Slashdot Mirror
Website Accessibility a Legal Issue?
geekwithsoul asks: "Target is being sued because its website is not usable by the sight-impaired. While this story from the San Francisco Chronicle is from February, I've seen surprising little coverage of it in either mainstream or tech-focused media. Is the threat of legal action the only really effective way to get companies to create accessible (and thus standard-compliant) websites?"
"From the article:
'Advocates for the blind said the lawsuit is a shot across the bow for retailers, newspapers and others who have Web sites the blind cannot use. They chose Target because of its popularity and because of a large number of complaints by blind patrons.'Considering how much accessibility and standards support is available in modern web browsers (well, except for that one we all know), and a rising probability of legal exposure for sites not meeting these needs, is there really any excuse for online retailers and others to not make their websites accessible to all?"
A major problem in the accessibility of the World Wide Web lately is CAPTCHA systems that distinguish sighted humans on the one hand from bots and blind humans on the other. For instance, Slashdot itself uses a CAPTCHA. Has anybody had success in getting a Slashdot account created through the e-mail method specified in the Slashdot CAPTCHA's alt text?
Sometimes, it's just not possible at all. My boss, for example, asks - rather, demands - that our organization's website be accessible to them in Dreamweaver. The problem is this: My pages are WAI A compliant and written in XHTML 1.0 Strict, XHTML 1.1, and CSS 2.1. The moment they hit "save" with Dreamweaver, it rewrites half the damn code in the page, changing indentations, switching out tags, and often changing things that weren't really any of its concern in the first place, adding CSS classes with names like "L1" instead of "bluebox" and inserting p tags everywhere. I'm left with a Microsoft-as-Borg kind of choice: assimilate and use Dreamweaver, or be defeated.
I try to create standards compliant, accessible websites, but the boss is worried about any emergencies that might pop up and require their immediate attention. Without being able to pull away from programs that change the pages around and aren't really aware of standards, I may not be able to do it at all.
(Side note: if anyone knows how to force the 'Reaver to leave my code alone, could you reply, please?)
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
The best way to ensure accessibility is to simply use XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS. Too often these are seen as overly-complicated technologies, but how hard is it to close a tag once you open it, and why doesn't the ability to describe visual styling in one central location instead of thousands of files seem like a hassle instead of a blessing? Get O'Reilly's HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide and just see how much sense the elegant order and semantic meaningfulness of XHTML makes over prior markup solutions. Once you have a site up in XHTML 1.0 Strict, just make sure it validates with the W3C validator, and chances are, it'll already comply with Section 508.
UK and Australia have a much smaller sense of humor about non-accessible websites. Here, the only organizations with a legal obligation are state and federal ones (I know, I design websites for one).
To stay accessible, you need to ditch table-based HTML filled with JavaScript widgets and unnecessary Flash navigation. Consequently you need to explore CSS, and guess what hamstrings adoption of CSS's more advanced features?
The other issue is the crap-awful screen reader market. JAWS ignores code designed to separate out screen readers from visual browsers, Apple's technology works only with Safari, and none of these companies have been sued for not doing their job either.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Unfortunately, there's a lot of ignorance to fight. The average PHB assumes that creating a website that the blind can use is an arduous task, but this is not the case. If you build your website correctly the first time around, you essentially get accessibility for free.
If, on the other hand, your website was built by the average clueless Dreamweaver jockey, then you'll probably have to spend money retrofitting your website. But that's the clueless web developer's fault for doing it wrong in the first place. Sadly, it's in their best interests to tell the PHBs how hard it is, and the PHB's aren't qualified to know when they are being told a pack of lies.
It's only in unusual circumstances that accessibility is difficult when you include it as a requirement from the start of the project. However, typical managers go on what they've been told, and what they are told leads them to avoid accessibility unless they really need to address it. Lawsuits are a good way of getting them to address it.
Don't assume that accessibility and standards-compliance are the same thing. They are not. You can create accessible sites that don't conform to the specifications, and you can create inaccessible sites that do conform to the standards.
It's also worth pointing out that avoiding being sued isn't the sole reason to make your website accessible. It can often improve various semi-related features of your website, such as search engine rankings and usability. According to PAS 78, the accessibility guidelines published by the UK's Disability Rights Commission, Tesco and Legal & General got great returns on their investments into accessible websites.
There's more information about that last bit on Bruce Lawson's weblog. Highlight:
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
To further your analogy, this is like some company selling you a hearing aid, you take it to a Greatful Dead concert, but you still can't make out the words clearly...so you sue the band instead of the people who made the poorly performing product.
:-)
No no no, you don't understand.
This is America. You sue the band for making you need the hearing aid in the first place AND sue the hearing aid company for a poorly performing product. If you're good, you also sue the venue and the band's promoter. If you're real good, sue the city who gave them a permit to perform in the first place! After all, their loud music damages hearing (see case #1 for the precident) and thus is a known dangerous product.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I roommate of mine a few years back was working for a major bureaucracy in the public transportation sector (please forgive my being coy. Normally I'd just blurt out the name, but in this case it's not my story.) She built a web page highlighting the specific work she was doing that was part of the larger corporate website. On her own initiative, she made her site compliant to the standards that blind computer users needed. Instead of being thanked for her efforts, she was ordered by her superiors to take down her page. They feared that her compliance would highlight the non-accessibility of the rest of the web site of the organization, and they were covering their asses.
San Francisco Photographers
I know a blind guy going into computer science who thinks any blind person who doesn't have a friend who will get em past a CAPTCHA doesn't belong on said website.
Unless the blind person lives alone and the site needs a CAPTCHA for every transaction. For instance, as of the beginning of 2006, Blogger required this for every post. Some sort of landmark case of the form American Foundation for the Blind v. (some major site) might have repercussions in the field of spam prevention.
In the United States, ADA website compliance means Section 508.
n /moveitdmz_generalinformation_federalregs_ada.htm
See:
http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/
How do I know? Before the U.S. Post Office looked at our web-based secure file transfer and messaging product (MOVEit DMZ), they required us to pass this requirement.
You can see a short version of our "yes, we comply" statement online here:
https://support.standardnetworks.com/moveit/doc/e
Among the interesting bits: to meet full compliance we added an option that allows our administrators to add a "skip repetative navigation" link to the top of the page; this specifically allows audio readers to skip directly to the unique content on the page.