Appeals Court Says ADA Doesn't Cover the Web

tassii writes "In this article from CNet, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld a lower court's decision from October 2002, which concluded that Web sites cannot be required to comply with the 1991 disabilities law."

Comments

A shame

[ttfkam]

The court cited the fact that the Internet wasn't listed in the 1991 law. ...which of course is to be expected since lawmakers would have been unaware of anything called the Internet back in 1991. To assert that the Internet is not a "place of public accomodation" is lunacy considering the ever-increasing amount of goods and services available over the Internet and amount of time the average American spends online.

Considering the fact that the ADA covers such items as cement walkways without overly tight turns and the installation of elevators, I find it hard to believe that the comparatively inexpensive addition of alt attributes to images and clearly defined form elements constitutes an undue burden on businesses and the web at large. I also find it hard to believe that exclusion of the Internet and Internet-related facilities from the ADA is consistent with the spirit of the law as written in 1991. Does anyone truly believe that if common knowledge of the Internet existed back in 1991 that the ADA would not have included it in its guidelines and requirements?

Re:A shame

[nharmon]

Lunacy is interpreting a law that was intended to give disabled people access to buildings to mean a website has to be written a certain way.

Please remember, that this could have freedom of speech implications. This would be like requiring protestors to talk a certain volume, because some in the audience may not hear what he/she is saying.

As far as spirit of the law...since you can't tell me with 100% accuracy the spirit and intent of every congressman and senator who voted for this law, all we have to go on is the wording. And the wording does not support your position.

Re:A shame

[pauljlucas]

The court cited the fact that the Internet wasn't listed in the 1991 law. ...which of course is to be expected since lawmakers would have been unaware of anything called the Internet back in 1991.

Congress is free to amend the ADA by specifically adding a provision for the Internet. You're free to write your repsentatives to urge them to do it.

Re:A shame

[ttfkam]

Blogs are not affected by this. This is not some cut and dried freedom of speech argument. Businesses have government-imposed limits all the time -- ADA guidelines for access into and out of a building for example. As far as free speech goes, businesses are not allowed to say that their hair dryer cures cancer. Is this an abridgement of free speech.

Accessibility in (commercial) web sites is not restraining speech; it's adding more content. Accessibility is not about removing images. It's about adding meaningful alt attributes to those images. How is free speech hurt by adding labels to forms -- which incidentally can be removed with CSS so that precious aesthetics are not lost but screen readers can still use.

Take a look at the W3C accessibility checklist. Of the three levels, the first is downright simple. Level three is definitely more work, but with a visually impaired tester or two and XHTML+CSS, it's more than possible for all but the smallest of businesses with an online outlet.

But in answer to your question, yes, I would lay money that the congressmen who voted for the ADA would have included commercial web sites had they known about them.

The wording doesn't support my position because it only explicitly lists physical places like restaurants? Maybe this is because interaction with businesses was only possible physically prior to 1995 (or so). Accessible websites are the cheapest, simplest, and one of the most straightforward ways to make a business usable by the physically disabled. To say that businesses have to put in a concrete ramp so that those with wheelchairs can get access -- even if they are less than 1% of the customers -- but a website can be completely inaccessible for the visually impaired is lunacy.

Point #1: Southwest was offering special deals over the Internet that are not available via phone or other alternative. This means they were offering a commercial service that notably excluded the visually impaired from taking advantage simply because they were visually impaired.

Point #2: Southwest has since revamped the website so that this is no longer the case. For something that squelches free speech or would be prohibitively expensive, they sure fixed the problem quickly while keeping the same look for fully-sighted users.

Is it more effort than not worrying about accessibility at all? Certainly! But "easier" wasn't the point of the ADA and shouldn't be the primary point for web accessibility.

Re:Other benefits of well-designed html documents

[gl4ss]

...also mobile browsers.

decently put out websites are readable on those as well.

the funny thing about this of course is that it doesn't really take extra effort, just a bit of brains, to make the site so that it's readable on just about anything.

However...

[phraktyl]

That doesn't mean that web page designers should blatently disregard disabled users, either.

Well-designed pages, with structured CSS layouts and tags (as opposed to sites using huge layout tables, frames, or bleeding edge CSS to get browsers to do backflips) look great in most browsers (and all recent browsers), are readable in all browsers, and are easily read by text readers and other devices.

Ignore headlines

[Piquan]

In many newspapers, the headlines are written by somebody different than the story's author. The headline writer quickly skims the story, and puts down whatever he thinks will be good.

Here, that process gave us the headline: "Disabilities Act doesn't cover Web, court says" on cnet. The /. headline is essentially just a rephrasal of that: "Appeals Court Says ADA Doesn't Cover the Web".

But this isn't what happened. The cnet article starts off saying: "Acting largely on procedural grounds," indicating something rather different. The article says that the appeal was disallowed because there was a procedural error. In particular, the plantiffs used a different argument in appeallate court than they did in the district court, which is generally a no-no. So the appeallate court had no choice but to dismiss the appeal.

But it's clear that this isn't them saying that the ADA doesn't cover the web. "In declining to evaluate the merits of this case, we are in no way unmindful that the legal questions raised are significant," wrote one of the three judges. That's in the article. If you read the judgement itself, it says in the introduction, "Unfortunately, we are unable to reach the merits of this case, however, because none of the issues on appeal are properly before us. Accordingly, we are constrained to dismiss the appeal."

From reading the judgement, I get the impression that the judges are sorry they didn't get to decide the issue. It's almost apologetic in tone, and comes close to giving the plantiffs "hints" on how they might argue a similar case next time. But they're not allowed to review issues that weren't raised in the district court, unless there's a really good reason. You can read the judgement for details; it spends most of its length discussing why it can't examine this case.

The headline here is just plain wrong; the appeallate court said nothing of the kind. Don't believe headlines.