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Should Online Stores Be Subject To ADA?
prostoalex writes, "HTML tutorials usually mention alt tags for images and noscript tags as something optional that a Web designer should add to a site for the crawlers and users browsing with graphics or JavaScript turned off. However, a recent lawsuit against Target by the National Federation of the Blind accuses the retailer of not complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Since Target's online store is unbrowsable with a screen reader, the nation's 200,000 blind people who go online cannot become paying customers, the NFB contends. From the article: 'In denying Target's motion to dismiss the suit two months ago, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel... held that the law's accessibility requirements applied to all services offered by a place of public accommodation. Since Target's physical stores are places of public accommodation, the ruling said, its online store must also be accessible or the company must offer equally effective alternatives.' Does the judge's name ring a bell? Yes, it's the same Marilyn Hall Patel who handled the RIAA's case against Napster in 2001." Web builders and tools may need to start brushing up on the Web Accessibility Initiative.
-b.
The accessibilities regulation when it comes to web sites have the same issues a LOT of things have when it comes to the web: They imply that the web is nothing more than a variant of a PDF browser. It doesn't consider that HTML/CSS were very poorly designed, that we have to deal with IE6 (even though IE7 came out), that the web already requires 10 bazillion skills, and if you need experts in every categories to do anything, a lot of companies will have to retire from the field, that a lot of the content is beyond the developer's control, etc etc etc.
The only thing one should require is to stick a div tag with CSS to make it invisible at the very very top of the site, that says "If you are a disabled person using a screen reader to navigate this page, and wishes to make a purchase, dial the following number and talk with one of our friendly representative who will be happy to help you, and give you any web-only discounts you deserve".
Otherwise, if you ever thought IE6 was holding the web back, never freagin mind screen readers. If your page is nothing more than documents with information, and maybe 1 form (which I guess a lot of e-commerce stores are), then go ahead and make it accessible. Its not very rough. But depending on your target audience, it very well might be a desktop-like application with all the wiz and buzz that it implies, and there's simply no way to make that accessible without ruinning your normal user's experience. And if you DO manage to make it accessible, it will be in the terms of the law only: it will still be useless a to a blind person. Those laws are out of date, simple as that: they consider the web as being nothing more than a giant e-book. It doesn't work like that anymore.
Define bad law for me.
Is a law bad because it requires businesses to accommodate ALL customers, regardless of whether or not they can see, hear or walk? Or are you a part of the group of pseudo-libertarians who think that government should butt out?
If it wasn't for ADA, my wife (who is confined to a wheelchair) and I would be extremely limited in where we go, what we do, and where we can shop, eat, or stay.
So it seems a bit ridiculous to you that Target was the target, and they want them to make the site accessible to the blind. It seems even more ridiculous to me that Target wouldn't do that in the first place (it may cost a bit more, but seeing as how they are a "good corporate citizen (compared to WalMart)", it would be befit their image.
Oh, but they don't want to. Now you see why laws like the ADA have to exist.
I'm not really a CPA, I just play one on TV
Congress decided the market wasn't working with respect to the handicapped. The costs were too high and the benefits accrued to too few individuals to make it worthwhile for most organizations to retrofit for handicapped accessibility. So, of course, nobody did.
If you don't care that people with wheelchairs can't get to the second floor of the Gap sometimes, then this is fine. If you do care, then it's not. Sort of a personal judgment call on how you feel about government intervention to protect the less fortunate.
Regardless of how I might feel about forcing retrofits (not a big fan), setting standards before establishments are built seems somewhat reasonable (and it's usually not all that expensive if you plan on doing it from the beginning). Having rules established ahead of time is basically the same as having building codes, and just as onerous.
With regard to the ADA and websites, it seems that the internet is not at all what was envisioned when the ADA was drafted and it should be looked at anew. If you want to set rules for website design, it has to be clear what those rules are going to be before design begins. Forcing major sites to redesign after they're established seems mean spirited and expensive. If this is something that people feel strongly about, they can go back to Congress and draft an amendment. Courts are probably wise to stay out of the way until then.
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RumorsDaily
If it ends up banning flash from being a part of web site's UI, it's got my vote.
Where were you when the voynix came?
why is your wife's handicap the business' problem? if you can't eat at Steak and Tacos, that's their fault, not yours. You don't have nor should have a right to eat wherever you like.
it's expensive to build wheelchair ramps (at times financially impossible) and to demand a small mom & pop shop to do so is absurd.
I just don't understand why people would be content to let a group of their fellow citizens be disenfranchised from large segmens of society because of their disability. Our sense of fairness demands that if we can do something to bring accessibility to people who don't have it, then we should.
These accesibility laws are not about making special exceptions to handicapped people. It's simply allowing handicapped people to live, participate, and work to contribute to themselves and their community just like everybody else.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
- There is a market in the first place (i.e. competition).
- The economic valuation is similar to the social one.
In this case there certainly is a market, but it leads to results we don't like. The problem is that the extra profits gained from selling to a small minority (the disabled) are probably much less than the expenses in accomodating them. Therefore it is rational for most retailers to simply ignore the disabled. Of course there will be a market solution: the disabled will have to use more expensive approaches (retailers who specifically cater for them, for example).What's wrong with that? First, on the money side, many of us believe that the disabled shouldn't have to bear all the costs of their disability -- that society should bear some of them. In this case we are forcing Target (and, indirectly, all of Target's customers) to pay for the fact that blind shoppers can't use a website which seeing users can.
More importantly, you have to realize that, both to the disabled person and to society, the value of shopping at Target extends beyond the price advantage.
Yes, but this is browsing the web, not a physical activity. Using the web is now a normal and necessary part of life for so many people. It doesn't take much to accomodate blind people at design and implementation time. If the web site designers/developers had done it correctly from the beginning then it wouldn't be so costly. It seems to me that many UI designers (be it web, traditional software application, media such as DVD, etc) are either ignorant or lazy. And anybody with a Comp. Sci degree has no excuse and should take this as a given - either that or their university was shit and the degree certificate isn't worth the paper it's printed on. This is fundamental and very basic HCI.
Is a law bad because it requires businesses to accommodate ALL customers, regardless of whether or not they can see, hear or walk? Or are you a part of the group of pseudo-libertarians who think that government should butt out?
It's a bad law because it goes way overboard in forcing businesses to accomodate every single person on the planet and every single malady they could possibly have. If the government feels that strongly about it, it can pay for it. Then people can decide with their own wallets, at the polls, whether these sorts of things are worth it.
So it seems a bit ridiculous to you that Target was the target, and they want them to make the site accessible to the blind. It seems even more ridiculous to me that Target wouldn't do that in the first place (it may cost a bit more, but seeing as how they are a "good corporate citizen (compared to WalMart)", it would be befit their image.
Whether they want to is their own business. Where does it stop? Do they need to supply deaf/blind people with special tactile screens?
And big businesses are one thing, but this crap gets absolutely ridiculous when you talk about small businesses. So now we have to saddle every poor bastard who just wants a website with a bunch of ridiculous rules? No thanks.
I'm sure it really sucks being blind, but to me, as long as Target makes accomodations in some way, that should be enough. I'd make a blind-only site that redirects them to a page containing nothing but a phone number, and let an operator help them out.
They're part of the community that can walk up steps. If they dont want to cater to 100% of the population that's their choice.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
So easy to say that (and so flippantly too) when you're not disabled.
If you've never experienced the flip side, you wouldn't know.
One of the law's provisions is that service animals are largely unilaterally allowed in places of public
accomodation. My wife is disabled as was our housemate at the time. They both have service dogs- certified
as such. Service animals aren't just seeing-eye or deaf dogs, there's a lot more there than that- and they
do actually help out in a lot of ways and you can't just arbitrarily separate them from their owners willy-nilly.
Needs to be very specific reasons- and there's not a lot of them.
My wife went into a store with said service dog and was physically accosted for her "dog"- the owner didn't
care if she was disabled or the dog was legally allowed. The police in Plano, TX backed up his "right" to
refuse service to anyone- never mind that like the blind and seeing eye dogs, she's in a protected class
(For this VERY reason...).
Until you experience the other side, you will never understand, never get that it's not QUITE
the thing you make it out to be. I only hope that neither you or any of those you love and care
for end up needing to be covered under the laws or that you aren't on the receiving end of someone
like yourself with that comment you just made.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
If you have ever lived in a place where there are no such protections for the handicaped (such as Belgium, where I currently live), you will understand how important this law is. Here, people in wheelchairs cannot shop in most stores (they almost invariable have a single step leading across the threshold, for asthetic reasons I guess), cannot access public most transportation (no elevator in most subway stations and you can forget about busses and trams), cannot access most museums, and frequently have to take substantial detours on their route to find places that have "cut" curbs. Oh, and if you can't use your legs and need to piss, you better get home in a hurry. Most offices (a career path that does not reauire legs) have little or no accomodation for people who cannot walk. Life unassisted (also known as freedom) is impossible for people who are perfectly capable of being contributing members of society, and it sucks for them and costs me money because they are not able to contribute what they could to our economy. The ADA is a good thing, and I sincerely hope that the internet becomes more navicable for the blind so that they can contribute to it for my benefit.
These accesibility laws are not about making special exceptions to handicapped people. It's simply allowing handicapped people to live, participate, and work to contribute to themselves and their community just like everybody else.
(Applause)
It _is_ a special exception. But it's a relatively _small_ investment on the part of the business owner which makes a HUGE difference in the independance and quality of life of the disabled. What society gains is a change between an individual who before was dependent on others and a burden - like in the pre 1970's era; and now is a capable, productive individual. There's a sound reason why the disabled are a protected group and that laws were created to oblige people to take that extra little step to help them out.
Redoing a website - or adding a special website for the blind - is not a multi-million dollar investment. Heck, it doesn't even have to look good if it's for the blind. It just has to work.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Spoken like an old web page designer who hasn't seen what the web can do.
Again: if all I'm doing is a standard web page, thats fine. Its pretty easy (to some extent). Being purely XHTML compliant doesn't make you accessible, and there are some things in some situations that are pretty rough to deal with.
That being said, as soon as you use something like, let say, Ajax (I use this as an example because everyone heard of it, and from your post you really don't seem to realise what people have used the web for these days, so I won't go in any more details), screen readers don't pick up the refresh, and thus its not compliant. So woohoo, I have to kiss ajax good bye. If I was using Ajax to refresh a dropdown list or something, thats easily remedied. If I'm doing something akin to Google Calendar in features, making an "accessible" version can take months.
Again: The Web is not a giant e-book reader anymore.
I see your point on the retrofit vs building from anew. Still I don't think I could justify forcing every website that sells something to be ADA compliant (or some other standard). I run an ISP in rural America. I can think of literally hundreds of Ma & Pa businesses that sell something crafty that has a small website for displaying pictures of their wares. What possible justification could I provide them as to why they're required to make their website ADA compliant. They use whatever generic website building program came with their PC, or Netscape, or Microsoft Publisher, or some other similarly inate WYSIWYG design app. I don't think they could justify buying Dreamweaver, let along hiring a pro to revamp the website. I feel for those with disabilities but what about those people with teeny tiny businesses that happen to have a website? ADA compliancy could easily outweigh any dollars that site could generate.
So your problem is with the law, not deaf people. If she was allowed to charge more, there would be no problem. Nice empathy there, dick. I guess if you ever go deaf you'll be more than happy to sit in your room all the time not doing anything.
Flash always ignores my browser default text settings. It also makes noises when I have configured the browser to be silent. On top of that, there are bugs in it that mean that highlight,copy,paste doesn't work. Of course, these would not be a problem if the flash users followed the basic rule to never use Flash as part of the UI, and only use it as part of media to be viewed or a game to be played.. If they followed that rule, it would get rid of the frustration of having to fight against a Flash UI that fails at following ui/web standards.
Where were you when the voynix came?
How do I print a page?
Besides, screen reading isn't the only thing disabled need.