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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.
What's wrong with this standard?
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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.
Mark Pilgrim, the guy behind Dive Into Accessibility offers some comments on this article, Southwest off the hook in his weblog Dive Into Mark.
Just in case this wasn't a troll after all -- yes, the blind can use screen-reading software to browse the web. But the software needs text to read; it can't handle _images_ of text. So images that convey important information need "alt" tags, etc.
There's more to it than the above, of course -- see the guidelines on www.w3c.org for more information.
make sure all the information on a web site is available as text, then a text to voice synthesizer can easily read it.
Or a Braille reader. I used to work at NCSA (you know, Mosaic and httpd?) and we had a web site redesign we wanted to run by an employee who wrote code, full-time and quite well, and also happened to be blind.
I wasn't sure what to expect, but he had a seeing-eye dog under his desk and a monochrome monitor with a long horizontal Braille outputter in front of his keyboard. If you've seen "Sneakers", you know what it looks like: a long bar with three rows of holes, grouped into eight or ten chunks of six. When a page was read by the device, tiny rods jumped up from inside the bar to create the six-bump patterns of Braille letters.
What impressed me is how fast he could read using this device. What amazed me was that he only seemed to use it when reading code; for normal English text, he used a text-to-speech reader which he'd slowly cranked the speed on over the years. It spoke words in what I could only describe as a buzz, at ten or maybe forty times normal human speed, and he understood it perfectly. Just like learning to speed read, I suppose, except with your ears instead of your eyes.
I learned that in order to make the Web site accessible to him, I simply had to make sure it was completely navigable in a text-only browser like Lynx. If text was clearly broken into paragraphs, images were labeled with ALT tags, and navigation was possible through ordinary hyperlinks instead of requiring DHTML or DOM support, everything was okay. It was really that simple.
People who design sites exclusively for the IE4+ market aren't just naive, they're inconsiderate. A one-time effort to add 5% more code to your site in the form of ALT tags and text-based navigation makes a world of difference to the 5% of people who can't use the latest and greatest technologies.
I remember the days where a truly insightful post would deservedly get moderated up. Now all we see are pithy responses no better than the old "First Post" we used to see.
What good is setting your threshold to 2 or 3 when refuse like the parent post get modded up?
Where is the slashdot for the intellectual community? Slashdot has become the stomping ground for the annoying kids who are on break from Everquest.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
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.)
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
Not only is this insightful (as per the moderation), but its exactally what happened. I've been foloowng this one for a while, as I once apon a time had to some significant remodeling of a website to make it 508 compliant.
Mod point free since 2001
people who use screen readers to access the site still cannot get complete access to schedule and route information.
As a non-disabled person with a few college years of experience in trying to make heads or tails of MARTA's schedules and routes, my message to these Disabled persons is:
You ain't missin' much. Trust me.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Section 508 of the ADA applies specfically to government agencies, but says nothing about private businesses.
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.
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.
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 think society needs to reshuffle its priorities. I don't believe Profit Is King. I do a lot of things that cost me more than otherwise (biodegradable car wash/wax stuff, for instance, start with the small stuff) and donate to nonprofits.
... and that's a shame because change often starts with who? The people.
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. Right now the tool that works with my web development software is priced out of reach for hobbyists like me
As for the racism comment... what I had in mind was the notion of rejecting someone because of some attribute about them that they can't change. I can't give myself perfect hearing any more than someone can change the color of their skin. Maybe it could have been said a little better. Hope that clarification helps a little.
i am a soviet space shuttle
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.
I take it you've never run your web pages through the W3C Validator. It says the alt attribute is required on all img tags. Note that this is true of HTML 4.01 as well as XHTML 1.0.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
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
supporting blind users is a good idea. After all, google is blind.
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.