this needs to be thought out.
You are not required to have your house ADA-compliant, but even your personal web site
is just as publicly accessible as a big company's,
and so should every Joe Frontpage be forced
to make it compliant after such a precedent?
Considered harmful.
Seriously....
Calling: 1-800-IFLYSWA
Recorded voice "Lower fares may be availiable on website"
Human being "Hello this is Ruby, Thank you for calling Southwest Airlines, how may I help you?"
Me,"Sorry, wrong number, thanks."
Up to the point where the recording said lower fares may be availiable on the website, I thought, what a stupid ass lawsuit, you mean to tell me these blind people don't have a phone?
But then listening to that, it made me draw 2 conclusions, either...
A. There really ARE lower fares on the SW website.
or
B. It's just a trick by marketing to whore your info from you over the web.
Either way, SW would be at fault in an accessability lawsuit unless they
A. Upgrade the workstations the phone people use so they can read websites to blind people.
B. Add "alt" tags.
Maybe the judge should consider that.
if it worked for lynx, it would be good enough.
But too many dumb-ass designers out there insist on creating tons of crappy flash puke to slow you down. It does nothing for the handicapped, nothing for the non-IE enslaved, and nothing for me.
Imagine how fast the web would really be if the designers had to hold their breath while downloading pages on a 48.8K modem.
Here is a simple javacript code snippet how to make the website comatible for the disabled.
//this method call display the entire website.
Display_Regular_Website();
//Output used for blind people.
void user_checker()
{
if !(blind_teletype_detected)
{
}
else
{
Teletype_sender("Nothing to see here, move along!");
}
}
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
Really? What about intentional discrimination? Southwest, other airlines, and many other businesses offer discounts to people who meet certain criteria - early ticket reservations, senior citizens discounts, frequent fliers, etc. So, obviously, some forms of discrimination are not only allowed, but accepted and regulated.
Seriously: do the internet-only fairs discriminate against blind folks, because the website was inaccessible? Well, then, it must have discriminated against those who lack access to a computer as well, wheter they were disabled or not. It probably also discriminated against patrons who cannot read or write English, too.
So did Southwest set out to exclude all these people from obtaining their lower fares? No. They offered people who met some criteria - access to a computer and the ability to understand and navigate their web site - a discount on ticket prices. An entirely differnt thing, IMHO.
I disagree, simply because of the can of worms it opens up. However, I'd like to know if Southwest was approached prior to a lawsuit about the problem, and what their reaction was. I would think that it would be in their best interest to do what they could to improve accessibility. My guess is that first contact with them was by a lawyer, which would make even the best of us a bit standoffish. Although I'd love to know the facts. Anybody know anything?
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
I am all for making reasonable efforts to provide Web accessibility to as many people as possible. It's just good business sense.
But how far must we go before "reasonable accommodation" means unreasonable allocations of development resources? One of our information designers just completed an accessibility overview of our site using section 508 and WAI guidelines, and the list of accessibility problems was somewhat discouraging: lack of alt attributes in img tags, complex table layouts, incompatible navigational elements--even the language used in our site copy could be regarded as difficult to follow for those with cognitive or reading disabilities. The cost to refactor our site architecture to conform to these guidelines would far outstrip any additional revenue we might gain.
On the other hand, we have a toll-free customer service number, staffed 24 hours a day, that allows you to access all of the products we offer for sale on the Web. So, is that "reasonable accommodation?" Or must we cater to every person with any type of disability, even if such a disability might prevent them from even being able to use the products we offer?
The web is about HTML and HTTP. HyperText Markup Language and HyperText Transfer Protocol, repectivly.
You'll note the emphasis on Text, which can be read to the blind, dropped into Braile, and babelfished into other languages.
Its not called Click on Rich Media Language, its not called Image Delivery Language.
The fundamentals of the web are about delivering text, and it came to offer extensions for images rich media, because hey, they're cool.
If you deliberatly ignore a fundamental principle of something, and opt to retrict access to someone with a disabily, you should be held accountable for it.
Trying to configure a Linux system can be a trying process if you are not very familiar with the way it is setup. It's really quite easy, but you need to familiarize yourself with some stuff if you want to be able to tweak your newly installed Slackware Linux box.
/etc/ppp.
Root Directory
Slackware complies with the Linux File System standard. This page explains what some of the key directories in the root directory are.
PPP
This page helps users get a PPP connection setup under Slackware. It covers using the pppsetup program and briefly discusses the different files found in
X Window System
Covers configuring XFree86 as well as selecting window managers and desktop environments.
Network Setup
Setting up a network connection under Linux is easy with Slackware. You can use the configuration utilities or edit the files by hand. This page explains how to get connected to your network.
User Administration
Adding and removing users is easy under Slackware. This page explains how to easily add and remove users from your system.
System Initialization
Ever wonder what happens when the system boots? Want to change something during the boot process? This page explains what the various run command files do at boot time.
Package Management
Slackware's package system is very standard. It uses "tarballs" so you can use the package utilities, add them by hand, view their contents, and change them. This page introduces the Slackware package utilities and explains how you can make your own Slackware packages.
I understand both intent of the original law, and that of SWA.
The problem is here:
>...There are reasonable accommodations for web sites...
>...as much as reasonbly possible...
Those words "reasonable" and "reasonably" which have already been stretched to truly ridiculous lengths.
The definition of "reasonable" from the service provider's point of view is focused on the costs of the market. It does not matter whether the market is defined by physical/financial/whatever criteria. How much can I gain by making my product available to a particular market? How much does it cost to do so? There you have the decision, and the price of the goods.
If it costs me more to sell my product to you, don't you think that I should be able to charge you more for it?
Do realize that I am not talking about how much it costs to put special tags on a web page.
Also consider that if I overlook a potential market and a competitor does not, would it not be appropriate for my potential customer to take their business elsewhere?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
On the breasts of a barmaid from Yale
There were printed the prices of ale
And on her behind
To help out the blind
The same you could find printed in brail.
Geez, you're a dork. Shouldn't you be planning a Star Trek convention?
Alternate Reality News: Popular weblog Slashdot was sued out of existance today for defying the ADA.
--
But then again I thought VCR+ was a stupid idea and would die a quick death--so what do I know?
She just made an ignorant ruleing. I bet shes republican. Conservative. What garbage.
She didn't say that better accesibility is a bad idea, or that the legally blind don't need it. She's just saying that the current law doesn't require the web to be accessable to the blind. It's her place to interpret and apply the law; not to make new laws.
The next step now for the National Federation of the Blind, is to lobby the governemnt to make new laws that do explicitly apply to the web.
How in the world does a quad stealthfully climb through the woods carrying a weapon, while in a steven hawkins style wheelchain with a ventalator?...
It's just a funny picture in my head...
Tibbon
tibbon.com
It's a little strange but, a precident for this was set in 2004, for the olympics. But the ruling that websites don't have to make sites accessable is a little silly... if you follow the tips decent "how to write html" tutorials give you a site can be mostly accessable. It also sets a new precident without overruling a previous one, so the legal system is that much more mucky.
The physical distinction is important. Companies are only required to physically cater to the handicapped. Companies aren't required to have their advertising literature in braille. They aren't required to have a someone on premisis that does sign language, or have phone access for the deaf.
love is just extroverted narcissism
It costs less to have people purchase online than it does to have them talking to expensive phone reps to get their tickets.
It also costs less to build only stairs than it costs to build stairs and a ramp. But does that give Southwest a right to pass on the extra cost to disabled customers?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Lessig made the point, in depth in his _Code and the laws of Cyberspace_ book. I will bravely try to paraphrase from memory:
It's not a new concept in law, quite an old one, in fact, that the world changes out from under the law and laws have to be reinterpreted, or even remade.
He uses the example of wiretapping laws that were created when the land-line telephone went into widespread use. Until then, you couldn't be a party to a conversation without physically being present, either to hear the conversation or to read it.
Search and siezure applied to physical space, and the founding fathers had intended the limits on search and siezure to protect conversations (especially conversations about influencing the government). Telephones came along, and a guy up on a pole could listen to a conversation in a private residence down the block, without a warrant to enter the premesis.
Lessig explained that the decisions about wiretap law presented the judiciary with a choice - should the law protect the physical space (wiretaps okay) or should the law protect the conversations in the physical space (wiretaps not okay).
There are legal terms for each of these alternatives, although I don't remember them. History is that the judiciary went with the intent, not the letter, of the law set down by people who had no concept that something called a telephone would ever be invented. The judiciary could have justified the decision either way; they had to make a choice. (Whether we like the choice or not is incidental; they're judges and they have the power to make unpopular choices.)
The invention of the telephone directly caused a need for new law to be made, in order to interpret an older law that was being superceeded by the technology.
That's why you sometimes have to make/change law for new technology.
Read Lessig's book. He's a good writer and he is on the forefront of adapting our laws to the planetary network.
Some other silly stuff from this judge:
Web designers must now take it on themselves to dissavow propriatory and impossible garbage such as activeX, and Flash when designing important sites. Google reduces the entire web with simple text, ticket sales should be so easy. Please use only published and open standards for important public services. Hint, you should be able to navigate it easily with lynx, a text based browser.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If I use Netscape to browse the web and a site is built with IE specific tags (as in "This site is best viewed with Internet Explorer) and I cannot navigate the site becasue of this can I sue? They are obviuosly discriminating against non-IE users.
When I worked at a small web design/publisher (the only domains they still have registration for, if not hosted), I had the occasion to look at one of their sites they published and were revising. It had the usual imagemap containing the graphical presentation of the primary navigation links, as well as a group of text links at the bottom of the page for those not using graphical browsers.
Except since they couldn't absolutely control the size of the text and get it to lay out exactly they way they wanted (incompetence + NetObjects (to) Fusion), they decided to turn the text alternative links for the imagemap into yet another imagemap! Not just an imagemap, but an imagemap designed to look like plain text links!
Talk about missing the point!
I worked on an "accessable" site a few years back, it was my former employers biggest client (and coincidentally, their biggest flop). Although I am concerned with the fact that the blind and other people with disabilities can't always access websites in as efficient a manner as possible (within a medium that is more easily than others to make accessable), I agree with the judge on this one. The W3C guidlines are outdated and unclear. There are no standards for screenwriters and they are prohibitively expensive for smaller shops to own to for quality assurance testing. I think the lobbying groups that wanted to force Southwest should focus their efforts at working with the internet and business community (who take green money from anyone, "able" or not) to come with viable standards and processes for making information technology as accessable as possible.
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
we DO need to consider ways in which to make the web more accessable to the disabled
How about (GASP) writing valid HTML code? That's all you need to do, there's no big trick to it.
The number of webmonkeys who vomit web pages together using [INSERT NAME OF GUI FOR INCOMPETENT WEB DEVELOPERS HERE] and who couldn't write a shopping list in HTML to save their lives is incredible.
Just write valid HTML like anyone with an IQ greater than that of a sock puppet and everyone will be able to read the site.
On second thought don't bother. When I see a web site that has been thrown together by someone who hasn't a clue what he's doing it's a good sign that there's nothing worth my time on that site anyhow.
Keep writing crap code, it's the McDonald's sign of the Internet. A giant wall of neon letters that read "We cater to the lowest common denominator, those with taste and intelligence should just keep on walking."
In fact, they went overboard on the ALT tags.
yes because whenever you win you should give the looser exactly what they wanted because you did win after all.....
Wow, no offense but was the political diatribe at the end really useful?
Patricia Seitz was nominated to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida in 1998 by then President Clinton. She was most recently tied (politcally speaking) to the election campaign of former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.
So, I doubt she's a Republican and probably not very conservative.
You may think she made a bad call, however, if you'll notice in the Order granting defendant's motion to dismiss she made the decision that Congress very narrowly defined the definition of a 'place of public accomodation'. (Obligatory 'I am not a lawyer') I would have to agree with her on that issue, when the ADA states that X,Y,Z places are covered and doesn't say "The Internet" as one of those then it doesn't cover it. Personally I think that regulating accessibility in websites is ridiculous. By that logic, all books would have to be printed in braille.
There are very few real things in this world...this isn't one of them.
I read this headline as "the programming language Ada" ... which would be true, since Ada SUCKS!!!
IT IS ACCESSIBLE.
Yes, they went overboard on the ALT tags, but you can muddle through it.
The whole point of the ADA is to cover situations that would render a business inaccessable to the disabled. It does not force businesses to comply to the personal tastes of every disabled person who could possibly be a customer. Only to provide some method of access.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Tools | Internet Options | Accessibility | Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages
I don't think that Southwest was fighting so that they wouldn't have to do it. The fight was against a lawsuit that was going to get a lawyer paid.
I'll bet if someone had approached Southwest and offered TO HELP them with this problem, instead of filing a frivolous lawsuit, this problem might already be history.
After all, it isn't in Southwest's best interest to alienate customers.
This was just a play for money by an unscrupulous lawyer. Bang, dead, there I said it!
I just saw someone's solution to this in my mind. I was just picturing someone's boss saying that they cannot use this font, because they are blind and the boss replying well just make it bigger.
I think this is a bad decision. Especially big companies and governmental web sites should be easily accessible for disabled people, too. And it's not difficult, too: If you are running a big website, you will need a CMS anyway, as well as separation between content, structure, and layout.
Not to mention that valid HTML is quite comprehensible on text or braille displays, too.
Germany has choosen a different way: Since July 2002 all german federal agencies are required to make their web presence accessible for disabled people until 2005. The Regulation for the creation of barrier-free information technology according to the disabled equalization law can be downloaded online, as well as a german article on Heise.
Although this only applies to federal agencies, and not to companies, state agencies or citizens, I think this sets a precedence for a best practice in web site design.
It was doing fine reading a /. thread until it started going "ack! aargh! gag!" I looked up to my monitor just in time for the goatse link ...
> Hmm, I think I've just been trolled.
When it comes to Lynx, sometimes you have to get down and even set the trolls straight.
The ADA has two purposes. The first one is to eliminate any discrimination towards individuals solely on the basis of their disability. Therefore, the argument must clearly present that "his disability and only his disability" is the root cause of his inability to access tickets at the reduced rate.
Well, one can argue that universal access doesn't apply. For instance, individuals without computers or internet access don't have access to the web site either. That eliminates the sole "disability discrimination rule" that the suit is based upon. If the judge would imply that SWA would be forced to provide a remedy, the customers that don't have computers could naturally sue along the same grounds. I doubt that the judge will let that happen any time soon.
The second purpose of the ADA is clearly define and legislate uniform standards of access for disabled individuals covered under the "universal access" portion of the ADA. While it is true that the government has officially legislated web standards for "public sector" (government) sites, the same is not true for private sector sites. SWA falls under the private sector. Therefore, there isn't a legislated standard for them to follow.
Result. Case gets thrown out. The ADA doesn't apply. Next case.
Legally, the decision is correct. Ethically, that decision is debatable. SWA should learn that this case will hurt them in terms of bad PR. And while SWA should give him the reduced rate, they are not legally obligated to do so.
Also, I can safely point out that price isn't that much of a factor. The person sitting next to you in that plane has most likely saved more on his/her flight than you have...
play the online games at Playhouse Disney
Well, is that a 'place of exhibition, display, and a sales establishment'? Didn't think so. At best it's online advertising... in any case it wouldn't be covered by the ADA.
I was hesitant about the ADA requirements too, but as people have pointed out this isn't about every webpage out there. It's only about the ones that are trying to sell services or goods to the public (like SouthWest is). And from what several people have said it's not even that hard for the average site - just being HTML compliant does virtually all the work.
It has nothing to do about getting enjoyment from the web. It has everything to do with being able to do business on the web.
Thanks for venturing your guess. My guess is you're wrong, and that the plaintiffs here are in the habit of encouraging large companies to use more accessible technologies before suing them-- do a Google search on "Gumson accessibility" if you need more source material.
However, even if they did move directly to the "sue" phase of this operation, I believe the whole idea would have been to get precedents established so that in the future it would be easier to convince those having inaccessible web sites to fix them. Now they are looking at a very uphill battle in that regard. Since the judge ruled the ADA didn't even apply, they'll need a whole additional law to close this loophole.
I do not have a signature
I hate Star Trek. I'm a sumo wrestler by trade, thank you very much.
All of our union contracts, college bylaws, yadda yadda have been converted to PDF - mind you, from A PRINTED COPY no less, not the original word-processed documents that were ALREADY ON DISK.
We were actually awarded a paperless office grant and the whole project was centered around Acrobat/Messenger/Capture. They might as well have called the grant the Adobe Gov't Subsidy Program. I mean, please, if you want to do it paperless, do it right by sticking the raw data/text in a database somewhere and formatting it only on demand or on the fly when it is needed.
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
No: physical buildings are clearly covered by the ADA. We are talking about websites.
Why should they be treated any differently? Because they are different.
This is the problem with adding layer upon layer of law - there's always another circumstance which does not cover what laws you have.
Suing the company in this case is basically trying to add another layer of liability to the laws. Keep doing that and no one will be able to do anything because companies will become immobilized as further restrictions are put on them.
What about those that are illiterate? Shouldnt' they have the right to access the site? What about people that have a phobia of flying? How do we include them? (they can choose other means of transportation, but the blind man in this case could've chosen other means to acquire the information)
In the end you cannot include everyone in all situations. The best you can hope for is that everyone has at least some options. Otherwise you end up with no one being able to do anything for fear of excluding someone. It all just gets ridiculous.
(Now backup to where this guy realizes he can't read the website. Instead of suing he could've done several things - called the phone number, had a friend read the website, chosen a more accomodating airline (personally this probably would've been the simplest course - through in a little media outrage if you're really pissed), etc. What would've been simpler?)
First off, I tend to agree with the judge. Maybe I would feel differently if I was blind but I don't think this is something that should be broadly mandated.
With that out of the way, what about those of us using Mozilla or something else besides IE. I do my banking online but my bank only supports NS4.x and IE5+. They do this 'to bring me the highest level of service and security' according to their web site. (the irony of that statement is another issue) Should there be a law requiring my bank to support Mozilla and other browsers? Otherwise, their service is inaccessible to many people.
For the record, I think they should support other browsers but I certainly don't think there should be a law requiring them to.
The ADA as it is *NOW* does not have any jurisdiction over the web.
What needs to be done is a new act extending CERTAIN rules to U.S. websites. Contact your congress people
jason
No one has seen what you have seen, and until that happens, we're all going to think that you're nuts. - Jack O'Neil
Funny here is the QOTD from the bottom of the Slashdot page:
"Ada is the work of an architect, not a computer scientist." - Jean Icbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie
Judge Rules That Inaccessible Website Violates ADA October 15, 2002
A federal judge ruled that the Atlanta mass transit agency violated the ADA by constructing a website that was inaccessible for people with visual disabilities. This is one of the first cases to decide that the ADA requires online access for people with disabilities.
This decision came as part of a court order in a class action lawsuit filed by Atlanta-area people with disabilities against the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA). The plaintiffs in this case complained about numerous problems they experienced with accessibility in MARTA, including difficulties in obtaining schedule and route information in an accessible format. This information is available on the MARTA website, but people with disabilities had to rely on cumbersome Braille schedules or through MARTA's telephone service.
MARTA staff testified that the MARTA website (http://www.itsmarta.com/) is not yet accessible for people with visual impairments. Since June 2002, MARTA has been working to improve the accessibility of its Internet site, but people who use screen readers to access the site still cannot get complete access to schedule and route information.
Judge Thomas W. Thrash, Jr. stated in his order that "MARTA can do a better job of making information available in accessible formats." The judge stated that although MARTA did provide information to people with visual impairments over the telephone, this service was not equivalent to that provided over the Internet to non-disabled passengers. Although MARTA is attempting to correct accessibility issues on its Internet site, Judge Thrash found that "MARTA must deliver on its promises". "Until these deficiencies are corrected," the judge stated, "MARTA is violating the ADA."
The judge ordered MARTA and the plaintiffs to work together to fashion a court order to remedy the violations of the ADA, including the accessibility of the MARTA website, but did not order MARTA to make any specific changes to its website. The court's order can be found in Adobe PDF at http://www.gand.uscourts.gov/documents/1001cv3255T WTinj.pdf.
The following summary was prepared by the Southeast DBTAC and has not been reviewed by any enforcement agency. The Southeast is authorized by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) to provide information, materials, and technical assistance to individuals and entities that are covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) under grant number H133D010207. However, you should be aware that NIDRR is not responsible for enforcement of the ADA The information, materials, and/or technical assistance are intended solely as informal guidance, and are neither a determination of your legal rights or responsibilities under the act, nor binding on any agency with enforcement responsibility under the ADA.
I am assuming the ruling does not apply to state and federal web sites. Is that true? Do state and federal web sites still need to be ADA compliant?
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
The disabled are a minority, so the economics will never work, since businesses aim at the largest possible audience. Thus the need for laws to protect those minorities, but without devastating effect on the majority. There are examples of how this can be made to work. For example, in the movies, there are no subtitles, since people will consider them distracting for the purpose of the movie and probably wait for the DVD to come out so they can turn them off--big loss for studios and theater owners. Therefore, the disabled have to wait for the DVD or TV premier to watch them with subtitles or CC. In my opinion, the web is a very graphic-heavy medium, not unlike the movies. The best solution to this problem--have a separate domain, like .dis or .ada and have companies make their sites more accessible, without hampering graphic- and audio-intense Internet.
Well if they didn't make them pay for two seats they would probably get sued by everyone else.
"God is a being of terrific character...cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust." Thomas Jefferson
Most people here seem to be blaiming the HTML author for sites which use tags improperly. The problem however is much deeper rooted than that. Your average member of the public likes interfaces with lots of pictures and little text. They also like interfaces that look nice.
While it is possible In Theory to write HTML using <div>s and CSS Positioning (indeed I do so), the problem is that the mainstream browsers do not properly implement the standard to do this. In particular, IE doesnt (Moz rocks, opera is slightly buggy, but usable, IE just... sucks) and the majority of web users who are targeted by the majority of sites (particularly for comercial stuff) use IE. Would you tell them to cut out the majority of their market? I wouldn't. Blame where blame is due, and admitedly not using alt tags is a true evil, but its not all the coder's fault.
-- John Linford
Only a narrow minded fool tries to limit what a good tool can do.
Yes, over 10 years ago, the web was created for information sharing. Its grown well beyond that.
To use an analogy, Unix wasn't intended to be a web server either, but it makes a damned fine one.
It's glaringly obvious that those who have the greatest need for the web's convenience are not being considered in important public services such as airline ticket sales, even public sites such as this or this or this that make slashdot look clean. How is an automated reader supposed to get through those tables of images and how long will person have to sit before CONTENT happens? News, tickets, medical and law information, job hunting, whew, I'm glad I'm not blind. Imagine having to use the phone to get the info you need - you can't it's not there.
Responsiblity is not hard to place. Flash and ActiveX and other nasties like that don't work and should not be used for important public sites. The designer that ignores this, and your simple advice, or who the manager who forces the designer to do the wrong thing anyway are responsible. It's that simple. Keep up your good work, the credit is just as easy to place.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This is quite a good point. My site is image-based, being a gallery, but just a little snip to the alt tag on the image map (only way i could get it done) on the front page, and now it explains this to visitors.
Watch out... It just might happen. msnbc
Why do people feel the need to violate my rights in order to make their lives easier? As I've said many times before: I'm very sorry blind (or deaf, or stupid) people have problems with my website, but why am I required to spend more of my resources (money, time, whatever) to accomodate them?
Why is it OK for the government to violate my right to present information the way I see fit and my right to do business with the people I choose in the manner I choose?
Why do people think that our only rights are the ones enumerated in the Bill of Rights, in direct contrast to what the ninth amendment explicitly says?
What compelling national interest using powers specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution allows them to restrict my rights in this manner?
I don't want to spend the extra effort to make my website accessible to everyone with every conceivable type of disability. As far as I am concerned, it is their responsibility to make my site accessible if they want to view it. If they want to donate the resources required to do this, or come up with a general, client-side solution that requires no extra work on my part (that means: no ALT tags, no text-only pages, etc.), great!
Hell, if disabled people were simply grateful instead of indignant, I might even donate the time to make my site more accessible.
But don't expect me to expend more resources to make your life easier. Anyone who feels entitled to the fruits of my labor just because I have something they don't have should go form their own socialist country elsewhere where they can violate each others' rights to their hearts' content.
This country was founded on a different concept---that of individual responsibility and personal freedom---that is being eroded with law after law and court decision after court decision. Is no one else concerned about these violations of our rights?
[ home ]
The remaining legal issue would then pertain to whether the company's webserver location can be considered a "place of accomodation" and whether the website can be considered a service or privilege offered by that place. This judge evidently does not.
Not that I agree with the judge. But this is evidently a matter of legal interpretation rather than "insane" reasoning.
Next, they'll be suing Playboy because their magazines do not faciliate the masterbatory desires of the blind. Or maybe they'll sue the phone sex companies because they're services aren't available for the deaf. Pretty soon, fat and ugly women will be suing strip clubs because they don't hire fat and ugly people -- appearance discrimination.
This is getting ridiculous. I can understand public access for blind people -- ramps, elevators, etc. I can understand brail. I can understand certain features in public buildings to help the blind. But I'm gonna have to kill someone if someone sues McDonalds because they're doors aren't "wide enough for 700 pound poeple to fit through" or sues the movie theaters because their seats don't accomadate 500 pounds worth of ass.
Telling companies to redesign their websites is a violation of free speech. It would be like mandating that Michael Crichton also release his books in brail, and threatening to fine him if he doesn't. Companies shouldn't have to spend millions of dollars making sure that the 0.1% of people who are blind can use their website easily.
And private websites certainly shouldn't have to accomodate the disabled. If I have a website with some opinions by myself on there and lots of other political stuff, and then have a little link saying "buy my T-shirt", that does not make it a commercial site. Its still a private website, and I should be able to do with it whatever I want.
I'll grant you that if the web were more friendly for blind people, it would be a better web:
1. There would be no unnecessary images. All web-sites would look like those of FSF.org.
2. The only places where pictures or sounds would be would be for screenshots or things like that; there wouldn't be banner ads, and structural features of a website wouldn't rely on graphical barriers.
But forcing companies to change their websites evokes free speech issues.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Do a little dance - make a little love.... Finally a judge with some common sense.
Ave Molech Setting
Judge Seitz also rejected plaintiffs' claim that the Web is a 'place of exhibition, display, and a sales establishment,'
Does this mean that PanIP cannot sue others for "doing sales via a computer"?
Table-ized A.I.
The judge cited that southwest.com doesn't block access to concrete spaces, like the fast-finger dial-in for "WWTBAMillionaire" does. Um. If the tickets are cheaper online than calling up (In telephone Jane voice: please note that special, Internet only fares are avilable on your website...), than it sure as heck IS blocking access to a physical place... the plane!
Curiosity got the better of me. The Google search didn't really help, although it did bring up a Robert Gumson who is on the Executive Committee for NYS Independent Living Council, and has attended activities that would indicate that he may be considered an activist in this area. Not sure if it's the same guy, though. Given his impairment, it should be no surprise that he's highly interested in accessibility.
Of more interest is the pdf of the court order. On page four, it is clearly footnoted (#4) that "Plantiffs' Counsel informed the Court that Plaintiffs made no effort to resolve this dispute prior to filing their Complaint. (Tr., Oct. 16, 2002). Although the law does not require Plaintiffs to confer with Southwest prior to filing this action, in light of Plaintiffs' Counsel's discussion of the proactive measures that other companies, such as Amazon.com, have taken to modify their websites to make them more accessible to visually impaired persons, it is unfortunate that Plaintiffs made no attempt to resolve this matter before resorting to litigation."
It's clear that the plaintiffs were, as you said, interested in establishing precendent for the future. It's also implied that the judge may have detected this and it may be part of the reason for the outcome. Although I definitely don't think it's fair for someone with a disability to be denied accessibility to a web site, I also think that they really should have tried to work *with* Southwest before they spent taxpayer dollars on this. Not everything needs to go to court.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Now if we could only get the courts to realize that this law goes way to far and fix it's abuses in the real world too, like paying $50,000 for wheelchair ramps in wilderness areas that can't be accessed by wheelchairs. This law is a kneejerk bleeding heart reaction to a real and serious problem, but one that can't always be fixed by laws.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Interesting how some people say that everyone should open up and make the web browseable for those 5% (or less) of people that are blind.. ...but when it's 5% of Mac users, people look the other way.
The web should be usable by everyone. Blind, Mac user, Linux user, old guy with 1 leg.. doesn't matter.
Follow the published standards, and this goal becomes easier to reach...
If you aren't sharing information then you are buying information.
If you are buying information, then your screen is more likely blue than black.
If your screen is blue then you are are more likely to give a three fingered salute than do nothing.
If you are used to sharing information, you may select a middle-finger salute over a three-finger salute.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Hell, I can see just fine and people try to run me over as I'm trying to get to a seat.
Even worse, their pilots! That's the LAST airline I'd want to fly on if I couldn't see.
Wait.. that came out wrong.. maybe being blind on Southwest *IS* a good thing. That way you can't see as Captain Kangaroo bounces you down the runway...
The next step now for the National Federation of the Blind, is to lobby the governemnt to make new laws that do explicitly apply to the web.
Right, because more laws are always the answer.
The judiciary's job is to interpret the law - and I don't think that interpreting the ADA to apply to the Web is unreasonable, nor does it entail "making new laws". It's obvious that the purpose of the ADA is to prevent Americans with disabilities from being excluded from services provided by a company, despite the fact that it isn't worded in a way that would apply to the web.
I'm all for having the judiciary stay within its bounds, but I don't think getting Congress to pass another bill for every new technology is a good idea. I'm sure any lobbyists that work for the National Federation of the Blind are jumping for joy at this decision, though.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Hell, I can see just fine and people try to run me over as I'm trying to get to a seat.
Even worse, their pilots! That's the LAST airline I'd want to fly on if I couldn't see.
Wait.. that came out wrong.. maybe being blind on Southwest *IS* a good thing. That way you can't see as Captain Kangaroo bounces you down the runway...
(erps, forgot to log in before posting..)
I saw a show, I think it was COPS. They were showing, a one handed, female, police, officer, doing her job. She, had to go, arrest, people with her partner, and, the people she would be arresting, would actually calm down, after seeing her stub (her arm ended right before the elbow.) The person she was arresting, stopped fuming, and started asking her questions, and, getting answers ("How long have you had that"--"All my life.") She said, that's how other people behaved, too.
Or, maybe, she was an E.M.T. I don't remember, now.
19 EXTRA COMMAS INSERTED FOR THE COMMA-CHALLENGED.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
What if they don't want blind people buying tickets from them and using their website? It only means they're losing money to competitors.
Such standards predate the commercialization of the web.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Any karma-whores/lawyers like to explain it please?
Hey, thanks for the grammar help!
I suppose its time to crack open a non-cs text book or two! (turning on spell check by default would be nice too...)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Sort of funny that the decision, since it is posted in PDF format and not text, would also not be text-to-voice or -braile parsable...
What the fuck are you talking about?
You seem to be implying that making the web usable for blind people is some hard and extreme task. Hell, the technologies are already there! And they're easy to impliment!
Please, stop all this "but where do you draw the line" bullshit.
Making the web more accesable for the blind is easy, and one who says it isn't, is lazy or doesn't know what they're talking about.
[that is all]
The directions you supplied are wrong. When I tried using this ReMaster tool following your directions, it *deleted* all the files I had in the directory. This is not +4, Funny, IMHO.
Luckily, I had a backup version of my files in a subdirectory and a friend nearby who told me that the right way to use the ReMaster tool, which is to type 'rm -Rf' instead of the lowercase 'r'.
Thanks for the good-for-nothing advice. Now I'm going to use ReMaster the right way!
blog
Well, a catalog in my mailbox is as much a "place of exhibition, display, and a sales establishment" as my monitor is. It's just about as good, if not better, than the web site. It just has one helluva latency.
... er, READ ... a copy.
If you know of any visually-impaired versions of the Victoria's Secret catalog, please send it my way. I would love to feel
http://aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca/
A-Prompt (Accessibility Prompt) is a software tool designed to improve the usability of HTML documents by evaluating Web pages for accessibility barriers and then providing developers with a fast and easy way to make the necessary repairs.
A-Prompt will ensure that client Web sites are accessible to the largest number of potential visitors - including those with disabilities. The tool's evaluation and repair checklist is based on accessibility guidelines created and maintained by the Web Access Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium
CSS
From the judgement:
"Plaintiffs claim that although purchasing tickets at southwest.com is "technically possible, plaintiffs found purchasing a ticket to be extremely difficult..."
They weren't even suing because they couldn't buy tickets, they were suing because it was too difficult. I'd argue that if they want the web price, they can suffer through the site. If I want to get gas, I can do so the easy way, and get gas by my house, or I can save $2.00 and go miles away to get cheaper gas. Unfortunatly, if they want the cheaper price, they will have to work for it. Nothing is perfect.
It is about time that a judge was willing to use some common sense!
I'm a great believer in luck. The harder I work the more I have of it. - Thomas Jefferson
Although you are being a bit more precise, it doesn't really change anything. The website is still the "service", not the "place". The "place of public accomodation" is the "place" (whatever that means) where the travel services of Southwest Airlines is provided. Likely that is the office buildings of SWA (or their agent) where their websites are hosted, administistrated, configured, programmed, specified, designed, and published.
What this judge is essentially saying is that you have to be at the "place" of public accomodation to receive it's services. That is patently absurd, and wholely unsupported by the statute.
I read a good deal of comments that have been posted so far, but frankly, the pile's enormous and the themes are pretty consistent... I've seen way too many posts sympathetic to this overbearing sort of gov't legislation, to one degree or another.
Put simply, the government has no place in determining what's "nice" or "fair" or "decent" behavior to respect the sensibilities of other citizens. The government's only responsibility is to protect the *rights* of all citizens. I couldn't find it -- can someone point me to the paragraph in the BoR with Southwest Airlines?
Some of you (otherwise intelligent) people seem to have forgotten that this is a society driven by a market economy. If some dude saves for 25 years for the money to open his own hardware store, he should have enough control over his own business that he can say, "I don't hire ugly people because they scare off customers, and I don't let fat people shop here, because they knock too much stuff off the shelves." Who cares? You have no inherent right under government to shop at Narrow Mind Hardware. If, in the market, his store survives because enough people shop there still, then he deserves to be around. Otherwise, he'll go out of business.
Let the market take care of that stuff. Government has no place legislating politeness, taste, religion, decency, or anything of the sort. Remember: It doesn't matter if you're blind, deaf, fat, gross, strong, tall, Asian, Catholic, a programmer, or stupid; you have no right under government to be served by Southwest Airlines unless they choose to do so by accepting your money. Stop supporting gov't largess and stripping me of my rights.
-Prophasi
So slashdot really *has* been taken over by trolls? (God I love this moderation system).
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
supporting blind users is a good idea. After all, google is blind.
Bush Administration. {If you don't realise the courts are taking their marching orders from the good ole boys network on top, then your simply not paying attention! This administration has been systematically rolling back dozens of reforms, laws, and the like on the books in the name of big business & profits... But that's not what this thread is about.} Being hearing impaired (and fully employable!) myself, I've seen first hand time and again how many business would really prefer to treat the disabled & the ADA. I constantly hear lazy business executives whine 'why should I be forced to do this?' quickly follow it up with the dogeared excuse, 'If we do it'll cost us our profit margin!' What irritates me the most, (and I imagine most other disabled people) is that after spending lots of my hard earned money just to *try* and be able to function like a normal human being most of the time, these same businessmen are completely unwilling to meet me part of the way, by spending a little of their money to make my use of their facilities less of a hassle for me... The disabled aren't looking for free handouts - what we're for is simply being *able* to do what everyone else takes for granted without having to resort to /extraordinary measures/ to do so.
And the ADA *WAS* intended to prod the really stubborn amongst our population into simply providing the disabled a part way meeting point so we could do just that. And, we all know that without it, a larger portion of the general populance would simply prefer to throw up a "it's somebody else's problem" mental shield of ignorance to hide behind!
Personally, I think everyone who voices their negative opinions about the ADA should try spending one day of their weekend without their hearing, sight or ability to walk to get a small idea of the challenges it presents them. Because they can't imagine it, they have to experience it.
Besides - How many of you noticed that people who were fully-abled and once believed that ADA was a such huge financial burden usually change their tunes when they or their children become disabled, and experience what it's like firsthand?
The sad thing is this is mostly because of a ignorant self awareness of our current cultural training. Which unfortunately, is directly proportional to how well medical technology eventually adverts some of disabilities we're born with, and creating a smaller and smaller minority of people who 'slip through the cracks of our cultural machinerys normal functioning'.
{And for those of you who still don't know what I'm refering too, here's a sample qoute illustrating the reality of many disabled people in our society - "Born a dwarf? Tough cookies - you'll just have wait until you get home to go to bathroom, Because all of our urinal's & toilets are set at the average persons height."
Unfortunately, after seeing this response enough times, even some of normally polite disabled people become quite tempted to simply unzip their fly and start p****** on these business peoples shoes for responding & acting like that in the first place.}
Making websites available to the blind isn't a big in the first place, putting glorified eyecandy on the site SHOULD NOT BE the end all of a Website. For most company website, that goal should be conveying information about their products and services, and how people can purchase them. The web (and the attendant webservers) can do just like the BBS's (Bulletin Board Systems) that came before them/it did, and have the ability for displaying multiple formats for the pages based on what kind of connection that is being made, (Ascii with color codes or just plain text in the 'old days'). I did it while I ran my own BBS years ago, and I really don't see why an Apache Webserver Admin can't do the same thing now days - because their essentially already doing something pretty similar to it when they use the language specific pages. Why can't an Apache web administrator (or user) simply toggle a switch that defines whether HTML or rich text is sent to a browser? I've seen others in the forum state many times that properly implemented HTML would make this very simple. Therefore, I can only conclude that several people are just cutting corners at the expense of the blind.
Personally, I think such is inherently wrong. But then, in this post-enron world, Morality & Ethics are probably getting dispensed with in the pursuit of the all mighty dollar... :/
- WW
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]
Hitler was very determined and aggressive
you have now lost the argument.
Godwin's Law in the Jargon File
MORTAR COMBAT!
Of course this isn't a visual medium, it is a message board. It is only one step from static HTML pages.
Airline tickets are a step up in that visual information can greatly help (map of cities that it serves, nice pictures that show what stage of the buying process you are in, etc).
Note again that it is not impossible for the visually impared to buy tickets, just "difficult". You would be surprised the number of visual clues that are given just by simple placement of form objects, text, and pictures. It is what the Design of Everyday Things book calls affordances. The Southwest site has visual affordances. Designing for auditory affordances is a completely different task.
Much more complicated are sites that sell things that you most of the time would like to see before you buy. Are you saying an online clothing store or an online furnature store or an online real estate store are not visual? I never buy anything from Ebay without seeing a picture of it, nor would I bother visiting a house without a picture.
Up the scale even farther are sites that use complex sound and graphics. Now you may say "oh man those sites suck". Fine, that is your opinion. But the truth is there are things you can express in Flash that are impossible to express in HTML. Visual things. As the web matures complex sound and graphics will become more and more important. Heck, Mac wouldn't be the same if the desktop wasn't so pretty. Why shouldn't websites be the same (especially if they are entertainment based like movies or games).
Finally, as the web grows in terms of the complexity of the application that are developed on it so too will the GUI elements. Right now we are stuck with text and list boxes. There are a wealth of other common GUI elements that people have or will want to start adopting more and more of. Things like trees, menus, interactive tables, spinners, etc.
the p0rn industry
The Australian government has legislation (Disability Discrimination Act 1992) and guidelines in place regarding accessibility for websites. A list of policies is available at Website Accessibility - Australia.
In Bruce Lindsay Maguire v Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG), the Human Rights And Equal Opportunity Commission found for the complainant, Bruce Lindsay Maguire, and ordered the SOCOG to modify the website. Of particular interest is the quote "In Ms Treviranus' view, if accessibility had been considered by the respondent when the site was being developed it could have been totally achieved in less than 1 percent of the time consumed in the site's development". Further details on the case are available.
I work with a group that maintains websites for a city government. We potentially have a much worse task ahead of us: not accessibility for the disabled, but instead, accessibility for the Spanish speaking! Compared to having just make a few thousand pages W3C compliant, having to pass a few thousand pages for translation into Spanish, with graphics, is a hell of a task. The only thing worse would be having to do both parts! It's nice that the ADA doesn't apply to private sector websites now, but pray that you designers out there don't get the ultimate call to make multiple language versions. There's a lot of people who don't speak English in the United States too, after all!
Playboy is not an interstate carrier. Federal law requires interstate transportation operators to follow ADA. It is the same law that requires airlines to provide wheelchairs to the disabled.
Browsers with images turned off are far far cheaper than ramps and bathroom stalls.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Disabled people often have to pay for special services. I see no reason a business should be forced to give something away for free, or made to do something that is costly but provides virtually no additional revenue. Yeah, they do have the right to pass on the additional cost.
So if cost is Southwest's major concern, then what costs more: alt= information or phone service?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm working on a project to implement the Aural CSS (from the css2 specs) standards as an activex control for IE...its sad that neither mozilla or IE or even opera support ACSS
with the ruling essentially removing requirement for sites to comply, it seems that all of CSS2's recommendations regarding Aural CSS are moot if sites don't implemenet it.
One hope, however, is the eventual coming of many non-visual browsers (i.e., car browsers, pocket radio browsers, or whatever people dream up), which will make Aural CSS incredibly important for us to have a richer experience of non-visual webpages!
I am legally color blind. There is no way I could pick out clothing from an online store by myself because I wouldn't be able to match colors worth squat. When I shop without my wife I always have to ask a clerk for help.
So how can you tell me that a fully blind person could shop from a clothing store? At least I can see the styles and shapes and kinda understand what looks good on me and what does not. And, for example, even if they gave in depth color information if you have never seen colors you will not know what goes with what.
And I know blind people shop for houses, but I doubt many buy houses without having someone tell them what it looks like!
Brian Ellenberger
I see both sides of this debate.
On one hand, locking out disabled/Lynx/et al might lead us to the IE5+ only Web as soon as 70-80% will use it. It will totally contradict the premises on which the Web was created, the premises of equal access for all clients and all platforms.
On the other hand, we live in a democratic society, and the democracy is the power of a majority. The way everything is moved, there is a mainstream/commodity market that tries to grow to a 100%, and there are niches.
And these representing a niche DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT TO DEMAND from the majority something that makes everyone go extra mile. Society can give it to some minority, but you do not have inalienable right for having the world changed to your liking.
When a telephone or insurance company has Spanish, Russian or Vietnamese hotline, it is a business decision or a cortesy, not the right for the minorities to speak with anyone they want in their language or decline to pay bills that are printed in English. And this can be related to many situations. Thus, a Muslim employee at a factory cannot demand the line where everyone is working stopped because he needs to pray 5 times a day. He can ASK, and the management MIGHT accomodate his request, but it is not his right to sue for "religious discrimination".
However, in the modern American culture it is assumed that everyone has a right to demand from the society not just to accomodate their peculiarities, but often go extra mile for it and feel guilt for belonging to the mainstream. It spawns an attitude describen in the previous comment: "I think society needs to reshuffle its priorities.
Anyway, for people like you and me, I've said in another response to my post that there need to be free (supported by taxpayers, perhaps) or cheap (same) tools to make sites more accessible."
This is why race-based "affirmative action" is morally wrong. This way you don't make it right while bringing up morally corrupt whinies, who perceive themselves as plaintiffs and the world as defendant.
Jews who were always discriminated against never asked for special rights, just equal rights, and this should be that way for everybody.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Van Gogh never made his artwork accessible to the blind. When will they sue him... or Rembrandt or any of the other artist.
/. is inaccessible to the blind as well.
The web is primarily a visual interface. Without added software to parse the test and send it into a speech program
Maybe I'll get sued b/c I can see and they can't.. this gives me an unfair advantage.
Anyone who has tried to implement W3C accessibility will now how much of a hassle this process is. Tables in particular: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#identifyin g-table-rows-columns
Oh, by the way, I love how W3C's examples are NOT XHTML compliant.
Anyway... I personally think that accessibility is another drag factor on web development, up there with users of Netscape 4.x (and worse) and etc. (I'm not opposed to different browsers, just shitty ones).
If the web is going to be accessible, I think all the effort should go into reader software. This has to evolve and deal with the current state of the web, rather than the web devolve to fit in with it. I mean sure - there are things that developers should do to increase accessibility (alt tags etc.), but there has to be a line drawn.
--- Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit? | Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?
Deaf people sue the NY Symphony. Seems they can't hear the music....
Are you sure about that? There are several ways around this:
1) Use the table's summary attribute (the one Tidy always warns you about). This will allow you to put in a description of the table without having it shown to sighted users. Of course, you could also put in some text and use CSS to hide it from sighted users.
2) Use proper headers (TH elements with scope attributes) where appropriate. You might be surprised at just how far this will go for increasing accessibility with most aural browsers or Braille readers.
There are a few others as well. Basically, it's just using more of the language for its intended purpose.
I don't know the particular legalities, but it seems to me from the credits given, that it is also third party sponsorship and organizations that put the effort into bringing closed captioning or descriptive audio to television broadcasts. Again, taking the existing medium, and making it more accessible to others.
The web is somewhat more gnarly and less structured, to say the least, but the same principles can largely apply. Screen readers, smart HTML parsing, and so forth, can make the Web accessible to those who can not read it.
The biggest threat to this is poor standardization (i.e. IE extensions and such crud, versus proper standard), and silliness like ShockWave which seldom add anything to the true *content*, and just add to meaningless splash.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
So if cost is Southwest's major concern, then what costs more: alt= information or phone service?
How much does it cost to go through a site and make it blind-accessible, versus hiring extra phone reps?
Neither you nor I know the answer. So until you talk to someone working at Southwest and actually get facts, why don't you leave it up to the company? Your opinion is not a substitute for truth.
...
My company VoiceWebSolutions.net and VoiceWebCommunity.com is planning to launch technology to speech activate regular web sites. This will not only allow blind users to interact with web sites but also remove the need to have anyone redesign pages to the lowest common denominator. Anyone want to invest? :)
If it has made some self-styled "web developers" actually learn about the technologies they are using, it would have had some direct benefit.
I have a friend who is blind - and he has a computer with a braile screen, keyboard and a screen reader (jaws). Last I talked to him about this he was very frustrated at most web sites because his screen reader would go nuts nuts - reading things like "image, image, image, image" about 20 times. Why people can't put tags into non-readable entities is really beyond me.
He probably gets to see only 5% of most all the useable sites - if that. He mostly uses the internet to chat with friends and read e-mail messages.
You don't like popups I'm sure - they are leathal to blind people, that aside how would you like it every time you visited a web page all that came up was lots of nonsense before actually being able to view the real content.
I'd still prefer a text-based site with meaningful information, than one with a bunch of useless eye candy that impedes access to something meaningful.
My primary browser is "links" (a text-based browser), and I definately get angry when websites aren't properly coded to make them navicable with a like browser. However, I believe there is a critical mass of text content that's necessary to make it worthwile to code for text browsers and braile readers. Some websites are so flash-and-graphics laden that if the ADA applied to them, there would be no way to transfer the same ideas without also including massive narration and text description... which the blind or text browser user would find quite non-useful. For example: everything on homestarrunner.com. The last thing we need is more laws. It's common sense to code for text browsers and braile readers where possible. Simple awareness campains and bitch-slapping will take care of the nimrods that don't have the necessary sense. Let's not get the law involved.
If the ADA ruled against them fine, we'll just move our hosting to Malaysia.
For some reason the Federal government thinks it has the slightest right to govern these things. It doesn't.
It might be tricky for a US company to get away with it, but it can't be long before they'd start going after places like well.. slashdot.
i can't really comment on the decision. i'm not a lawyer. but i do think it is sad that the airline spent all this time and money on lawyers instead of making their site easier to navigate. even a little, "If you are blind, please call 555-5555 for help" might have helped. but no they spent their money on lawyers.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
If you haven't signed up for a slashdot account in a while, try it. There is a step where you have to read a series of letters from an image to prove you aren't a bot. But it also shuts out the blind. (Not that I even thought of that until now.)
Liberty uber alles.
So, given the example I listed (Playhouse Disney), how would you implement that site in a text-reader-friendly manner?
"Olie is running to the left."
"Zoe is picking up a trombone."
"Coupie is bouncing from one tire to the other."
I'm being quite serious. On a text-based site such as Slashdot, ADA compliance would probably be quite simple. On other sites, it would probably be completely impossible (and utterly pointless to boot).
The majority of web sites should voluntarily follow normal accessibility standard. However, if you legislated that they had to, would you allow waivers for non-text-content sites? What percentage of the site has to be non-textual before you'd grant a waiver?
In general, I agree with you. I could also cite a long list of examples where any attempt at ADA compliance would be fruitless.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
If they ruled that all marketing brochures and pamphlets that a company distributes must also be available in Braille, this would increase costs, and cause huge delays to business because there wouldn't be enough Braille printers and translation/typesetting experts available.
On the other hand, the web offers the ability to make information accessible to the blind with very little additional cost or trouble, so why not take advantage of this?
I don't think that interpreting the ADA to apply to the Web is unreasonable
But are you a lawyer? Are you saying you could do her job better than she can?
despite the fact that it isn't worded in a way that would apply to the web.
Have you read the law? Perhaps it's worded in such a way as to explicitly exclude the web.
My point is that interpreting the law isn't easy. If it was we wouldn't have lawyers. Just because we want the law to apply to a certian situation doesn't mean it does. Perhaps you're forgetting that this is a lawsuit. The defendant is taking the position that it doesn't apply. The judge has to be objective in her interpretation. I'm willing to trust to her professional expertise that it doesn't apply.
I agree that we don't want a new law for every new technology that comes out, but the solution is for the law makers to use more foresight in designing the laws. Not for lawyers to take a handfull of laws and try and apply them to every situation.
Morals are general, laws are not. Laws need to be explicit in thier wording or the whole system falls apart. If laws were more general then figuring out when they applied and when they didn't would be almost impossible.
I don't think that writing an amendment to the ADA to include the web is unreasonable.
(btw - ianal)
Your research brings us both rewards. Thank you for doing it. I agree that, in spite of the world of good a positive precendent would have done in helping other companies "see the light" on web accessibility, the Plaintiffs probably should have-- as a formality-- tried to get SW to change on their own. Sadly, now it will be even worse for accessibility advocates as their won't be any possibility to threaten legal action.
I do not have a signature
The problem isn't the websites, it is the substandard software used by the disabled. Read on:
While Accessible Design is very good, the rebuttals here are like a bad joke. There are no intuitive tools to make complex web applications magically accessible and yet perfectly cross-browser functional without loss in appearance or functionality. That may be fine for your page about your cat's tendency to spit up hairballs shaped like Abraham Lincoln's profile, but try telling the CEO and the Stockholders their nifty dynamically rendered holy-mother superpage has to go. You never tell someone they have an ugly or imperfect baby, and you never sink a large investment into something flashy just to lose it and spend more on something vanilla.
Use alt tags! Run it through Bobby and change what he tells you to! Amature
If you don't design a complex site around accessibility from the ground up, you may as well go home now. You may have downloaded some freebie screenreader from cnet, but you've never used the industry standard.
Accessibility is great, but the current spec on screen readers is like trying to use Netscape2.0 on a page designed specifically for IE6 with all the proprietary non-cross-browser extensions. 'Accessibly designed' my ass.
If you think your pages are so accessible download JAWS and view them. JAWS has the largest user demographic and it is quite literally a piece of shit. It is most accurately envisioned as the NN4.x browser every cutting edge developer wishes people would stop using. You can't slip complex CSS past it, hell it gets hung up on divs and even table structure. It's like adding the development time of NN4x compatibility on top of the estimate for the project.
The 'handi-capable' (thanks Carlin) are using the equivalent of a device with no interpretive ability to attempt to share in the 'online experience'. A better use of resources would be writing a screenreader that understands layout constructs and supports the developed standards... OR FOR THAT MATTER just a fscking browser that fully supports CSS.If only we could use the AURAL STYLESHEETS that should have been supported years ago! Of course, then there wouldn't be anything to talk about.
Listen to JAWS or any other screenreader mangle your nice accessible pages. Guidelines schmidelines. Testing provides the only true revelation.
Well I'm just saying (and no offense intended) that its irrelavent. The issue is general access to websites for people who don't have computer monitors.
What I'm saying is why worry about video games when 90% of the internet isn't even availble - when it could be easily.
Did you even read the post? Your entire response is meaningless. It isn't even a response, it's just the same argument you used before.
Why can't you admit that those asians could get food somewhere, just not at the store run by racist bastards? And again, why would they want to give their money to racist bastards anyway?
doesn't it follow that comparisons to other real world activities such as "stealing" should have the same standard applied?
BOFH excuse #322:
Your Pentium has a heating problem - try cooling it with ice cold water.(Do not turn of your computer, you do not want to cool down the Pentium Chip while he isn't working, do you?)
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