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Judge Rules Sites Can Be Sued Over Design
BcNexus writes "According to the Associated Press, a California judge has ruled that a lawsuit brought against the Target Corporation may proceed under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The catch here is that the suit, leveled by the National Federation of the Blind, concerns the design of Target's website. Could this set a precedent and subsequent flood of lawsuits against websites? What if another design is not tractable?" From the article: "'What this means is that any place of business that provides services, such as the opportunity to buy products on a website, is now, a place of accommodation and therefore falls under the ADA,' said Kathy Wahlbin, Mindshare's Director of User Experience and expert on accessibility. 'The good news is that being compliant is not difficult nor is it expensive. And it provides the additional benefit of making accessible web sites easier for search engines to find and prioritize.'"
This just plain scares me. In a society where a criminal can sue the homeowner of the house he broke into and got injured AND WIN. I can only see this as ending poorly for site developers. But I will hope that someone realizes how foolish this kind of lawsuit is
I often have trouble remembering which way is out of bed in the morning.
The next "target"
Not Mindshare's spin of it. Until then, we don't know enough.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I think the general idea behind their lawsuit was good -- most websites should be as accessible as possible. However, using a lawsuit to get their intended results -- I think that was a poor idea. And target is stupid for making their site unaccessible anyways.. potentially losing lots of business.
Obliterate advertising!
Bye bye roughly 90% of flash sites.
And in other news, the National Association of the Deaf is suing Apple because iPods to not adequately provide for the music needs of the non-hearing. Also, the National Association of the Mute is suing AT&T because telephones do not adequately provide for the communication needs of the non-speaking. Multimedia and communications companies have also been informed by the National Association of the Blind, Deaf, Mute, Crippled and Crazy of their intention to file a number of lawsuits.
Should they be sued because I can't use them in Firefox (or vice versa)?
I'd at least like to know what aspects of Target's web site are considered inaccessible and how the plantiff believes they could be made accessible so I can advise clients properly. Anybody know?
Not necessarily. New versions of SWF include ways to make objects accessible. But on the other hand, it could spell doom for sites that exclusively use visual CAPTCHAs.
Smaller businesses can take years to squeeze the cost of a total site re-design out of their profits. A large, sprawling site that's been growing for years may not lend itself to anything other than a major piece of work. That's not to say the business shouldn't do it for other reasons (like SEO), but if they want to alienate some customers because for them, that's less expensive than a big IT project, that should be their call. Not a lawyers. I can't believe that any business not in the mood to do this doesn't have competition that is.
Of course, I smell some consulting blood in the water, here. On the other hand, one of my customers sells eyewear for sports. Somehow I don't think that redesigning their site for the blind is going to be high on their list. The irony is, they can still get sued anyway. Brilliant.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This is not a good thing, at all. How exactly do you define a 'service'? How do you define 'accessible'? The judge should have instead called for an extension of the ADA, with explicit description of what sites it applies to and what it means to be accessible.
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
Wasn't one of the arguments against open format in MA that FOSS tools didn't provide accessibility?
How does this ruling impact the use of OSS tools to build web facilities?
I'm considering adding braille to my website and building ramps between pages for those in wheelchairs.
This is one time where I would say that reading the article is a waste of time. In fact, the article is actually an advertisement for this Minshare outfit. There are eight paragraphs in the article and five of them are about Mindshare and nothing else. Can we please find better material for the front page of slashdot?
Maybe this'll get all those so called 'web designers' to realize that there's more to web sites than making them look pretty.
Your analogy falls apart. Deaf people can tunnel text over a voice channel and have been able to do so for decades, even back when AT&T had a monopoly on telephones. It's called a teletypewriter. Nowadays there's even a relay service to translate between voice and TTY modes.
It's the same situation in the U.K. The Disability Discrimination Act specifies that any place of business must be accessible to people with disabilities (including web-sites).
I see the legislation as a "good thing", the internet is the great leveller, many people who otherwise would find it hard to make purchases or converse in real life find fewer barriers.
It goes further than just visually impaired visitors however, you have to take into account things like colour-blindness, essential tremor (so big chunky web 2.0 buttons are fine!).
All of our sites and web apps (including admin backends) have been fully DDA compliant for several years now. Being compliant makes business sense, it doesn't cost much more to build it in from the start and then you increase your potential client base - plus you get a warm fuzzy feeling when you know you're not preventing people from accessing your services.
I am NaN
So we don't die from from a disease borne from unsanitized telephones.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
For example my parents run a quit shop, not in the US so this doesn't apply, however it gets me thinking. They have a large amount of fabric online you can buy. It's just pictures and sku numbers. There's not any text descriptions. Why? Well that takes time to write, time they don't have. Their web person doesn't even keep up with the load of things to be done as it is, much less have the time to write up fabric descriptions.
So to say it "wouldn't be expensive" to do this is BS. They'd have to hire someone. That's expensive, especially considering they aren't making a profit right now. It also wouldn't be worth it, there are a whole lot of blind quilters since it is a visual medium. There's nothing stopping a blind person from doing it, of course, but it's hard to appreciate your work if you can't see it.
So ya, I'm sure the expense is minimal for large companies, but you've got to think about the small businesses too. When your entire web team is one person, and your entire staff is like 6 people, hiring another person IS expensive, really expensive.
"The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled yesterday that a retailer may be sued if its website is inaccessible to the blind."
Time to patent a Braile monitor.
Another thing to think about is how this will affect other industries... Music companies being sued for not making their music accessible to the deaf? Telephone services being sued for those who can't speak?
Where will this end?
For sale: Parachute. Used once. Never opened. Small stain.
One member of a family uses sport eyewear. Another member of the family, who holds the purse strings, is blind in one eye and legally blind in the other. One of your customers will likely lose business to a competitor whose site is more accessible to blind people.
Yahoo Finance News article has detailed information on the ruling.
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A company didn't make it's website accessable to the blind, and they're getting sued? How does that make sense? They don't HAVE to sell their products to blind people if they don't want to...
What's next, suing Target for not sending out braille catalogs?
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
having a site be accessible is easy - provide a plain text alternative. Simple.
Or is just a "developed nation" thing? There seems to be a workable lawsuit for anything that one person doesn't like about something else. To the best of my knowledge, Target doesn't have a monopoly on any essential product. Nor do they prevent anyone from coming to their store. Suing them do the design of their website for all things is ridiculous.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I've been making a huge push for standards compliance - and it looks like those of us who still fight for it might finally have their voices heard. I just finished up a design contract for a hospital, recently - one where their current (soon to be old) website was all but easily usable by the blind.
For those of you who think that the blind don't surf, they do; Do you think TTS readers are just so you can make your computer say naughty words? There are numerous blind users on the web.
While transitioning from crap to standards compliance is a pain in the butt to do, once you are there, it is usually smooth sailing (assuming you have an experienced designer do the site). I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to manage some of my current web projects while using tables for layout, and whatnot.
Now, if only IE would catch up on the standards game..
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
We are people too!
maybe the colorblind are not disabled, but, I would surely love to get some money from the websites I have been unable to read or navigate due to poor color choices!
I would think what this judge did violates the 1st Amendment.
That label shows up in the US too. I've even seen that notice at some restaurants and ice cream parlors too. It seems like people are contracting weird allergies, I mean, there's an allergy to latex such that at least some hospitals have banned deliveries of latex balloons.
Are you sure the disclaimer isn't just a CYA for those packages that contain something other than nuts?
cat
Since peanuts are legumes (members of the pea 'family' of plants) and thus not 'nuts,' perhaps they were warning the customer that since they also process and package walnuts at the same facility, there is a risk of nut content making it in with the peanuts.
You know, a lot of folks said the same thing about admitting black people into their establishment. This ruling was probably made for the same reason.
Are you saying Slashdot can sue Kuro5hin??
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
First, the inspirational quote: "The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." -- Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and Inventor of the World Wide Web
Some info for people who want to learn more:
"Website Accessibility Initiative (WAI)", published in 1999 by the "World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)".
Lighthouse.org A lot of help on designing with vision-impaired people in mind.
And finally, (Please don't slashdot this poor guy's site)... online classic stories (Twain, H.G. Wells, etc.). It's called www.readeasily.com , and was setup specifically for vision-impaired, but with such good stories that I often go there myself.
Who? Judges?
Dunno, get rid of the lot I say.
I dont read
The first problem of which is obviously "What am I going to do with all this free time I have now?", but what's the second?
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
As one of these "defective" people, I've often wondered about this myself. The end result, is that much of our survival is attributed to the same religious nutjobs that are trying to push creationism over natural selection in our schools. All human life is treated as sacred, regardless of just how far gone each particular human life is. All out of fear of judgement from a god that may not even exist beyond the human mind.
Of course, this isn't performed selflessly. Often times, these same people will try to guilt us for being an unnecessary burden on society or claim that our disability is the direct result of their god's divine punishment for sins we've committed/or are about to commit. (Such as the eventual rejection of the religion that repeatedly has shunned them in some form or another.)
The fact is, neither I, nor anyone else with a similar condition *asked* to be born as flawed beings. It was forced upon us without our consideration or consent. So when the time comes where demands payment for our survival in the form of baptism under their rules and we refuse, we're seen as embittered, ungrateful asshats for rejecting their definition of god.
And, in some sense, they're exactly right. Why should I be greatful to sadistic, omnipotent being who supposed has it within their power to prevent such severe disabilities, but chooses not to under the guise of serving some "greater purpose"? After all, I never asked for it, and no one ever consulted me ahead of time to tell me about the "fine print" in the contract of life prior to my birth.
Yeah, I'm a pessimist, and will probably end up in hell assuming this god stuff is even real. But at least I'll take with me the satisfaction of god having my blood on his hands for choosing not to do anything to help me or anyone else of my kind when he had the chance.
8==8 Bones 8==8
...but note that only the claims related to information related to the physical stores were allowed to proceed, those related to online services/information not related to the physical stores were thrown out.
And even those that were allowed forward simply allow the plaintiffs to make the case that the law was violated.
I think that it is in the best interest of a business to make themselves accessible to the widest audience possible, but it seems that the litigants want to hold the nation's businesses to standards created by the TTS industry (I'm assuming they use some variant of TTS software - I know very little about software for the blind). An international standard would be ideal, but in an age where technology changes so rapidly, it will be difficult to regulate compliance with ADA laws. If we compare this to wheelchair access ramps, we have a design that has fundamentally remained unchanged - wheels going up a ramp. It would be like requiring companies to rebuild their ramps every few years to accommodate new wheelchair designs while expecting them to maintain backwards compatibility with older models.
You know, I wouldn't have any problem with establishments not admitting black people; the same thing would happen. In cosmopolitan areas, the establishment would go out of business as people began to avoid it. In redneck areas, blacks still aren't allowed to patronise the establishment, it's just their kept out by the abuses of the other patrons rather than the policy of the storeowner.
Of course, there's also a qualitative difference. You don't need to do anything special to make your store "black-friendly". You don't need to spend money on ramps, elevators, etc. Whereas for disabled access, it imposes a financial burden on behalf of the operator.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
The versions may slip out of sync. If not, and the accessible version is usable enough, then people will start using the accessible version because accessible pages are generally more usable anyway, and all the money that the company's marketing department spends on making the eye candy version look good will be wasted. Marketing doesn't want to make itself look like a waste of money.
A starting point is Section 508 of the Rehab Act.
As for the technical assistance sites, there are just too many to list.
Anyone remember: OMG! Ponies!!!
That argument would apply to the ADA as a whole, and for me that's enough to dismiss your reasoning outright. The fact is, there are some choices business owners just shouldn't be able to make. For example, the decision to not serve hispanics, or to dump toxic waste into the sewers. The decision to not make a place of business accessible to the disabled qualifies.
Now, what constitutes 'reasonable accomodations' for website design is up for debate, but I can't imagine that they'd have had a problem if they'd followed the w3c guidelines.
Target? I love that you're not Wal-Mart and everything, but please just stop fighting this and add the damned alt tags.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Because other Americans really love to ignore the law.
Because Target may be the only brick-and-mortar store of its kind in town. A lot of click-and-mortar retailers, such as Best Buy, allow customers to order goods online and pick them up in the store.
Worse, what happens when it's not Target but instead a monopoly or near-monopoly? For instance, what competitor is there to a given public utility such as electric power, natural gas, water, or mail delivery? In residential high-speed Internet access, what competitor is there to the cable company and phone company?
I can understand when government has to be accessible, because people with disabilities pay taxes too, and the government is responsible for all its citizens, not just the ones with disabilities. However, when it comes to private enterprise, I believe it should be up to the business whether or not they want to provideo services to those with disabilities, especially when it comes at an increased cost. Should world of telescopes be required to ensure their services are open to the blind? Should the running equipment store have to ensure that their store is wheelchair accessible? Should the music store have to contain written lyrics of all their albums for sale? I think that businesses should do what they can for those with disabilities, however, they shouldn't be forced into it. There's businesses where it really isn't worth it for them to make their services accessible to all. As easy as it might be to follow ADA guidelines and make an accessible site, it's hard to find developers who know how to make the site accessible, rather than just getting VS.Net to generate all their HTML for them.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Can you sue over designs that are so obnoxious they cause you to go blind?
I'd rather have no alt-text then the alternative:
..."
"target-dot-com. image: transparent-dot-gif, placeholder. image: transparent-dot-gif, placeholder. store directory. image: transparent-dot-gif, placeholder. welcome to target-dot-com. image: transparent-dot-gif, placeholder. link: household. image: transparent-dot-gif, placeholder. image: transparent-dot-gif, placeholder. link: gardening supplies
<sarcasm> If you can't think of a good alt attribute value for a page's most important images, just set it to "(Security Code)", and you'll be set. </sarcasm>
(Nit: alt is an attribute not a tag or element, and its value is a replacement not a caption.)
Should people have a RIGHT to minimum wage or decent working conditions? Workers can always choose to work for a different company, or not work at all
Should people have a RIGHT to not have their medical records released to everybody? We can always choose to not use a health care provider that doesn't protect privacy.
Protection laws such as minimum wage or ADA were enacted to address the gaps between social responsibility and the free market.
Just look at the Interstate Commerce clause in the Constitution.
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I see this as a good thing as long as it doesn't get carried away.
Companies that are building new websites or redesigning old ones should be standards compliant. There is no excuse not to be if you are already hiring someone to do the work as doing so improves the site in general as well as for people with a disability.
I would be concerned if websites of companies that were built before good standards came about were targeted for legal action. We are still in a time of transition of web design (a longer transition then needed thanks to IE) and I think companies with old sites should have a fair grace period to update.
Here's what I think should happen:
I think the real contention is in the definition of 'places of public accommodation.' Does this include the internet? What about a customer service call center for ordering from a catalog? I'm not a lawyer, and I can't decipher the letter of the law, but I think the spirit of it is fairly evident:
If we accept that a web site falls under the definition as a place of public accommodation (though I'm not sure I do, just yet), then we must treat such offenses as we would any other under the ADA.Perhaps people should look at how this has been handled here in Australia. The definitive court case here was in 1996, where a website's owners were charged under the Federal Anti-Discrimination Act. The finding was that websites must include means for visually impaired people to access information and navigate within a site, unless it can be argued that it is unreasonable to expect that a person with those disabilities would not seek to access that site.
So a web site guide to microscopy would not be required to provide access and navigation for the blind, but almost any retail or public sector sites do. The guidelines are pretty simple - use ALT tags for images that are navigation elements, provide html alternatives for flash video (when it's essential for navigation, or "essential content", plus a few other sensible rules, that would be followed by most devs with good taste and sense anyway.
Charges are brought by the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner in response to compliants by consumers. The Commissioner usually informs the owner of the infringing site and allows a chance to remedy the defects before charges are laid. The fines can be in excess of $100,000AUD for Corporations under the Act.
Zow..... Sorry for whomever tried to force you to do whatever. Unless you were just bitter to start with, that ain't the way the God I know works. But this is neither the time nor the place.
My brain is overly lubricated
but if they want to alienate some customers because for them, that's less expensive than a big IT project, that should be their call. Not a lawyers. I can't believe that any business not in the mood to do this doesn't have competition that is.
So, the rule of thumb is: If a business doesn't give a crap about alienating a customer, that's their right?
Ergo, if the disabled can't use a site, the business has the right to alienate them if they want to.
How about say wheelchair access to their brick and mortar site? If a business doesn't give a crap about disabled people, they shouldn't have to worry about disabled access and should have every right to exclude them and lose their business?
Hell, why worry about physical infirmities. If Capt'n Kracker's Army Surplus store doesn't like those damn darkies, towel heads and jews, why shouldn't be allowed to refuse them business? In a free market, they can take their business elsewhere and all he does is harm himself.
And the golf club. If they dislike negroes and women at some of the best golf clubs in the country, that should be there right. After all, if they think they can cater better to rich bigots and make more money that way, shouldn't they have the right to refuse membership to undersirables who, a free market states, can go elsewhere and support other businesses?
Then, finally, there's the Montgomery bus service. If they think black women should give up their seats for white people, they should damned well be allowed to do it. The uppity black woman should go find another bus service, start her own, walk, buy a car or any of plenty of other options. There's absolutely no reason to let something like that inspire any kind of law changing.
Every one of those situations has argued the "free market" line. In just about all of them, the United States has ultimately said we'd rather not permit exclusion, even at the cost to free market ideals.
Sure, you can decide to draw a line. You can state that "Well, the south's the south. Government shouldn't interfere." and draw the line just before black people on buses. You can state that "Golf clubs are private institutions" and draw the line just before forcing them to be open. You can state that "Stores shouldn't be forced to remodel" and draw it just before adding disabled access. And you can state "Websites shouldn't be forced to be inclusive either" and draw the line there.
The thing is, whilst people may get outraged at the time, the fact that the U.S. tends not to accept drawing that line (albeit after painful wrangling each time) is one of the things most Americans are most proud of.
The ADA has provisions written in about relative cost, about size of business affected, about reduced compliance for expensive retrofitting vs. building inclusively when new projects come up. The cost generally isn't anywhere near as bad as initial kneejerk fears tend to tout and the ultimate benefit, for the kind of nation it helps promote, is what ultimately makes most Americans damned proud.
That's not so hard. Braille displays translate the text on a page into raised pins on the display's face. To accommodate braille displays, make sure that every important non-textual cue has a text equivalent. The first step is to put a meaningful alt attribute on each img element.
Also not hard. The counterpart to stairs on web pages is links that require script, such as a lot of pop-up and pull-down menus within pages. For a list of links, an HTML list (ul or ol), each of which contains an item (li) containing one link (a), is more accessible than a select element that causes a script to execute onchange.
"According to the Associated Press, a California judge has ruled...." hehehe.... just about says it all. :)
-- Zieggenfus
Just a few years ago, a federal judge ruled that the ADA only applies to physical spaces. From the article:
In the first case of its kind, U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz said the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies only to physical spaces, such as restaurants and movie theaters, and not to the Internet.
"To expand the ADA to cover 'virtual' spaces would be to create new rights without well-defined standards," Seitz wrote in a 12-page opinion dismissing the case. "The plain and unambiguous language of the statute and relevant regulations does not include Internet Web sites."
Since you now have a couple of federal judges in different districts disagreeing with each other, the Supreme Court may ultimately decide this one.
I used to advise a major university on ADA and Rehabilitation Act issues, including issues related to web compliance under section 508 of the Rehab Act. It does not surprise me at all that Target was held responsible to make its website compliant with the ADA. This was far from the first lawsuit involving compliance with the ADA or otherwise trying to force web entities to make their websites accessible to the disabled. In fact, I did a paper for the National Association of College and University Attorneys back in 2000 that relied on a Slashdot article:
"The overall design of web sites can have a tremendous effect on their accessibility for persons with disabilities. Because the internet is predominantly a visual medium, it should be no surprise that accommodations may be needed for the blind. However, proper design of a web page can also accommodate the needs of persons who have mobility impairments or learning disabilities, or are deaf.
Guides for making the web accessible recommend the use of standard hypertext markup language (html) or, if appropriate, the new extensible hypertext markup language (xml or xhtml). (Html is the standard coding language that tells a web browser what to display on a computer screen; xml is the name for the most modern version of the coding language.) Cutting edge html can pose problems because specialized software for the disabled, such as reading software for the blind, may be unable to understand it. Also, in general a simple layout is better. Frames and tables, for example, can cause problems with reading software because that software reads from left to right, ignoring the layout of a page. The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) recently sued AOL because AOL's software allegedly does not work with reading software. A copy of the complaint is attached and can also be found at http://www.nfb.org/aolcompl.htm. Curtis Chung, the NFB's Director of Technology, answered questions about the suit at http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/09/1342224.shtm l. Mr. Chung said:
'. . . the quarrel we have with America Online has to do with the accessibility of the software we *MUST* *RUN* in the Windows environment in order to use any AOL service. This is *NOT* related directly to any question of accessibility to web pages. To put it simply, the AOL software, all versions, behaves in such a way as to make it difficult if not impossible for screen access programs for the blind to understand what is being displayed on the screen. What we are asking for is to have AOL software that works well with screen access software for the blind.'
The choice of colors and typefaces, and the layout of the page, can affect the ease of reading for persons with learning disabilities, particularly those with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. Consistent style and navigation design from page to page also helps those with learning disabilities. Sites designed for ease of navigation and with large hotlinks can accommodate the needs of persons with mobility impairments, who may have difficulty controlling a mouse. Keeping pages short means that reading software does not have to read a long page before the listener can click to something else. Reading software also may have difficulty with symbols and graphs, such as those used in math and science classes. Persons who are colorblind can have difficulty if the web site relies on color for navigation.
The technology selected to deliver the course content also can affect the disabled. For example, streamed audio or video is not accessible to persons with hearing or vision disabilities. An institution's duty to accommodate does not force the course designer necessarily to eschew these technologies, but it will require the institution to give thought to alternate means of providing the course content. For example, a course that uses streaming audio lectures will be accessible to a deaf student if a
Zow..... Sorry for whomever tried to force you to do whatever. Unless you were just bitter to start with, that ain't the way the God I know works
Yeah... unfortunately, the version of god I was raised under is considered infallible. If that is the true nature of god, then the logical conclusion is that all human suffering is intentional by design.
Considering how many atrocities were committed by god as defined throughout the old testament, it's kind of hard not to view him as a sadist.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Also have a disability and used to be a ex-social worker. And I think its about damn time for this ruling--its been long overdue.
And this court also restricted the claims allowed to go forward to those advancing the claim that the site design impacted the accessibility of physical spaces (the Target stores), so there is no disagreement here.
What does this mean for all of the "mom and pop" websites out there that are non-ADA compliant?
Will we suddenly have thousands of little lawsuits against "Henry's Landscaping" because he used Publisher to make his website?
I could see a lawyer cleaning up on this, just hunting around for businesses without compliant websites and finding a blind person to represent. Didn't that happen with wheelchair / ramp access?
-David
The requirement is reasonable accomodation, businesses can apply for a compliance waiver if they feel if the requirements are impractical.
Yes, a blind person can hook the telescope up to a computer or figure out some way to make the telescope useful.
Yes, there is running equipment that would be useful for somebody in a wheelchair (weights, sweats). Also, the disabled person may intend to purchase items for somebody else
No, the ADA only addresses accessability, not require businesses sell products for the disabled
The problem is that if it isn't required, it won't be done.
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Putting their best spin on recent web news, Microsoft spokesvole Andy Nonymous told reporters gathered at a press conference about M$'s radical new Interweb.
"For years we've been telling the free software terrorists that they were bad for business and their work was hurting disabled people and killing puppies, this drives the point home."
"We stood silent as Sendmail replaced the far more disable friendly US Post Office, but formulated a plan." At this he cackled like a fiend. "We made M$ Word the default editor for email, though most people rejected this. It really hurt us to see the demise of 3m word attachments as a means of conveying 1k of text."
"As Apache on Linux took over the world wide web, we were stunned and shaken that people who wanted to stay in business avoided our IIS unless we paid them to use it."
"It was in Mass. that we finally realized that our email strategy right all along. M$ Word is the only blind free format in existence and we are now pressing for it's use as a standard for all interweb pages! This is indeed the cheap and easy solution the good people at Mindcraft are talking about. Victory at last."
A stunned silence settled on the conference. One or two hands came up but and Nonymous nodded off stage.
A huge, sweaty, bald man with a chair then danced onto the stage carrying a $2,000, 75lb office chair raised over his head. "Any questions?" he asked through a truly demented grin. And there were none. He had fucking killed them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A lot of disabilities have already been thought of. If your site works in Lynx, then existing assistive input and output devices can probably handle it. As for people with less common disabilities, groups representing such people are more likely to try to contact the web team to resolve issues amicably than to sue first and ask questions later.
A lot of engineers look to science fiction for inspiration. For example, the character Dust Puppy from the comic strip User Friendly is in shape a head with two feet attached at the neck. He has no problem playing first-person shooters by operating the mouse with his feet. In this world, there are the NoHands Mouse and keypress pedals.
There are PS/2 mouse filters to smooth out Parkinsonian tremors. But if basic interactions on your web site require the use of a context menu and cannot be performed with the keyboard, then your site may already be broken.
If the Society for the Blind is serious about access, not just their share of "damage awards", they'll offer a free toolkit that presents a crappy, but legally compliant, ecommerce system. Then instead of sites getting sued, they can get sent free software. Hosting the system would really make sense. And funding it with whatever ADA funding and damages they get would make it all make sense.
That setup would be inclusive. It would not only make a bigger percentage of sites accessible to the blind, but also just a lot more sites. With fewer hassles.
Of course the same goes for all the other organizations that represent disabled people. And remember, short of telepathy, we're all at least somewhat disabled when interfacing with computers/networks. And disabled people are enabled. We've got a lot to learn from each other. If we don't just sue each other into oblivion first.
--
make install -not war
I suggest getting hold of Mark Twain's "Letters From the Earth". It will put a smile on your face.
I would agree with you about private enterprise, until you realize the market for disabled people is so exceedingly low that you would be *extremely* hard pressed to find a company that would be able to cater to those with disabilities. In effect, you are taking a (small) segment of society and segregating them to a degree that makes the civil rights movement in the '60's look like a bunch of whiners without a cause.
Honestly, if you're going to do that to disabled people, you may as well take them out back and shoot them, or, less dramatically, forcibly move them all into the exact same location so it would make sense for a "specialty" store to be able to cater to their various needs and still expect a profit. I'm pretty sure neither of those would be constitutionally allowable (and for good reason).
Exactly! That's why racial discrimination in commerce spontaneously disappeared right after the Civil War.
Oh, wait...
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Ah, yes. The "commerce clause." The clause that magically allows the federal government to ignore all of the other restrictions placed on it by the Constitution.
And, no, the alleged rights you mentioned don't exist, either. They're figments of the socialist imagination made possible by lying about what the U.S. Constitution actually says and clearly intends. When people such as FDR and his friends wanted to change the rules by which the republic was governed, they didn't bother with little things such as legality -- and we're still dealing with the ever-increasing consequences.
David
2. All web sites must provide forblind.html (or whatever is chosen as the standard) to comply with ADA.
3. And the forblind.html will read out:
Press or say 1 if you want to listen to the web site
Por Espanol reinterpret_cast[spanish](press 2)
Press 2 if you wish to throttle the person who designed this idiotic phone menu
Press 3 if you wish to throttle Alexander Graham Bell.
Your visit is important to us. For quality improvement purposes (ha, ha, got you there) we might hang up on you any time.
Start elevator music.
4. FireFox will come up with an extension to automagically append forblind.html to all urls.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The problem is that if it isn't required, it won't be done.
That's kind of a cop out. Most stores don't sell stuff that's made for left handed people. However there's stores that have realized this and decided to sell only left handed stuff, and they make pretty good money at it. In the same way, if businesses weren't forced to be accessible, I believe that there would be more businesses specifically catering to people with disabilities. And they'd probably get better service from those stores specifically catering to their needs, rather than just regular businesses just following the minimum standards to comply with the law.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Would you say that to someone who fell and is paralyzed as a result of a severed spinal cord?
And, FYI, I was injured at a former employers and can no longer work!
STFU!
I sympathise with what you say, and on a simple capitalist level it makes perfect sense. But there's an important issue of scale. Compared with how many users overall use a site like target.com I imagine the percentage who would require special consideration in the design is pretty tiny. So in reality the site operators would lose money - but not much - probably less than it would cost to do a redesign. This isn't like allowing black people in your store because that's a much larger population and therefore a much larger economic incentive.
But if every site chose to do nothing (and why would they - it's not a big enough market to care about) you'd end up with disabled people having few if any choices for online shopping - which in many cases is probably a lot more convenient/possible for them than visiting B&M stores.
So whilst the stores have saved a few dollars, a good number of people have had their lives significantly inconvenienced. In a purely capitalist dog-eat-dog world we'd not care, but I like to think that the fact we do care is what makes us a little more human - concern for our fellow man and all that. The cost to the bottom lines of the big corps is tiny, the impact it will have on people's lives much larger.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
If you use semantic markup, and you make a CSS available that uses lightness contrasts along with bold, underline, and italic to convey this semantic markup, you can still introduce some variety into a site without interfering with color-blind users. You can test your color choices by fiddling with your monitor's color calibration. Simulate protanopia by turning red all the way down; simulate deuteranopia by turning green all the way down.
This wasn't a decision that websites have to be "accessable". The judge just refused to dismiss the suit in the preliminary stages. The judge also refused to compel Target to make the site "accessable" during the litigation. So this just means that there's enough of a question to proceed to trial. It's not a "decision". Computerworld has a better story on this.
The only store in town is by definition the only store whose web site can offer in-store pickup of purchased goods in town. This is important for larger goods where asking a family member with a truck to carry it home from the store is an order of magnitude cheaper than paying UPS or FedEx to ship it to the customer's doorstep.
No, they weren't.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Yeah... unfortunately, the version of god I was raised under is considered infallible. If that is the true nature of god, then the logical conclusion is that all human suffering is intentional by design."
Theistic DRM! Haha- oh, I feel kind of bad for that joke now.
Whoo, signature!
DesireCampbell.com
...to purchase your products, but it's also good service to have plenty of friendly cashiers at the counter. Should the government mandate that as well? When government tells private business how to operate, you can guarantee that businesses will do the minimum necessary to comply. Sometimes this is necessary with regards to fair trade and product safety, but it is *not* necessary in this case.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Likewise, <sarcasm> that should be the company's business decision to go after the African-descent community or to disregard it - it should not be required by law. </sarcasm>
But if there are three businesses that sell a given good or service, and none of them finds it profitable to serve people with disabilities, then what happens?
Likewise, <sarcasm> even if they could gain money from making their services available to people of African descent, it should still be their own choice. </sarcasm> Would you support Jim Crow style segregation using this sort of language?
Because the situation today is the same as that of 100 years ago? The majority of people think racism is bad. They would not shop anywhere that practiced it.
These regulations wouldn't have affected that situation, anyway. Jerks will be jerks, no matter what the law says.
Regardless, I appreciate your response. This is contrary to my feelings about people who disagree with me modding me down. Oh, well.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
If I had something that dumb to say, I'd post as an AC, too.
Since you're (apparently) claiming that such rights exist, it's incumbent on you to show where or why they exist. It's not up to me to prove the negative. On what basis would you make the claim that such rights exist? Natural law? Constitutional law? Where else? Or are you just pulling it out of the air because it sounds nice?
David
You mean a boycott? I remember when advocating an economic boycott because a business wouldn't cater to blacks was illegal, and those people got arrested. I mean I personally remember it as an old civil rights worker would remember it. I remember seeing a sign at a city boundary, welcome to xxxxville, with the signs -> kiwanis, moose, elks, no niggers allowed. Yes. for real,. saw that. That's what happens once you go that "who cares it's my business" way. In your private life, if all you want to do is hang out with left handed lutheran latvians-go ahead. If you operate a public business-be prepared to be open to the public-to people, any old people. On the web, off the web, it doesn't matter. We've already tried the other way and it didn't work *so bad* that we explicitly made some more detailed laws about it.
We have governments to level the playing field and make things a little fairer over all. Just some, because it works. Not doing it leads to..well..warlords and the middle ages scene again. Eventually anyway. One step leads to another to another to another, until you got total separation and a lot of conflicts. Don't know about you but I sure would like less conflicts. Just seems nicer.
I've heard the same complaints about human rights being "enforced" since..well a long time ago now. None of it panned out, once laws were in place,and enforced, society adapted at least enough to get on with life a little better. Believe me, you don't want to live in a society with a lot of hate and mistrust and schisms in business and local government, etc, it just sucks man, it sucks. It's hideous middle ages nasty mega suckitude. Been there, done that, breathed the gas and dodged the clubs and stupid police dogs. Kinda lucked out there, lot of my friends didn't. Civil rights-human rights-it's all tied together. Just like free speech, free speech means nothing unless you are just as passionate about it for the dude who's ideas you hate as you are for your own speech.
This disabilities act/idea/goal with the web pages is a reasonably good idea, and ya, some places will have to suck it up and code something a little simpler so that more people can navigate and use the site-so what? What's wrong with that really? We are gradually getting away from that "IE" only BS as well-double plus good. It also helps makes sites faster for those still stuck on dialup, still millions and millions of people. Alt text for images? Why is that hard or wrong? Having some regular links instead of Flash links? That's a *good* idea.
When I go to some store, and go to park the car, I can see special handicapped parking places near the door. Am I pissed about it? That I can't park there, that I have to walk further than that, that maybe what I pay for something inside is some tiny bit more expensive because they had to make a few special parking spaces? Absolutely not! If I choose I can go park at the farthest away slot and calmly walk into the store. There's folks out there would pay a million cash if they could do that-but they can't, and no amount of money would help them do that. At least getting closer to the door helps the situation-it's a compromise. This is a similar deal with the websites-it's just a human and humane and civilly cool thing to do.
If we do care, which I feel that we do, people will not shop at places that are not accessible to the disabled. It is ridiculous for people who are unwilling to do that to have a "representative" government which bosses companies around into making their stores accessible.
At most, the government should put Target on a publicly viewable "bad list", though even that could lead to corruption, and will be done by a caring private group anyway.
Make no mistake, I think that Target should fix this, if it is a serious problem. But they shouldn't be forced to.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Because of intolerant bigots and other ignorant people who, either actively or passively, deny access to others based on their skewed perspective of what 'normal' is. And because this nation decided that human rights matter, even when it costs more to respect them.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Of course not. The idea that people should have a right to a wage greater than the value of their labour is one the most absurd theories out there.
Telling people how to build websites, or ramps for entrances, goes well beyond "regulating interstate commerce" and well into the "powers not enumerated" which are reserved for the states and the people.
I would only consider public property to be "public accommodation", and I can't find a problem with that having to be accessible.
The law does mention "commercial facilities", though.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Some people with disabilities are on a fixed income and can't afford to constantly upgrade all the crap necessary to run MS, so many do use open-source software for as it is more secure. And when a site can only be acessed by IE...well, that sounds like its another one for the courts. Think a lawyer would have a better answer than mine.
This is an existing racket which has just been ported to the web.
k edown.htmlc le.html?storyid=5543
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_ada_sha
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/articles/arti
http://blog.mises.org/archives/001453.asp
Question of the week, why the fuck is the outdoor DRIVE UP atm the one with braille on it? Why not the one in the bank?
However, according to an article I just googled, there are quite a few disable people. 18% of Americans have disabilities and 12% of Americans have severe disabilities. So while you're probably going to turn this around on me to say that it represents a very large percentage of the population and therefore, businesses should be forced to comply, it shows that there are enough people, that even without laws stating that you must comply, and even with businesses that will not comply, that some (and many) businesses will find it worth their while and extremely beneficial to support this segment of society. I don't think that this should be something that has to be legislated in, or something that businesses are fined for. If a business doesn't want to go through extra work to attract a certain part of society, then that should be their own choice. However, there will always be businesses that do find it worth their while. Wouldn't you be a little angry if you spent $5000 putting in a ramp and didn't have a single person use it?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
While I don't disagree with you, left-handedness and blindness are pretty different things. Aside from golf clubs, scissors and some computer mice, how many items are hand-specific? Not too many. On the other hand, how many things require to use one or more of your senses to function properly? Just about everything that's not food.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Comparing the US to Europe is apples and oranges, a better measure is comparing unemployment rates within the US with State minimum wages. States with higher minimum wages don't necessarily have higher unemployment rates.
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That's non-discrimination laws for you. It doesn't matter that you will take the loss of potential customers if they can't find their way around you site. It doesn't matter if you don't want to sell to whites/blacks. It doesn't matter if you can't afford to widen all your doorways and build ramps etc. The fact is, we no longer have the right to own property in this nation. We can't even do buisness in "residental districts". The more you look around, the more you realise, we are extreme-socialists, and are losing our rights daily.
Maybe it is time for new browsers to be made for people with disabilities. A 'blind browser' that interprets the content of a webpage and translates to a specified output device. A blind person would be able to maintain their own equipment (don't the rest of us do this anyway) and the thousands (if not millions) of online businesses don't have to spend a fortune, constantly accommodating 100% of the surfing population. A possible problem is that the source for flash may have to be released so the browsers may interpret. Similar could work for the deaf, dumb, etc.
.
In my experience, usually all ATMs have braille, not only the outdoor ones, and plenty of people either walk up to drive-up ATMs, and they are of course just as usable from the rear left-hand seat as the front left-hand seat, so while it makes a good line for a standup comedian, there is nothing really wrong with drive-up ATMs having braille.
You mean a boycott? I remember when advocating an economic boycott because a business wouldn't cater to blacks was illegal, and those people got arrested. I mean I personally remember it as an old civil rights worker would remember it. I remember seeing a sign at a city boundary, welcome to xxxxville, with the signs -> kiwanis, moose, elks, no niggers allowed. Yes. for real,. saw that. That's what happens once you go that "who cares it's my business" way.
Which is absolutely irrelevant to the point at hand; I wasn't advocating discrimination by the government (arresting people who suggest boycotts, forbidding blacks from the town limits). That's not an outgrowth of "who cares it's my business", that's an outgrowth of government-endorsed racism, which is pretty much gone now (government-endorsed racism, not racism in general).
In your private life, if all you want to do is hang out with left handed lutheran latvians-go ahead. If you operate a public business-be prepared to be open to the public-to people, any old people.
So once you open a storefront, your property should become public property? You shouldn't have the right not to serve anyone in particular, simply because you don't like the look of them? I know over here, petrol station attendants are particularly told not to serve anyone they think looks suspicious after about 10 at night because of the risk of robbery. Do you think that should be disallowed, because it discriminates against people with squinty eyes and a sour mouth? Or even because it discriminates against black people, in that the attendant is more likely to think of a black person as suspicious?
When I go to some store, and go to park the car, I can see special handicapped parking places near the door. Am I pissed about it? That I can't park there, that I have to walk further than that, that maybe what I pay for something inside is some tiny bit more expensive because they had to make a few special parking spaces?
Really, it's nothing to do with you as a non-disabled customer. It's between the business owner, and the disabled customer. This is (AFAIK) an unregulated area that has been addressed by the market. Businesses want the custom of the disabled and elderly, so they make special provisions for them. A more apt question would be, do you think all businesses should be forced to have a certain proportion of their car spaces reserved for disabled people? I'm all for businesses being disabled-friendly. I'm not for all businesses being compelled to be disabled-friendly, especially when that entails a financial burden on the business owner.
This is a similar deal with the websites-it's just a human and humane and civilly cool thing to do.
I agree. It is civil and humane. But not doing it shouldn't be illegal, especially when people have already invested thousands of dollars developing something which, at the time, was not known to be illegal. The judge's interpretation of this law, even if valid, is far from obvious. Because of that, it means that businesses that created websites they believed to be fully legal, are now suddenly liable unless they invest thousands of dollars to correct the problem. The judge's interpretation of the law (intended for physical premesis) has essentially created a new law for websites (because nobody else interpreted the law that way, and it wasn't made clear in the text of the law). However, unlike a new law, which would only be valid against offences committed after it has passed, a re-interpretation of an old law means that people who created inaccessible sites before it was known to be illegal are now liable. It's like waiting for someone to spit on the street, then creating a law imposing a $10,000 fine for spitting on the street and charging them with it.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
A blind person can easily surf the web with the aid of a non blind person. I'd say just give us the user agent of whatever browser blind people are using and we can redirect them to a purely text page that says this page is not designed for blind people.
Your assumption that a website is visual, is shortsighted.
Read this comment. The author is right on the money.
lifetime appointment judges
This is an entirely different topic, though I totally agree with you.
http://slashdot.org/~tf23/journal
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
...to realise that the us-american court system is flawed by design.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
I think the key difference is accessability vs. product. Lefthanded stores are selling a product to exploit a market, just as there are stores that sell equipment for disabled people. Disabled people need many of the same products non-disabled people need, the problem lies in not being able to get those products. Niche stores could work, then again, there is no certainty they would show up, which would mean serious gaps in service.
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Kitchen knives (knives are only sharpened on one side.. a lot of righties don't realize this...). Potato peelers. Doors. Just about any exhibition (my instinct is to go anticlockwise and they're always laid out clockwise.. I've done a lot of them backwards!). Laptops (why is the power button always on the right? Not to mention the CDROM drive.. it's a bitch to get CDs out sometimes..) etc. My printer has its controls on the right (OTOH I compensate as all my hardware is on my left where I can easily reach it). We live in a right handed world.
All minor inconveniences compared to a real disability like blindness I guess but it does give a perspective.. imagine being left handed but instead of invonveniences like spilling your tea on the keyboard because you had to reach across to find the cdrom eject button you have major road blocks to normal life simply because some bozo thought that everyone was the same and couldn't be arsed writing a decent website.
It is not as easy as you think.
I am a team lead for two web based products used by the US Government, which means they must be Section 508 compliant.
It is very very expensive and time consuming to make a website S.508 compliant. S.508 sites are plain and simple because in order to be compliant, you cannot take advantage of most of the DHTML and interactive content used on websites today. As a result, companies that want a slick website that is accessible tend to make two websites, one for disabled people and one for everyone else.
-Dan
I see a lot of comments lambasting the lawsuit, but I have to say I don't see the problem.
Making a site 508 compliant is not really all that hard and it essentially consists of making sure your site validates as XHTML 1.0 (preferably 1.0 Strict) or even better, XHTML 1.1. Do that and you are about 90% of the way there. The rest consists of actually knowing html and using it correctly. Learn to use labels, fieldsets, and other html elements that have been largely ignored, despite being quite useful. Actually use the alt tags for images of consequence. In other words, if you've designed a site that complies with web standards, you have little to worry about with this lawsuit. If you haven't, then now you know why we have and push standards. Consider it a lesson learned and move forward a wiser developer.
The only downside to writing a site to be 508 compliant is that AJAX must be used carefully. Screen readers still don't detect client-side content changes well, so client-side dynamic content is slightly more limited, requiring a few more postbacks that you would normally use. But if you know what you are doing, those sorts of "intrusions" to your normal programming work are almost inconsequential. One caveat: Don't trust that Visual Studio 2005 and IIS will give you compliant code, even if they say they will. They won't.
You need to know a little something about real web development but the end your site will be better, cleaner, and more easily maintainable. I've done it. It's ain't that hard.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
I'm sorry that you have a disability, but I don't think every business on the web needs to cater to you.
What's next? Suing book publishers for not providing braille versions of books? Suing TV stations for not having closed captioning for every single show? Suing shoe stores because amputees have to buy both shoes and not just the one they need?
Business that choose not to cater to those with disabilities will pay by bad PR and reduced patronage by disabled persons. The courts do not need to be involved.
-Dan
There is a big difference between barring black people by just not letting them in (which would require no extra money) and not making your website easily assesible to everyone on the planet. If the disabled person can't access your website but still could come to your physical store then I see no harm done. They can still access your goods, so that is all that should matter.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
Post the sign on the front of the web page.
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone we so choose to.
There - that covers any and every accessibility issue.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
In the April 1999 JACI (Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology) estimated that 1% of the population, or close to 3 million Americans, is allergic to peanuts or tree nuts.
So it is pretty common. And this allergy can be very serious. Google for "anaphylactic shock." It is a get-to-the-hospital-in-30-minutes or die situation. Those warnings save lives.
Taking some time, I read the ruling, and for a large site such as Target, they deserved it. First the DRA (Disabily Rights Activist) tried to reason with Target, which in return Target dismissed them. From the ruling:
The plaintiffs originally filed the complaint in Alameda superior court on February 7, 2006. The case was removed to federal district court and assigned to Judge Marilyn Hall Patel. Target responded to the suit by filing a motion to dismiss the case, which argued in part that no civil rights laws apply to the Internet.
"We tried to convince Target that it should do the right thing and make its website accessible through negotiations," said Dr. Maurer. "It is unfortunate that Target took the position that it does not have to take the rights of the blind into account. The ruling in this case puts Target and other companies on notice that the blind cannot be treated like second class citizens on the Internet or in any other sphere."
Another interesting note is that if you are blind, you can't access the site at all, well some, but you would not even be able to purchase anything. From the ruling again:
The plaintiffs originally filed the complaint in Alameda superior court on February 7, 2006. The case was removed to federal district court and assigned to Judge Marilyn Hall Patel. Target responded to the suit by filing a motion to dismiss the case, which argued in part that no civil rights laws apply to the Internet.
"We tried to convince Target that it should do the right thing and make its website accessible through negotiations," said Dr. Maurer. "It is unfortunate that Target took the position that it does not have to take the rights of the blind into account. The ruling in this case puts Target and other companies on notice that the blind cannot be treated like second class citizens on the Internet or in any other sphere."
Target is a big company, and therefore has a responibilty to all demographics, even the disabled. Making a site compliant is not very difficult, in fact a big part is just making ure there is a text only alternative to images, and to use text as much as possible. This does no require a complete site redesign, only some minor tweaking, unless it is flash based,even then there are work-arounds. Not every site will be sued, only those that chose to deny those unable to access there site due to disabilities.
And yeh thats it
If they all have braile, why do they all not have text to speech? I've never been to an ATM where it told me what was going on.
Why must we have these ridiculous laws?
I see you are here representing the Executive Branch of our government. Welcome to Slashdot!
You do know that there are people who sometimes walk from place to place, right?
(IANAL)
How do you define 'accessible'.
Section 508 is what the US Government has to define "accessible" for their own stuff. They have an entire website dedicated to helping application designers meet the requirements. Here it is http://www.section508.gov/. While IANAL, I would guess that if you followed these guidelines, then you would be able to say that you made a bona fide effort and would be immune to lawsuites. If you are designing for the government (either web-apps or compiled desktop apps), then you are already required to follow these requirements (it should be in the contract).
Um.. they both have braille. Why bother making an entirely different set of buttons just for drive-through ATMs?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Except for the fact that they won't know how/when the questions appear on the screen... At least they'll know the options FOR the questions...
If you're going to be elitist, it would help to be elite.
In a way it is, in another it isn't. We've had anti dscrimination laws on the books for awhile now here, discrimination against handicapped people is one of them, I see no reason to give websites slack thinking they could get away with blatantly not caring and being discriminatory if they are open to the public. If you want a closed site, invite only, pass protected-who cares then, your business, go for it, code however you want it. Open to the public, different story, alter your code a scosh to make it more accessible..
And yes, some places have had to alter practices before, and it cost them time and money, in fact, it usually does everytime alaw gets passed or enforced. This isn't new at all, not even close to new, it's how laws evolve all the time. It happens in a lot of businesses. Look at electrical generation. Years ago, public utilities made regular coal plants, bun coal, generate electricity with steam boilers and turbines, thick black smoke goesd off into the sky, shareholders make "profit", customers get electricity-but everyone got to breathe some rather toxic stuff.. Then it was determined that just allowing unrestricted emissions was a bad idea. Those plants now have to start to install scrubbers, etc at their expense and tough noogies because it is in the general public interesdt to dfo so.. It was legal then to operate the plant as it stood, but later they had to modify what they were doing. So how again is this website case different? It's not near as I can see, same general idea, law says such and such is a better idea and in the general public better interest. suck it up. What you are saying, if I am reading this right, is you think because the coal plant wasn't built with the scrubbers in the first place, and they don't want them, and it was legal back then, that now they shouldn't be required to change/alter what they do, even if society and laws determine that it is in the public good -which is all a law really is anyway, codfiying some alleged public do or don't do? they can just keep their old design forever? Here's another example- It used to be legal to sell cars without seatbelts-now they are mandatory for all new cars sold, and even a much older car, if driven on the street, needs to add the belts-at the owner's expense. And so on, there are any number of laws like that currently being enforced, so I don't think this is any new style of precedent.
Guess we'll have to agree to disagree, I don't have a problem with making them change based on new laws, especially when they make sense like that. some I do some I don't, in this instance I don't have a problem with it. Sometimes we re-think things and change our minds, and our government and society and laws change to reflect these new thoughts. Some times it costs you money, other times you wind up making money from it, sometimes it's a big ho hum. Just depends. It's how civilization and governments work now, and I am the first to admit there are a lot of flaws, but the alternative-no laws at all, a pure might makes right, caveat emptor hienlein styled ultra libertarian anything-goes fantasy world like that-I'll pass. Until humans evolve a little more socially and psychologically-we need some form of government and laws. Unfortunately.
Oh, as to the boycotts and whatnot-you don't understand. Not only boycotts being made illegal for a time, they were just a *reflection* of the ingrained institutionalised racism and "apartness" that lead to private violence. A lot of private violence and heartache and despair. Once people are allowed to openly and blatantly discriminate like that, it leads eventually to pain suffereing death and violence. That's what happens. To make a civil-ization, to have to make being civil the legal way to live, else it de evolves into violence. Like I said, been there, done that, seen that. Voluntary doesn't work all that well. I wish it did but it doesn't. Even on the web, I still see discrimination, I just was at a website that wouldn't let me access some content because it said I needed
But then why civil suits?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
target.com == Amazon
Blind allegience to free markets to the detriment of people is absurd. An economic system is a tool for the use of resources in society. Capitalism maximizes efficient use of resources, but since labor is a resource, the maximization can result in negative impact on people.
For the most part capitalism works to serve society, there are some cases where the system fails and requires regulation (eg OSHA, minimum wage, ADA). Unfortunately the government has gone overboard and overregulates to the point where it's no longer fixing gaps, but rather, is trying to directly manage.
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You can't be thrown out of Home Depot because you're a woman.
But you can't join (play at?) Augusta National...
www.target.txt
Time for a new domain. Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all night.
I can see how this might be a problem if you didn't have a right hand. If you're just left-handed, it's not like you have to draw some elaborate symbol with your non-dominant hand to turn your computer off or take a CD out. BTW, how much does it bother you that you have to use your right hand to reach half of your keyboard?
I understand the difficulty of getting versions of things made to be left handed (e.g. left-handed archery equipment is almost never present). Even so, most things, even though they are made for right-handers, do not require anything complicated from the right hand.
I can see where you're coming from, but, having talked with disabled people, I doubt you really have much perspective on it.
(IANAL)
FYI, the GP was talking about moral rights.
(IANAL)
Some are nutjobs, yes. Most of the nutjobs that "much of our survival is attributed to" are not really religious. They just need to pretend to be to continue to hold office or prestige.
Fair argument. I'd rather that to the alternative. (holding all life sacred as apposed to selectively choosing)
A different group of people I think. They're wrong none-the-less.
This has really got to stop on their part. I've never heard any biblical reason to even begin to suggest punishment before crime. It does not surprise me that some teach this, but it is truly ludicrous (and unfounded).
Furthermore, they CANNOT say that it is punishment of any kind with any degree of certainty (If you need to argue with them, point them to John 9:1-3).
Be VERY careful about this phrase and concept: "...the religion..." . Christianity is not a religion. It is a set of religions that have a common base (just like Judaism and Islam). You CANNOT fairly paint all Christianity with any given brush. Just about any statement you make about Christianity WILL be false for one sect or another somewhere (if not false for most denominations).
That is arguable, depending on which flavor of Christianity you consider. There are possible eternal gains to be had. Again, this is making a lot of assumptions (existence of God, continuity of human existence after death, etc). You may simply have seen an advantage to a harder road, or have been asked to fill a harder job. Without knowing everything, such conjecture (and counter conjecture) will not get us anywhere through reason.
I think I refuse "their" definition of God too (assuming you've given me an accurate portrayal). Though admittedly, you do sound "embittered".
I will not belittle the value of baptism, but if you don't think the teachings of that denomination are true (whichever it is), then simply don't get baptized there. It would be a worthless and meaningless gesture. I'd just suggest that you don't entirely dismiss the idea of baptism at some point down the road. It must be what you want, and not what somebody wants for you.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Why is it that is seems that common sense and reason is rarely practiced in our judical system? Better yet, why does a single person, via a judicial fiat, have the ability to force their will on the entire American population?
Idiocy like this should be pursued all the way to the federal supreme court, but I certainly don't imagine we'll see any weak-spined American corporations fighting something as outrageous as this.
I'll never understand why such tiny minorities in this country have such amazing power over the rest of us.
Depends entirely on how the fall happenned.
Floor of assigned workspace collapsed under them, well, hell yeah, sue like crazy and win.
Walk across a wet floor full of people with mops and fall on your ass, well, that's your own problem.
Severity oif the result does not (Should not) affect the assignment of fault, and the fault for clumsiness falls on the clumsy person.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
...we can get the ADA to recognize "allergy to bad web design" as a disability we can start scaring all the web designers who think [NameOfColor] text on a [NameOfColor] background looks good...
What you do is hold it like a right-handed person would, then pass the knife over to your left hand without turning it over. Now, the sharp edge is still down, and it's in your dominant hand.
I think he's talking about the bevelled edge of the knife, a lot of them are only bevelled on one side, and it's hard to cut straight with them if you're not holding them the "right way". Of course, even right-handed, I can't cut straight with these knives, so my knives are all double-bevelled.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
1) What about the millions of glossy catalogs produced at great cost and destined for inevitable landfill waste? Will the pushers be sued for printing catalogs that are inaccessible to blind consumers?
2) Why is the ref on this ruling basically an advertisement?
3) Who defines what is fair? A billion dollar corporation can afford to come up with whatever is deemed compliant if this thing is for real. What about Joe down the street following his dream and starting up an e-business selling foo with a loan from the bank - how is he supposed to come up with the funds for this as well? He can't defend against a lawsuit and I don't buy this "just take our approach and all will be fine."
us mac and linux users? Should we all sue the big websites that are only tested in IE?
It's our choice to use a Mac or Linux (I normally use an iBook for all my Slashdot needs, but happen to be on a Linux box at the moment). It's not their choice to be blind. Despite the pain and suffering that would undoubtedly be cause by doing so, if we wanted to badly enough, we could install Windows. They can't become sighted, no matter how much they might want to.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I am SO going to get a contract job writing acessible versions for p0rn sites!
i'm certainly not going to argue that the commerce clause isn't [mis|over]-used, but you don't really think any of that started with FDR, do you? at the absolute latest, Lincoln was pretty clearly ignoring the constitutional balance between state and federal rights for his entire term, and it all just fell apart during and shortly after reconstruction. while the issue of slavery tends to overshadow what the war was really about in nearly every debate (and not without reason), it's entirely probably that, as far as the constitution's concerned, the wrong side won that one.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
I am not familiar with screen readers for the blind, but I did notice a few things when I went to the Target.com webpage. I am using my Linux computer just now and I tried using two different browsers to viewing their website just now. First, I used the Mozilla browzer and everything seemed fine other than the fact on my slow dial-up Internet connection it took about 5 minutes for the webpage to load. Next, I switched to using the text-only Elinks browser. The text-only webpage finished loading in only about 20 seconds this time. I then started to compare how the two webpages looked in each browser.
As I am comparing the two webpages right now I see that the text-only version is missing many of the headings and sub-headings, but in most cases the individual menu items are still there. For instance, the word "woman" is missing from the heading of one section and in a sub-section the word "clothing" is missing and the word [USEMAP] just appears in place of each missing word. But, the list of individual items such as "sweater", "tunics", "jeans", and "leggings" still appear and can be selected.
The individual items can be slected in the text-only based browser, but just out of curiosity I also tried slected where it says [USEMAP] for one of the missing headings. In that case a list on long complicated meaningless looking URL's appeared and I was expected to choose one. I randomly chose one of the URL's and the next page appeared about 25 seconds later.
My conclusion is that the Target.com website does not work very well on text-only browsers such as Links or Elinks. Well, so who uses text-only browsers anyway? Not many of us, I suppose, although I would assume that screen readers are also text-only. When I viewed their webpage with Mozilla the webpage was so slow that it was barely useable anyway. Either way, on my slow dial-up connection their webpage is almost useless. The heck with the blind, they are discriminating against people who use dial-up Internet connections! In many rural parts of the U.S. and in some neighborhoods with older infrastructure, such as where I live, it is not even possible to get high-speed Internet access yet.
I don't like the idea of possibly forcing webpage designers or struggling small businesses to pay experts to have their webpages audited for ADA compliance. I wonder if it might be sufficient if they just made their webpages compatible with text-only browsers such as Links or Elinks. Presumably, that would also result in a webpage which is not be overly dependant on Macromedia Flash or other fancy bandwidth wasting graphics technology.
"Should people have a RIGHT to minimum wage or decent working conditions? Workers can always choose to work for a different company, or not work at all"
I'll word this differently: should people have a RIGHT to make private contracts? If I want to do something respectable in exchange for $4, who are you to come and tell me that I can't?
The minimum wage is a great law for the middle class: someone with an education is more likely to be worth $6 an hour. Sucks if you are one of the elements of the cycle-of-poverty who is only worth $3 an hour, because no one is going to hire you at a $3 loss. (Actually, what usually happens is that those below the poverty line do get hired, but not for nearly enough hours. They would be better off working a dollar less per hour for twice as many hours--which is not an unlikely outcome for a marginal utility curve for labor!--but try explaining the math involved to someone in congress.)
"Should people have a RIGHT to not have their medical records released to everybody? We can always choose to not use a health care provider that doesn't protect privacy."
But your medical records *can* be released to everyone... if you give permission. Unlike with the minimum wage example, you actually have a choice.
The 'right' here is actually a valid instance of the sanctity of private contract. The government has just said it has to be opt-out instead of opt-in. The important part is the 'opt'!
"Protection laws such as minimum wage or ADA were enacted to address the gaps between social responsibility and the free market."
Now here is the problem: where is the responsibility? Is it also Target's responsibilty to pay for the blind's computer access equipment? Do they have to provide them transport to and from the store, since they can't drive on their own? Does there need to be a guy with a megaphone standing on every Target billboard declaring the contents of the sign in an audible format?
Why is this not a problem with the *technology*? It's theoretically possible to write a program to parse Target's site correctly, so is it Target's problem that this technology does not exist? If the technology that exists right now was not available, would this mean it would be illegal to have any commerce site whatsoever until technology was developed to allow the blind access?
It's not immediately evident what the way of reconciling disability with this new medium should be, and it's up to congress to make the laws clear. I'm perfectly alright with requiring businesses to make their sites 'accessible' as long as it's not something that would prevent me and other non-megacorporations from putting together a business related website. But it's daft to go around persecuting people and even businesses for not complying with legal standards that don't technically exist. If standard X is mandatory, someone needs to mention that specifically in the lawbook before the criminal investigations start.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
trolling are we?
\
I would argue that Lincoln was our worst president for the reasons you allude to, but I think he tended to just take power unilaterally without trying to justify it with the Commerce Clause. While Lincoln tried to arrest a Supreme Court justice (the chief justice, maybe?) for trying to strike down some of his more egregiously illegal acts, FDR had legal theorists to dress it up in nice language based on the Commerce Clause. The effect was the same, but the reasoning was different, to the best of my recollection. (On the issue of slavery that you mention in passing, it amazes me that people don't realize that Lincoln ONLY freed slaves in the Confederate states, not in the Union states where slavery was allowed. To him, it was merely a tool to use in pursuing more centralized power.)
:-)
So I don't think we disagree about the basic issue. I just don't believe anybody before FDR's era used the Commerce Clause to justify what they wanted to do. I could be mistaken, of course. I don't have a book handy that deals with the issue and I'm too lazy to Google it.
David
I took the time to actually put the data that you linked to into a spreadsheet and then calculated the correlation coefficient. It turned out to be -0.01.
Assuming those data sets actually coincide time-wise, that appears to mean that there's no simple link between those two values. I wouldn't necessarily expect a direct causal link given the many variables involved in unemployment, but I'm surprised that there's no correlation at all.
I'd be interested in looking at that correlation over time. For instance, if we run these numbers every year for the last hundred years, is there ever a correlation? Perhaps the correlation is low during certain periods of time (perhaps when the economy is good) while it is much higher in others (perhaps when the economy is bad).
If anyone else wants to run the numbers, you can view them at: UnemploymentMinWage
I tried pasting them into this message, but the spam filter wouldn't let it through.
Cow Cube
As are mine. Serrated knives, I suppose, but most quality culinary knives (ie, not table knives) are double-belvelled, and quite a few serrated knives are as well. Heck, even the crap plastic ones are uni-hand. And I know quite a few lefties who do many common activities right-handed. Most notably, using the computer. Even with uni-hand mice, they're still on the right side in computer labs and have the buttons mapped accordingly. Some fight it, but most just use the mouse righty anyways. Even at home, not just in public.
Potato peelers? Most, if not all, have blades on both sides. And despite what most people do, the correct motion is to actually use both of those blades regardless of your hand-dominance (ie, not lift the peeler off the potato on the "backstroke"). Doors? I've seen both. Like... look at the other side of the door sometime. The handle is, believe it or not, now on the other side.
Now being neither blind nor left-handed, I'm really just going to have to take your word for it. But in both cases, it's really a matter of catering to the masses. Except that there's a helluva lot more lefties than there are blind people (or deaf, mute, incapacitated, whatever).
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I am a rank-beginner at site design, but from my pouring over books to help me learn, most of the mentions of accessibility mentioned that it made it much easier to get "ranked" on search engines, because search engins read text like us, not pictures. So I added little labels to our images and got good ratings on the online disability raters like the ones I found here: http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/abtools.html#te sting
Not like it's related, but we got good ratings on Google soon after. So it didn't hurt us at all.
What I want to know is: WHY DOES TARGET WANT TO PREVENT ALL BLIND PEOPLE FROM SHOPPING ON THEIR WEBSITE? Are they just stupid? Lemme tell you, the next step after(?) a lawsuit is you'll have a hundred blind adults and kids with their canes and aide-dogs chaining closed the doors to your store. Just showing everybody else what it's like to not be allowed to shop there. You can get rid of them by sending them to jail, your choice. But you'll do it to their face, on TV, not just while they sit home on their keyboards because you figure you'll save a buck.
Kind of a pain to make it on the bus down to the actual store, but if they won't sell to me online, I guess we'll be "seeing" you in person.
This case isn't decided; I hope to hear more about it.
peace b
It's also theoretically possible to create artificial nerves to bypass damaged tissue and cure paralysis, or to fit paraplegics with robotic legs that work just as well as the real thing, making stairs negotiable. In practice, most people in such a position have to make do with wheelchairs.
Ramps, like website code that follows accessibility guidelines, are possible now.
I was wondering how long it would take for something like this to happen.
http://outcampaign.org/
There are specific legal guidelines covering the accessibility of US government websites under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (usually referred to as just Section 508). What I read there doesn't explicitly mention cross-browser/OS compatibility, but compliance with the guidelines would probably preclude the use of IE-only or Windows-only technologies without some sort of fallback.
Unfortunately, many federal sites still don't comply with the regs.
Text-to-speech generally causes the ATM to announce that you are attempting to withdrawl $500.
A better text-to-speech interface would be the tellers. While they aren't 24/7 in most places...
All that junk mail I recieve, too! Offering me the ability to shop from the comfort of my home, while not letting me do so without using my eyes! Fuck 'em!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
And any web designer who didn't do it the right way has only themselves to blame, because the ADA was passed in 1990.
Who took accessibility out of the requirements before putting the job out to bid (or told the in-house developer not to bother with it as it would take too much time). Most web developers (who are worth the title) know about accessibilty, but it's a hard sell to bosses who just want to see a pretty screen.
When the country falls into chaos, politicians talk about 'patriotism'. Lao-Tzu
Following the link yields (at least for me) a bunch of HTML displayed right on the page. I don't mean the content in the HTML. I mean it looks like a text document and I can see the HTML tags right there with text between them.
Their website isn't usable enough for people who don't know what this is. SUE THEM!!!
(The "sue them" line is a joke, but their website really is broken)
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Um, yes, it is. At least it was back in Europe, when I practiced the sport. One reason is that many right-handed archers prefer holding their bow in the right hand, usually for one of two reasons:
1: They might have a dominant left eye, which is more common than being sinistral.
2: They might draw the bow by pushing the bow instead of drawing the string. This allows for using a more powerful bow.
But anyhow, the problem here isn't that the blind potential target.com users want Target to sell special stuff for blind people; they want to be able to access the store. It'd be more like an archery store that refuses to sell any equipment to left-handed people, including arrows, wax and carrying cases.
Since it's not difficult to make a site degrade gracefully (it's a change of mindset more than anything), they don't have to sacrifice functionality for sighted people to make basic functionality workable for blind people, or people with javascript turned off, for that matter. There are many sites far more complex than Target's site that do this quite well, without looking like they were designed back in '96.
Regards,
--
*Art
I've seen this argument used many times recently, for many reasons. Can you cite any REAL examples?
"Now here is the problem: where is the responsibility? Is it also Target's responsibilty to pay for the blind's computer access equipment? Do they have to provide them transport to and from the store, since they can't drive on their own? Does there need to be a guy with a megaphone standing on every Target billboard declaring the contents of the sign in an audible format?"
Nice straw man. You, along with many others, are ignoring (wilfully?) the fact that Target has had to explicitly decide to make their site inaccessible. Take a look at their site as it is right now; they've chosen to use images for functional links and they have rarely, if ever, included an alt attribute in the image element where all they would have needed to do was bloody-well duplicate the text already in the image in the alt attribute. They have taken a medium that's fundamentally accessible (i.e. one which, by virtue of being text-based, can be intelligently parsed by a screenreader), and intentionally or ignorantly rendered it inaccessible.
Not only are they morons for apparently not understanding accessibility concerns, they must also be pretty dim-witted about e-commerce if they're too dense to provide textual equivalents for the UI elements required to make purchases.
"It's not immediately evident what the way of reconciling disability with this new medium should be"
What is evident is that you're not well-informed enough to be commenting on this event; check items 25 through 34 of the complaint and get back to us. Basic compliance with the WAI Guidelines or Section 508's guidelines (though not required by law for private industry) would likely have prevented this ever becoming an issue for Target--as would simply running the cart application's code through the w3c validator and correcting the resulting errors...
What I'm wondering is how blind people are going to see my website, no matter how accessible it is. Are we going to require that all websites have an audio version now, because I distinctly remembering phones already having that function.
In other news, today the entire internet circa 1995 has been sued for inaccessible design.
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
Okay, I'm sorry you were born blind but that isn't my problem. I don't care if I'm running a business or not, some medium weren't meant for all kinds of people. This is absolutely ridiculous. Next thing you know they'll want to sue the local paper because it isn't published in Braille. What is going to be next, those with low IQs are going to sue because they can't navigate their way around the website? I've got some suggestions here. First, for the blind people get up out your stupid house and go to the store and actually touch the merchandise. If you can't see it, and are only told about it, how the hell do you know you want it? I wouldn't trust a business to describe a product to me, its their product, they are going to put a spin on it. Get on out and touch things. Secondly, be proactive about the people with low IQs. Put a big button somewhere that says "I'm Lost" on it. That button would take them to a page with a fake loading bar and a button that says, "Click here to load faster". Each time they click the loading bar starts all over again. That'll keep them entertained till they finally give up.
However, this was before computers were as widely used as they are now. And, technology has to catch up so everyone will benefit, not just a few. As a matter of fact, in my instance, advances in technology are wonderful.
I am a traumatic brain injury survivor and due to neurological damage, I have a difficult time writing legibly w/a pen. (In addition to extremely painful headaches caused by shrill noises, problems concentrating and several other things.) So, email and computer use are great for me, as is having a cell phone, because the ringtones don't give me a headache while a land-line does. (These are some of the reasons why I couldn't work--in social work, case notes have to be written by hand and signed, the damn phones in the office never stopped ringing--I headaches and was exhausted constantly. There are others.)
Plus, computer use is more widespead today--that reminds me of a couple things. Many people with disabiities go online as there is not much else for a person on disability to do. (re: computers, many people with disabilities are self-taught by reading tech sites.) So, it seems to me that a business that has a site on the net should want to make their site accessible to as many as possible. I have a question for you about this:
One of the criteria for the ADA, Rehab Act, and more to apply to a business is that the business receive federal funds. (From my social work days, I know for a fact Target gets Federal funds.) So, why should taxpayers subsidize a business that does not allow a segment of the population to access them? If the market were truly free, there would be no need for any federal sudsidies to any business. Those are your tax dollars I'm talking about. So, why don't people get all riled up about that money being wasted on corporate welfare?On another note, the first time I booted linux, I was amazed that it didn't have all of the crap everywhere--made it so much easier for me to concentrate as I didn't get a headache after an hour or so. (Still haven't decided which one I like best. Also have some hardware problems that I'm putting off fixing--that's another story.) I enjoy writing for the sake of writing, as do many people. Here's a writing sample re: Medicare D that is only the tip of the iceberg re: how screwed up the computer system is.
Thanks for your thoughts.
-Terri
The requirement will be that all websites be renderable by a reader, if Target loses the suit (all that has happened so far is that a Target motion to dismiss the case was not granted). The judge also denied a preliminary injunction to require Target to make their website accessible immediately.
This is not trivial. There are programs that will read web pages and then pump them out through a voice synthesizer. The trouble is that the reader programs can't understand all HTML. I've forgotten the details of what fails, but I remember deciding I never wanted to work on a 508-compliant web site. 508 is a separate set of accessibility regulations for government websites. Information can't be just graphic, for example. On one hand, this is essentially adding another type of browser. But it is more complicated than ms vs. netscape, because you have to have a version of each page that doesn't use graphics.
Slashdot's new frontend blinded my eyes before I could find a fix. Does this mean I can sue /. now?
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
You can make the agreement, you just don't waive your rights.
The problem with your arguement is there are plenty of unskilled minimum wage jobs that are unfilled; I don't know any high school kid that had a problem trying to find a minimum wage summer job.
Marginal job losses occur when the minimum wage cannot effectively be absorbed by the economy. An effective minimum wage does not significantly effect inflation or unemployment, but does ensure wealth dispersal.
That is why the standard is reasonable accomodation.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
I see this as beside the point.
The web is meant as a free-for-all where everything exists, and only the worst illegal activities really draw fire.
If a business has a site which doesn't play nice with certain disability accessibility tools, they shouldn't be sued. I don't know what auxilliary benefit flows to the defendant besides "just buying my sweater", but I would be terrified if this spawned a Professional Disabled Litigator.
Wait, that makes my head spin. Isn't the definition of "disability" something that seriously impairs functioning with no clear upside? I can't BEGIN to calculate the consequences of law firms hiring every person ever tagged with a disability to begin testing sites with their accessibility tools. "Nope. This site is incoherent. Case # 1653265. Next!" We all know that Law firms have THE most abusive labor rate ever. Couple this with an unlimited caseload, and suddenly you become able to make a million dollars a year if you are disabled. "Hm. I can work at McDonalds, or I can visit Iraq, doing my Patriotic Duty, get something nasty in my eyes, and make a million a year suing companies for noncompliant websites. "
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
What you imagine the web to be is far from what others intend for it or use it for. Providing disability access doesn't limit the usefulness of the internet as a communication medium. In fact, it would ensure better access to a larger population. And lawsuits brought against sites that don't comply with accessibility standards would be the same as lawsuits regarding public buildings without wheelchair access in the early 90's. This sets a legal precedent that would encourage other sites to comply with standards without litigations having to be brought against them.
Your fears are simply too absurd to take seriously.
LOL! good one.
... when I first got internet access in 1996, one of the first places I had to go was to microsoft.com to download an update. Well, someone there had just discovered FRAMES, and you've never seen a frames hell quite like this... the download frame was buried among half a dozen other frames, and was so small that I almost couldn't SEE the link I needed, let alone click it.
On a related note
So I took a screen capture and sent it off to webmaster@microsoft.com, with a vociferous complaint.
Two weeks later, the frames were gone.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The keyword here being "public". My private website is like my private house - love it or leave it.
Global warming is a cube.
All the ATM's at my local WaMu bank have headphone jacks, guess what they are for.
That's nice. I, and I'm sure most people, could care less whether your private website is accessible or not. If you want to be inconsiderate towards the disabled community, that's your right.
But if you actually RTFA, or even just the summary, you'd realize that this issue is about the Americans with Disabilities Act and bringing it up to date with the internet age. Title III of the ADA requires that public accomodations and commercial facilities do not discriminate against the disabled and comply with accessibility standards when readily achievable.
This is no different from stores, restaurants, hotels, and other public accomodations being required to install wheelchair access ramps, braile elevator buttons, etc. so as not to discriminate against the disabled. With the growing popularity and importance of the internet, there's no reason why web-based commercial services and digital accomodations should be exempt from this.
Sue Microsoft for not implementing or falsely implementing the needed css attributes for disability concerns. A proper barrier free site always fails on the problem that it has to be compliant with ie as well.
...sorry, that should have been phrased as "the internet has the potential to be the great leveller", it was getting a bit late when I wrote that and I'd been working all day on fitting our new kitchen.
I am NaN
"If the Target.com web site doesn't suit you, shop elsewhere. Target isn't that great anyway. Encourge others not to shop at Target and write the company to tell them why you aren't shopping there. It's a lot more effective than a law suit."
How about:
"If you don't like sitting in the back, ride someone else's bus."
And:
"If you don't like segregated restrooms, use someone else's."
And:
"If the Target store doesn't work with your wheelchair, shop elsewhere."
I don't particularly care for this lawsuit and what it implies. I like how litigious our society has become even less. But everyone has rights and stores that are open to the 'public' need to actually be accessible to the public. I think it would have been a lot better to raise a stink on the internet first by getting bloggers/slashdot/the media/etc to put up articles about it. And if that failed, then go for the lawsuit. But I think we've proven that if you can get something on Slashdot, stuff will happen. (Maybe not exactly what you wanted, but people will notice and heads will roll.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
To protect the rights of real people from being trampled and disregarded by businesses and government organisations.
Well actually they can't - particularly a blind person. Visiting a physical store presents a multitude of different barriers to overcome. Have you noticed that most of the items in a physical shop don't have their product names braille labelled (let alone the list of ingredients)? Getting to the store and moving around it is only a tiny part of the real problem.
I suggest the next time you do some food shopping by yourself, get to the store first (Just to make it much much easier for you), blindfold yourself and walk around getting all the items on your shopping list. That will give you a partial impression of what its like.
Now a website, properly done, can alleviate all those barriers - at a staggeringly smaller cost. In terms of return on investment, an accessible web site outdoes physical premises - for both the business and the customer. Accessible websites and home delivery are a boon to disabled people (as well as non-disabled people). With an accessible website, a blind person can do their regular shop without needing to inconvenience other people - its a means of self-sufficiency. What was once an arduous task is now something that can be completed successfully from their own homes - providing Target had done two really simple things.
So your solution to disabled people being discriminated by Target on its website is to ... wait 100 years? At which stage the majority of people will think that disability discrimination is bad, and non-disabled people will decide not to buy from Target, thus putting them out of business?
Do you think we should do something in the meantime? We've got plenty of time till then.
What you've left out are the number of people who benefit (as opposed to require) from the special consideration. What's typically happened on websites that have been made accessible (from small businesses right up to FTSE100 companies and public organisations) is that making websites accessible also provides a far easier website for all people (disabled or non-disabled). Its not uncommon to see convesion rates of shoppers to increase by 100% to 250% because of the launch on an accessible website. A FTSE 100 company, for instance, made back the investment into making their websites accessible within five months.
This is no different from stores, restaurants, hotels, and other public accomodations being required to X
Which is just as idiotic.
Global warming is a cube.
If you can'tdesign a website so that it's ADA compatable then you should not be in the business. Go back and learn how to do it properly. Then try again. If you are in the business of building websites then you should strive for excellence, which means following standards, making things accessible and compliant, and educating yourself as to how to do it properly if you can't. If you get sued for making a non-ADA compliant website then it's your own fault and you have nobody to blame but yourself. Don;t like the sound of what I'm saying then tough. That's the way it is.
On one hand, this is essentially adding another type of browser. But it is more complicated than ms vs. netscape, because you have to have a version of each page that doesn't use graphics.
Unfortunately, views like that lead to the self-fulfilling prophecy of a massive proliferation of inaccessible websites in the first place. People think it's difficult to do, so they don't really try, just perpetuate the rumours of how difficult it is.
Making a website accessible just requires a little bit of forward planning and correct use of semantic html - the problem is most "design professionals" can't produce valid, semantic html and that's where the difficulties begin. If your page has a lot of graphics, what's difficult about including descriptive alt attributes or long description links to describe the content of those graphics? Or producing a page that uses clean css techniques for layout instead of a horrible mess of nested tables?
The truth is, designing for accessibility is no more difficult than designing for IE5.5/6's deficiencies, but because it's not been a business priority in the past (yes, business would rather cater to a disabled browser than help its disabled customers), designers have been allowed to ignore it (and, in some cases, forced to ignore it by near-sighted management). A few high-profile cases alerting business to how important it is to build in accessibility might help to turn the tide.
Sadist? Possibly. But He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Its *my* site, i should be able to with i want with it.
If i lose 'disabled' customers, so be it. Unless im accepting fedreal or state funds ( or want a governmental contract ) to hell with their 'rules'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's funny how many people bitching about the ruling here have missed that rather important point.
If your web site is reasonably well-designed in the first place, then any extra steps required to make it fully accessible to disabled people will probably be trivial. For example, simply using reasonably correct semantic mark-up is enough for things like screen-readers to work well most of the time. Providing a fall-back for Flash or Javascript-based features has been good practice forever, since a significant proportion of users don't enable those features.
Irony point for the day: I wonder how many people who are complaining here about the small extra effort required to support the disabled community are themselves Firefox users who think everything should be written to W3C standards rather than to "work with IE and screw the rest if they're not compatible".
Second irony point for the day: I wonder how many people who are complaining here actually realise how many disabled people there are in web site terms, where even something as common as colour-blindness can be a serious handicap on a site with a poorly chosen colour scheme.
What this means, as the parent post pointed out, is that web developers who have a clue and think about how their site will be used and who their target audience is will probably start doing better now, at the expense of the hacks who undercut the good guys on price by taking short-cuts, possibly without even mentioning alternatives to their clients. Personally, I'm pretty much OK with that.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The biggest problem with your approach is that we've established through history that the free market doesn't do enough to cater to minorities without a little encouragement.
However, your example is a work of fiction anyway. Generally, disability discrimination laws require that companies take reasonable steps to accommodate the disabled. Adding alt tags and using a colour scheme that doesn't inhibit colour-blind users is usually going to be reasonable. Redesigning an entire site based on eyewear, at vast cost, to accommodate blind users is (hopefully) not going to be considered a reasonable obligation in a court. I'm neither a lawyer nor based in the US, but I do maintain web sites and did scan the major accessibility legislation in a few jurisdictions when it first came out, and they all seemed to have safeguards to this effect.
Moreover, such legislation was passed in several countries well over a decade ago. I find it hard to believe that any small business has "a large, sprawling site that's been going for years", which wasn't designed after the relevant legislation was in place, yet which will cost years' worth of profits to redesign. Anyone who's in that position has bigger problems than accessibility, because it sounds like their management and/or marketing people suck.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Hehe, the irony of someone too dumb to understand what the web is meant to be entitling their own post "stupid" is not lost on me - well done, sirrah!
You see, the web was actually created as a means for sharing data. Data is essentially not tied to any one medium. That data can be taken and presented visually on a page, but it can equally be converted to sound. A VISUAL website, as you say, if it requires visuals to be used, is a badly designed website totally outside the spirit and intent of the web. It is, in essence, a STUPID website, it's broken.
Some guy called Tim Berners-Lee once said "The power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." - but hey, what would he know about the web? I guess he's just stupid too, huh?
Freedoms are generally a good default in society, but rarely are they (or should they be) absolutes. The usual counter-example for freedom of speech/expression is yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, and a more subtle one is defamation. We curtail freedom of movement and association for convicted criminals who are sentenced to jail time. We have freedom of religion, yet you may not attempt to murder someone just because they don't follow the same religion.
So it goes here. Trying to look after the less fortunate in society can be one of humanity's better traits. History and experience show that a capitalist model abuses such people if left unattended, and thus we introduce laws like the ADA in the US, the DDA in the UK, and so on. This court case appears to be the law working exactly as intended.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The majority of people already think it is bad. If they didn't, how could a "representative" government pass these laws?
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
It's not actually as difficult as that. What it means is that the site's functionality can't be dependent on graphics. Simple use of ALT and TITLE attributes goes a long way toward making a graphics-heavy design accessible. A better step is to specify the graphics through CSS backgrounds that visually blot out the text content in a visual medium, but deliver usable text in a non-visual context.
The trick is to not think of Web pages as "this page for that browser, and that page for the other browser." Think, instead, of a weakly-typed variable. What you get is dependent on the context in which you view it.
Sorry, I'm a writer. That makes you raw material.
It's M$'s fault that Funny mods don't give karma here. As their products are laughing stocks, Taco felt it would be unfair.
Friends don't help friends install MS junk.
Eh, why is it always God's fault? Did they teach you about Satan? Pretty strange sect of Christianity without that. He presumably has dominion over the earth. Otherwise what would be the difference between Earth and Heaven? What power does God have over Satan? It's a complete mystery, but presumably enough to save us if we are willing. Just food for thought, not trying to convert you or whatever. You seem pretty set in your views.
I suggest the next time you do some food shopping by yourself, get to the store first (Just to make it much much easier for you), blindfold yourself and walk around getting all the items on your shopping list. That will give you a partial impression of what its like.
They can ask for an employee to help them, I highly doubt a store would turn them down that help. They could also ask a friend/family member to come along to help. Disabled people got along just fine for hundreds of years before you could shop on the internet, there are other ways.
Accessible websites and home delivery are a boon to disabled people (as well as non-disabled people). With an accessible website, a blind person can do their regular shop without needing to inconvenience other people - its a means of self-sufficiency. What was once an arduous task is now something that can be completed successfully from their own homes - providing Target had done two really simple things.
I agree that accessible websites and home delivery are great for disabled people, but I don't think businesses should be forced to provide that service. If they don't provide that service then they lose out on the business. Like I said before, as long as the stores physical location is accessible then they should not be able to be sued over their web interface. In my eyes that would be like suing a business because every door coming into their business is not wheelchair accessible, as long as there is at least one way (physical or virtual) to get inside that should be enough and no suing should be going on forcing any businesses to change their website.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
I did indeed state the outer bounds of my conclusions, but then every time I open the newspaper I discover events taking over those bounds. There are also indeed differences in the scenarios.
I don't know the ratio, but there are far more websites than physical facilities. The access to them is also much easier.
At another level though, there really is a growing clash between anonymity and visibility on the net. We all know we frown on websites asking for personal information because of the risk of nasty results. Yet said prospective litigant wants to be known, and force costly results.
This is also a US law, so how does it affect multi-national companies?
A judge from New York might throw out a case by a plaintiff complaining about a library in Utah, but the same New York plaintiff would have a more relevant case against the Utah Library Website. He get to sit at home with a lawsuit Tommygun.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
In fact, this might be a silver lining - if all major sites need to be machine-readable, they will have to all conform to some unified way of coding web pages....like, I don't know, maybe a standard? If this forces major sites to produce valid, standardized CSS/HTML code, fantastic. It might even mean that the major browser in the world will have to start adhering to standards too. And if this also requires all major sites to offer a fully functional "non-flash" version of their site, even better!
Desiging for accessibility shouldn't be very hard, since there is already a framework to do it. And I agree, a few high-profile cases might turn the tide and make the web better for everyone.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
One can only imagine the comedy viewed by some proto-chimps when they saw a group of their close relatives climb down from the trees to live their lives in the open plains. The big cats also enjoyed the comedy, but not for long.
I agree that the linked article is worthless. In fact, my story submission linked to a copy of the actual Associated Press article but for some reason Zonk chose to link to that Press Release advertisement.
As a follow up I wonder why Zonk chose that press release? It did name the California law that apply to the suit, whereas the AP article didn't, but it's still basically a dirty ad! I thought this was news for nerds, not links to ads...
As many people have pointed out, this is a prelimenary decision to allow the question to even be reaised, not a ruling. Furthermore, the source is Business Wire, a self-publising mechanism for PR companies, so it's ultimately just scare-mongering from this Mindshare company.
Because civil suits are the only way individuals can vindicate their rights under the law. Only the state can file criminal charges, and criminal law is only indirectly related to protecting individual rights.
Usually, they have standard headset jacks. They don't have loudspeakers for privacy reasons.
Take a look at this as a good example for someone who is blind:
& pid=601&dept=22
http://enablemart.com/productdetail.aspx?store=10
Lots of ALT text for the graphics, but still has pictures, more text based, no flash nonsense.
Kind of reminds you of a web site from 1995, not a lot of visual nonsense.
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
This post is absolutely no surprise to me. In 1998 it became federal law that ADA compliance was mandatory. The problem is that the ADA was written with such absolute language that there is no hope for compliance because there is no room in the wording for any sort of reasoning. (As my roommate put it "it is worded to require fluffy bunnies and unicorns.")
I am a university professor. I teach computer science. It is routine for my students to request that I publish my lecture slides on line. In the past I have done this to accommodate different modes of learning that exist in any population of students. There are certain university mandated rules that I must follow in order to accommodate our disabled students, such as allowing for sign language translators present during my lectures if a deaf student requests it. The university however does not, and cannot, mandate that I provide lecture materials via a web page. In fact I don't even have to have a web page.
However, If I do choose to present a web page then, like Target it must be ADA compliant. Which for scientific and musical disciplines is nearly impossible to achieve. Now, it gets worse. CSU Long Beach is currently being sued for non-compliant web pages. My university has just established an administrative policy that was dictated by our president's office and not voted on by any faculty governance, a policy to prevent such litigation against our university from being successful. That policy reads, and I quote:
Read that and parse it carefully... Now we can actually be sued by a non-diasabled student who went through my class and fails due to lack of effort, stupidity or both. They can argue that they studied from my web page and failed to "get a full and complete understanding of the information". But it gets worse still. See the university has a mandatory policy. So technically it will be difficult to sue the university since they had a policy to prevent such "negligence". But in our hypothetical example my slides didn't meet policy. So I would be considered personally negligent and I could be sued personally by the student.
So I have two choices:So the instant anybody requests that I make my pages more compliant I will select 2. I will have choice 2 fully and permanently implemented within 30 seconds of the request. It takes the least amount of effort, saves me time each week and eliminates the greatest amount of risk, both personal and corporate. So no more web pages the instant anybody on campus asks me to make them more compliant.
Yes. I know how stupid this is. Yes, out of 100 students each semester I have maybe one, or two, disabled students and I am in effect punishing the other 98% of my students. This irks me a great deal because I try to be as open and helpful with my students as possible. But I cannot afford a personal lawsuit nor will I risk losing my job on the grounds of providing non-compliant pages that I am not required to provide in the first place.
To the law makers: Grow a logical, reasonable lobe in your brain. Write laws that make sense and that the public has some hope of complying with.
To my students: I am truly and deeply sorry.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
I am very socically liberal but this is getting rediculous. First the cripple suing over the right to use a golf cart in a sporting event and now this. Disgusting. I don't blame the disabled but rather the lawyers and law makers and judges that implement the law. F the letter of the law, it's all about intent, and this is only hurting the cause.
I think blind/braille browsers are completely impractical. What a non-disabled person could view in a few minutes would take hours to go through on a disabled browser. Many pages on a website contain repeated information, and the person receiving the information would miss out on the structure of the page, and obviously any images. Creating web accessibility for the blind is hopeless in my mind.
I am curious about this. What is Target's responsibility to a blind person who walks in their front door? Do they have to provide an escort for that person who will describe in precise detail every item in every aisle? Or is it assumed that a blind person would provide their own "seeing eye person" for this task? I don't think too many businesses can actually staff a handful of "seeing eye people" on the chance the a busload of blind folks happen to walk in their front door. In a similar sense, you have to provide wheel chair access but you don't have to provide someone to push the chair.
Which makes me wonder... is it Target's fault that their website, presumedly, doesn't work with a particular screen reader (or with any screen reader) or is it the screen reader developers fault for not building a better screen reader. Prior to computers it wasn't the responsibility of every publisher to provide their books, magazines, newspapers, etc. in braille. Nor does every business have to hire a person to stand at the entrance to their store calling out the name of the business and the type of service to every person who walks past.
What I am hearing from all the people who say "it's not expensive/hard" is that site developers have a choice: make simple websites with very basic layout and functionality, or make two websites. One of them simple and the other rich. Maintaining two parallel sites is going to cost more and making a simple, limited site only, is going to drive customers away. I think those making such claims are just thinking about this issue in a very shallow fashion.
Those suing are trying to get something that they never had before. They are effectively saying that ever advertising circular that arrives in their (physical) mailbox must be structured such that it can be mechanically translated to braille. It should be up to the screen reader developers to solve this problem and not Target.
As many people have already pointed out, a lot of web developers have been telling their clients to use best practices, and these recommendations have fallen on deaf ears. This ruling may help developers, in that it will give them more paying work ("Agh! We need to revamp our website right away!") and perhaps more respect ("Hey, what was that you told us about separating data from presentation?").
Nobody in Slashdot would argue that the Internet hasn't become an integral part of all our lives. We use it for everything, from communicating with friends, to gathering news about the world, to making purchases, obtaining government services more rapidly, and so on.
Given that it took the government to step in with the ADA to make physical businesses make buildings accessible, why would anyone believe that market forces will somehow alleviate the difficulties faced online by people with disabilities?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Excuse me, but that's incorrect. Direct payments to a person with a disability (Supplemental Security Income) are $620.00 a month. Social Security Disability can be higher, in some instances lower, but is capped. (Tbe amount changes yearly.)
States custody/foster care is a hellhole w/administrative costs/waste that are unbelieveable. That's where the majority of the figure of $100,000.00 goes. If you do the math re: direct v. indirect payment, you'll see what I mean. Yes, in some instances it/foster care is needed, but if direct payments were made to the parents of a child w/a disability or a person w/a disability, the costs would be substaintially less, due to the administrative overhead and other bs.
The same can be said of many other agencies. Also, there is so much unnecessary crap (duplication) that it contracted out to private businesses. Don't get me wrong, there are some very good ones, but not all.
The costs of audits and compliance monitoring are another nightmare/waste, and the that is pretty hefty, as are the fines for non-compliance--an agency can be fined for non-compliance for the stupidest things, as on a case-by-case basis, the emphasis is on procedural bs, as opposed to the end result of a case that would benefit the client (and society as a whole).
With that in mind, litigation is/can be more cost-effective in bringing about any change (as opposed to working w/in the system), as that is the only thing that some businesses pay any attention to. With the costs of ligitigation, both direct and indirect, it seems to me that it makes more sense to comply in the first place.
It depends on the corporation and which ones it qualifies for, both at the State and Federal level. (In some instances, not all, it can be much higher.) Also, the cost of designing and maintaining a website would be an operating expense. That can be written off.
What if I don't know how to make my site compliant with ADA, and cannot afford to make it so?
The screen reader developers have already solved the problem for the most part. It's not hard to create websites that are accessible with screen readers. Most web designers don't even have to go out of their way to make sure their websites are screen reader accessible. What the disabled community has asked for is simply for the ADA to be applied to websites, which makes complete sense seeing as how integral the web has become to our daily lives. Your suggestion is like saying wheelchair designers should design wheelchairs that can climb stairs or can access any building without the need wheelchair ramps--that it shouldn't be storeowners' responsibility to make their stores & facilities wheelchair accessible. For a better understanding of ADA requirements, read over the phrase you quoted, particularly the last 3 words. Give it a little time to set in...
What, You mean there's more than the title? ;)
Of course i've read TFA. I was just expressing concern to what's going on.. You see I cannot be suprised anymore by judge or lawers theses days..
okay, good point in that FDR may have been the first to use the commerce clause. but i disagree that the effect is the same. both end up with arguably unconstitutional actions being passed. but FDRs method at least provides for the opportunity of subsequent review. it stretches individual laws past their originally intended effect, but preserves the function of the system as a whole (checks and balances and all that). lincoln just said "screw it", under the logic that actions done to preserve the Union in the face of a threat could plausibly be justified if they were outside the mandate of the document that established said Union.
it doesn't take much to get from lincoln to bush. his concept of the Unitary Executive relies on much the same sort of logic, except now the "threat" is just a general environmental concern, not an actual war. the idea of the federal executive being above/beyond review for the good of the country, though, remains - and is just as invalid under the Constitution today as it was when lincoln did it.
on lincoln and slavery: he purportedly said "If I can save the Union by freeing none of the slaves, I will do it. If I can save the Union by freeing some of the slaves, I will do it. And if I must saved the Union by freeing all of the slaves, I will do it." he clearly had his priorities. that's not incompatible with his publicly stated believe that slavery should be ended, and that he'd work towards doing so. but his priority was the preservation of the Union (explicitly; implicitly, also the establishment of the supremacy of the federal government over that of the states). still, it's difficult to say he was our worst president, even if he was only good accidentally or incidentally. he's also got some pretty stiff competition: Grant for totally buggering reconstruction, for example, and a few contend based solely on their treatment of the continent's native population. oh, and then there's the current idiot who might've done more to undermine the foundations of the country than anyone else. none of this is to defend lincoln, just point out he's got some pretty stiff competition.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Why is it idiotic to protect the disabled from being discriminated against? Is the Civil Rights Act also idiotic? Maybe it only appears idiotic to you because you can't think beyond yourself. For a vast number of Americans it's not idiotic at all, and it's the only thing that's reduced many of the hardships that they previously faced due to the lack of necessary infrastructure to accomdate the disabled in our society.
It is amazing to read all the blacklash concerning the Target suit. First if you run a business in this United States of America you cannot disallow any group from purchasing your services. Sorry no blacks allowed does not go anymore. Sorry little woman, you need to bring your husband in to make the purchase does not go anymore.
Sorry blind guy you cannot use our website has not been judged yet. But it would be reasonable to expect that Target will settle/loss this. The point of the lawsuit and I am certain that Target was selected, was to purchase anything from Target website a buyer was required to create an online account. Not a big problem, except at Target where the submit button required the use of the mouse. Two lines of code was needed by Target to fix the problem the day after they were sued. In the six months of negotiation Target said it was to difficult. That is not the only problem but that is why Target will loss the lawsuit.
Second, I am certain that to create an accessible web site or a standard based web site requires a web developer of superior skills and knowledge. Other wise you would see more of them. To mention two great web sites please see http://www.jkrowling.com/ and http://www.afb.org./
That http://www.jkrowling.com/ site uses something called Flash and it's accessible. Obviously from the various posts on slashdot that web designer must be a magician.
For the rest of you who said fuck the blind, what do you expect braille monitors, or I am a sorry ass college professor in computer science who does think I have to have an accessible web site. Get a grip and grow up. Life continues to evolve. and yes one day we will be reading about how hard it is to make web sites accessible for cognitively impaired. And from reading the various posts I think we need to start now.
The Americans with Disabilities Act has a pretty large loophole known as "Altnative Accommodation". For example, if putting in a wheelchair ramp is too expensive, all a store has to do is offer to provide service at the curb and they are off the hook. Similarly, all Target has to do is offer to provide assistance in making purchases from its web site over a toll-free phone number and I'm sure they will be off the hook as well. This really won't ammount to much.
There are plenty of instances where a non-graphical site is of no use. For example, what if the product in question (maybe a video game that requires vision to play) is of no use to those who can't see. If they put up a flash site (annoying, but not a crime) with no text links, should they be sued even though the product it advertises is of little or no use to the vision impaired?
Try using a can opener with your left hand. You are aware that the life expectancy of a left handed person is almost 9 years less than a similar right handed person - due almost exclucively to accidents.
Oh, and take almost any 9MM semi-auto out & shoot it left handed - I recommend a driving glove to keep the ejection gasses from burning your hand. Rifle, bow, any sword with a basket hilt, almost all high tech point & shoots - that covers weapons.
Moving on to the rest of the world - measuring cups, quill pens - the cut of the point is different left v. right, 104 key keyboards - the numberpad & navigation keys are on the right. Should I go on? Just because us lefties can accomidate your right handed designs doesn't mean that they are ambidextrious designs.
As a business owner, why alienate a part of the public who would benefit from your business having a Braille sign (and their friends and family) and risk litigation when the costs for ADA complaince can be written off? That makes no sense to me.
Personal experience again: re: vocational rehabilitation: I want to take a computer class and get some type of certification, so I can go back to work. Technology caught up w/me, as explained previously. Seems to me that approval for my taking a class should be a no-brainer. Voc rehab says no so I have been filing appeals since last summer. There are administrative costs involved re: the appeals as well.
The way I see it, it would be more cost-effective for me to have taken the damn class to begin with. (I've had a couple job offers disappear due to my lacking any certification (despite the fact that the economy is tanking.) So, yeah, we do agree, but it is completely unrealistic to wait for market forces to sort the good from the bad.
BTW, think I should change my sig to something like "Yeah, I'm a liberal. Deal with it!"?
Target is a private business. They are not required to offer service to anyone or to offer any service from which they do not expect to make money. They're going to have to go to no small expense to 1) defend this lawsuit and 2) revamp their web site. I reiterate my statement from above - "Which one of you - squeezed between high gas prices, high taxes, and a few years of pay cuts - wants to pay more for anything?" You don't seriously expect Target to just "suck it up". They're going to pass it on to everyone else that shops at Target. Once again, the majority is paying a premium so that the "minority" can have something for free.
2 more cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
Resources isn't just energy, it's manpower, time, money, materials.
We could have had 50mpg cars a decade ago, the problem was that the consumer would not buy them because they preferred heavier more powerful SUVs. The resources invested in developing a marketable 50mpg car would have been wasted - If nobody buys a more efficient vehicle you aren't saving any oil. Now that prices have shifted, so have the priorities of consumers and car companies.
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