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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.
Maybe finally we can put a stake through the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Flash-only sites.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
-b.
Luckily, my house has stairs, so they'll be stuck milling around outside in their wheelchairs when they come to get me.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
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?
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!
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.
So easy to say that (and so flippantly too) when you're not disabled.
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.
There are many examples of this foolishness. Here in San Francisco the ADA-compliant public self-cleaning restrooms are so large inside that they are mainly used by hookers as a convenient place to deliver a blow job. All apartments recently constructed here in the city have ADA-compliant bathrooms large enough to U-turn a fire truck. Let me tell you that it really impinges on your 800-square-foot apartment when your bathroom is statutorily required to be at least 100 square feet. And even a remodel triggers the ADA: in my former office, we had obnoxious ADA-compliant bathrooms which were both huge and furnished with uncomfortably-tall ADA-compliant toilets.
At all the new parks in the city, the picnic tables are 1) missing one of the seats and 2) have tables mounted neck-high so you can run a wheelchair underneath them. The furniture is very uncomfortable for the 99.9% of the normally-abled public.
The ADA had the right idea but the implementation has been a nuisance.