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Legislation To Make Web Devices Accessible To Disabled Users
pgmrdlm writes "In an effort to make web devices accessible to the disabled, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (H.R. 3101), submitted by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA) passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 348 to 23. The related Senate bill has been introduced by Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR). Quoting Representative Markey's website: 'We've moved from Braille to Broadcast, from Broadband to the Blackberry. We've moved from spelling letters in someone's palm to the Palm Pilot. And we must make all of these devices accessible.' The Washington Post coverage notes, 'Some broadcasters put videos on the Internet with captions, but not all. That can make inaccessible everything from the political videos that are now common on the Web to pop culture clips that turn viral.' As someone who has 20/200 vision with my glasses on, I completely agree that the web has not been kind to individuals with various disabilities. But due to the size of the web, and the large number of different devices that access it, is it even possible to legislate something of this nature? Or should we rely on education and peer pressure on the various manufacturers?"
I've heard that some sites even actively prevent users from making use of techniques such as LARGE PRINT. To rub it in, they call this a lameness filter.
Let's see: www.govtrack.us is not accessible. markey.house.gov is Joomla, ugh, definitely not accessible. How about showing the rest of us how it should be done before heaping yet another economy-destroying law on the productive class?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Just an off-thought: how do you make a web device (or anything else for that matter) accessible to a mute, blind, deaf, quadriplegic?
The Disability Discrimination Act has been in effect here in the UK for years. Whenever I do work for a big company, there's usually an accessibility requirement in the brief somewhere. They started appearing not long after the DDA came into effect, and from talking to the clients, it's usually specifically due to this law.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
While this has merit, those who would like to see this occur thru legislation are going to be stuck in limbo land. The goverment is too damn slow and I doubt would care, because unless this is going to get them some accolades in the press, they can't seem to be bothered to do something good for the people. That being said I think a lot of companies will not bother to try and do something like this just because they won't spend the cash needed, and for some it would be too cumbersome. There are a lot of devices out there that I am sure the disabled would love to have and I agree they should have access to them, I dont think we will see this legislation pass. Half the goverment can even decide on things before them now. Unless you have the lobbyists and the companies to participate then, I would doubt you would see the goverment slam down the legislation for it, they dont like to make any waves it seem most of the time
We've moved from Common-Sense Connected Concepts to Complete Catastrophes in Comprehensibility, from Correct Case-Sensitivity to Compulsive Capitalization and Asinine Alliteration.
Seriously, these pompous dipshits are responsible for writing laws? No wonder they get corporations to do it for them.
"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
-Mark Twain
This sort of inanity is comical, pointless, impossible, and laughable.
This is akin to mandating braille on the Mona Lisa.
The more nefarious thing is that such actions (like requiring closed-captioning on new shows online) can serve as an impediment to the publication of creative works (for fear of ADA-style lawsuits). Restrictions on presentation could also lead to limitations on new online presentation techniques.
It's not like these things (like alt text) weren't already considered. Force all government agencies (as means of public access) to adopt these rules for their websites, but major search providers (and places like YouTube) are *way* ahead of the government on this one. Unlike quite a few other places that needed a nudge from the government, the private sector has already recognized the market value of serving impaired users.
Specific restrictions are almost always going to lead to undesired side-effects. Chevy Volt drivers can't use HOV2 lanes solo but Toyota Prius drivers can? Whoops. Corn subsidies lead to a fatter nation? Sorry about that. HMO-friendly regs? Yeah, about that...
Legislators are notoriously bad at actually knowing the details of the problem. Letting them call for specific remedies to perceived problems is perilous. Start small, with government sites, and see if we can merely catch up to the accessibility practices of leading internet companies.
In other words lets pucker up for any possivle voters we've missed so far. More people to screw in the end. Hey slashdot... Nice Shitty iPhone site implementation.
The wish behind this is excellent, but the law had better be carefully drafted. For example, you could mandate that all videos should have subtitles or closed captions. Which, with respect to major broadcasters, would be reasonable. But are you going to force this onto everybody who posts a home video? Obviously not (I think). But now how do you draw the line between home videos, small semi-professional videos, and full-blown broadcasters? And is this likely to produce a de-facto censorship of overseas broadcasters.
Why do you have to make all devices accessible? Does, for example, a waterproof phone designed for surfers/canoeists have to have features for the blind? While not saying the blind cannot surf, the population of blind surfers is pretty small, and they do not really need access to what seems at first glance a trivial gadget. The blind must not be locked off the Web - but they don't need it while canoeing.
Put it the other way, do you have to make all web devices available to the non-disabled? Am I required to make a braille web-interpreter (a device) accessible to the sighted but braille-impaired?
Will this effectively ban ultra-low-power long battery life devices which, for example, don't have speaker-phones and use e-paper without back lights, which are harder for this with impaired vision to use?
So, while I applaud the idea, I fear the detail.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Where shall we begin? Oh... I guess this will kill Youtube or significantly stifle it, since all programming will be required to have CC, they will be required to relay emergency information, and all mobile devices will be required to have decoders for CC and emergency information.
And VoIP providers will have to contribute specified amounts to the Telecommunication Relay Services fund, even if not interconnected. Bye bye free VoIP services like Skype. The government is making things more expensive for everyone, and eliminating a lot of free stuff, for the supposed benefit of a minority of the population.
Wonderful! Now Markey can show that he cares by spending other people's money and imposing time-consuming, expensive regulations on all of us.
What's the point of requiring *all* VoIP phones to be hearing-aid compatible? It'll just make all phones more expensive for everyone, including those of us who don't need have hearing aids! It's not insensitive, it's just common sense; we don't mandate that all books be written in 20pt, we just allow publishers to sell both regular-print and large-print books! There are currently cheap VoIP phones that are not compatible with hearing aids and slightly more expensive VoIP phones that are. And it works just fine this way, the deaf can just use some of the $10 million that Markey wants to give them to purchase fancier phones!
The same applies to screen readers for mobile devices. Some are already available, what about the radical notion that those who benefit from them should purchase them with their own money? Not everyone who is blind is poor and helpless and so destitute as to not be able to afford the spend $300 on software that, according to Markey, is indispensable to live a fulfilling life. And if these politicians feel generous, they should just donate a portion of their income to organizations that help the blind. They're wealthy enough that don't have to stick taxpayers with the bill when they're feeling generous.
not content creators and website owners
if i open an icelandic or bahasa indonesia website from new york city in google chrome, it will automatically try to translate the page for me. this is my "handicap" that the browser is working around for me: i don't speak icelandic or bahasa indonesia
so if my handicap is deafness or blindness, there is no need for websites to provide special content for that, merely to be able to "translate" on the fly into that different "language"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But due to the size of the web, and the large number of different devices that access it, is it even possible to legislate something of this nature? Or should we rely on education and peer pressure on the various manufacturers?
It is always possible to pass legislation; some seem to pass it like they pass wind. Whether it is going to have any effect, let alone the intended effect, is always the big question.
Education will have to be the way forward, but one has to be realistic - the web is to a great extent a visual medium, and much as one may sympathise with the plight of blind people, no amount of good intentions will make them see, and they are never going to experience the world exactly as a fully sighted person. And I don't think these exercises in "accessibility" are meant that way - the goal must be to make the resources on the web accessible enough that blind people are not unfairly excluded from the potential benefits, especially when it comes to public services (libraries, health care, etc)
Requires that apparatus to receive or play back video, including using the Internet, allow control by individuals with disabilities and that on-screen menus be accompanied by integrated or peripheral audio output to enable control by blind or visually impaired individuals.
Why do blind people need video?
If blind people are interested in media content then provide an audio only stream instead of forcing the video player to work for blind people. I would hope most publishers would be happy to provide this. Some forms of media are just incompatible for individuals without all or certain senses. I would assume it's rather hard for blind people to appreciate a movie simply by listening to it.
It's a great idea, but how practical is this really?
348 to 23, huh? Glad to hear the entire House is around to vote on things, and hasn't ditched out to campaign and fund-raise. I'd hate to think that they're off, desperately trying to keep their job, rather than doing the job they were elected to do in the first place.
I suggest anyone who has interest is seeing what is possible with universal access, check out the iOS's "VoiceOver" mode (triple-click by default in iOS4).
VoiceOver speaks out loud whatever the sight-disabled user hovers over onscreen, then registers the choice via double-click. It's a tremendously effective system and I'm impressed at how universal it is throughout the iOS. Apple is doing some good work here that the rest of the industry would do well to pay close attention to
The natural progression of egalitarianism will lead to this and then to people being punished for publishing content that is not accessible. Your little blog or mom and pop online store will get raked over the coals because it's a "public accommodation," and the argument will be that "sure, you have every right to speak your mind online, but you better make sure the blind and deaf can participate too."
The DoJ recently shut down a trial program--a trial program--that let students use Kindles at several universities instead of buying text books. Their logic was that since Kindles have mediocre accessibility that prevents the blind from fully using them, the mere fact of offering the program is ipso facto discrimination.
That logic didn't come out of nowhere. It is it the end state of egalitarianism: if we ALL can't do it, then no one can. It brings us down to the lowest common denominator. Instead of providing subsidies to Amazon or giving them the legal stink eye so they'd hurry up and make it happen, the DoJ simply shut it down under the pain of loss of liberty. That is the tyranny that awaits us if we give in in the name of "equality."
... is that I have to read with my eyes and key with my fingers, which so many newfangled devices can't handle.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I'm looking forward to the usual suspects coming forward with the "let the market sort it out" argument.
Please?
So we can follow up with suggestions as to how to create more disabled people so their number grows enough that they are an interesting market segment.
After all, we don't need no stinkin' government regulation, do we? The market will sort it all out. Won't it?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Somehow, I am less worried about a "tyranny" of making things accessible to all than to the long timed tiranny of only some having access to all. Unfortunately, this is how things work... 99.9999% of people don't think about the ones that need special conditions, so I am glad that the government transforms it to a "law", so that people do not forget about the one right beside them.
..I have put myself in their "shoes" many times, to understand the difficulties they have in using various household electronics and gadgets, and of course, software and websites. My experience has been that all those devices that are usable by blind/visually impaired people, are also more pleasant and easier to use for able-bodied people. I have never met an exception to this rule. Hideous flash-encumbered websites are the direct opposite of accessible, and we all hate them.
A website does not have to be specifically made for a blind person - it just has to be text-readable instead of being a big blob of graphics, un-parsable by the various reader softwares available to blind people, be it voice or Braille.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Class action suit against Amazon in three, two, one...
The Constitutional "lever" for the FCC has always been the perceived scarcity of the airwaves, necessitating spectrum control and licensing and thus a certain power over broadcasts over transmitters licensed under that authority.
Where is the Constitutional "lever" here, given the First Amendment ? In the case of Cable TV (from the FCC Cable TV Fact sheet web site) this authority was extended :
The Supreme Court affirmed the Commission's jurisdiction over cable in United States v. Southwestern Cable Co., 392 U.S. 157 (1968). The Court ruled that "the Commission has reasonably concluded that regulatory authority over CATV is imperative if it is to perform with appropriate effectiveness certain of its responsibilities." The Court found the Commission needed authority over cable systems to assure the preservation of local broadcast service and to effect an equitable distribution of broadcast services among the various regions of the country.
This case in 1968 deals with the transmission of regulated broadcasts over cable, which is not applicable to Internet only broadcasts. (The 1968 Supreme Court ruling is available here.)
I see a big Constitutional fight coming up here at some point, maybe over this bill, maybe not, but at some point. Under what basis does the US Government FCC have power to regulate speech on the Internet ? Anyone can put up a broadcast on the Internet; regulation of those broadcasts is thus a regulation of free speech, and thus a violation of the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law") ? Regulation has a tendency to start with sensible things, and wind up with stupidity like the Janet Jackson "breast malfunction" mess. (Do you want your web site or video posting to be done under such rules ?)
The Internet has been the most positive development in the cause of Freedom since the fall of the Berlin Wall. To put it simply, it has given the people a voice that they previously lacked. I hope that we don't screw it up in this country by giving it over to FCC regulations, no matter how sensible they seem on the surface. Applying FCC regulation to the Internet will almost inevitably lead to a situation where only major corporations have the ability (in fact if not in law) to broadcast on the Internet. (If you doubt me, try reading the FCC regs sometime.) The major corporations that own most on-air broadcasting in this country fear the Internet and would love to have it delivered into their hands; any bill that threatens to give them that power should be resisted.
The DOJ had nothing to do with it. The Universities themselves decided that the Kindle didn't meet their requirements.
The problem with the term undue burden is it can change depending on who is asked to determine it. Get an over zealous government bureaucrat or inventive lawyer and suddenly costs some businesses would see as burdensome are now portrayed as acts of unkindness or greed. There are lawyers and even some professional victims who will love these new rules. There is a story of a San Diego area lawyer who has filed over 1500 lawsuits since 93! He hires out severely disabled people to visit businesses he targets, then "negotiates" a settlement with the business under the threat of "if you don't agree to our terms (how much money I want) and fix the problem we will sue you in court for even more.
Welcome to laws designed to be abused. of course government sites won't be threatened. Oh sure, there will be complaints, but watch out big sites. Any site where someone of "disability" would obviously desire to participate. Not that they would ever go to the site, but its not hard to find someone who needs a grand or two to declare such intent.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I have to side with the DoJ on that one, chief. In case you have not been in a bookstore lately we are within about one decade of physical printing on paper ceasing altogether (except for a tiny connoisseur market, like vinyl records today). Unless there is some requirement for accessibility, blind people will be denied the ability to read, shut off from all education and employment. Are you OK with that, seriously?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
What next? Cars have to be drivable by blind people? Radios have to have closed caption displays for the deaf? All movie theaters have to display subtitles? Every store that carries scissors have to have left-handed ones?
"Handicapped" means what it says. Life isn't fair, and some people aren't able to do things that others can. I'm all for reasonable accomodations, but this idea has gone waaaaaay too far.
You probably have no idea how much your comment sounds like a hysterical parent screaming "will somebody please think of the children" right now...
The natural progression of fire codes will lead to this and then to people being punished for constructing buildings that are not fire safe. Your little house or mom and pop store will get raked over the coals (tee hee) because it's a "public danger," and the argument will be that "sure, you have every right to build on your land, but you better make sure you don't endanger everyone else too."
You're playing the the "if we take one step, we'll take all the steps" slippery-slope card. Some infringements on liberty are worthwhile. Wheelchair ramps are worthwhile, just as fire walls are. I don't know if this piece of legislation will be worthwhile, as I haven't read it and am not an expert in this area. However, by your level of stridency, I doubt you are either.
That logic didn't come out of nowhere. It is it the end state of egalitarianism: if we ALL can't do it, then no one can.
I'm working on an essay looking at egalitarianism as a societal form of OCD. I'd be interested in comments from the peanut gallery^W^W insightful Slashdot crowd.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The Kindle is a bad example -- the Kindle program was shut down, but it is quite possible that a relatively small effort by Amazon could make the device totally acceptable -- the Kindle 2 already had a screen reader (it could read books out loud), all that was missing was something that read the menus out loud so that a blind person could actually use the device. In other words, it had all of the hardware capabilities and only needed a bit more software -- software that would be relatively simple compared to the screenreader software that they already had.
The Kindle 3 incorporates menus that you can listen to. It will be interesting to see whether they meet accessibility standards.
Unless there is some requirement for accessibility, blind people will be denied the ability to read, shut off from all education and employment. Are you OK with that, seriously?
Hold on a sec. Deep breath. You're not on Slashdot because you hate technology.
Now, then, we're talking about an all-digital world. Where we have good text-to-speech software, better than Ray Kurzweil's reader from the 1970's. His device, and similar devices today, are mostly limited by the quality of OCR.
By contrast, an all-digital world is a dream for blind people who want to consume books. How much of a pain in the ass is it to have a home reader where you have to align pages of a physical book, turn them, etc. vs. having an iPod-form-factor device that can download most any book from Amazon?
There are 2-3 million blind (enough) people in the United States alone to make this a hugely attractive market. The only thing that can get in the way of a product like this is the government itself. Its copyright laws (DMCA and standard) with threats of 'rapecage or death' for violators may dissuade profit-seekers from doing a DRM-break on whatever formats are common. This a potential multi-billion-dollar industry, they just need to get out of the way if they care about blind people.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It would be nice if E-readers are disabled friendly!
Seeing as there is a group of people in the states that speak Spanish, but not English, should (under this bill) /. offer a spanish equivalent version as well?
Or is inability to understand English not considered as disabling in the USA as physical handicaps?
I mean, Braille is a language right? Well so is Spanish... so if you were to mandate availability of a resource in Braille, why not in Spanish?
(I do realise that there exist other options to make resources accessible for folk with less-than-optimal sight)
Not trying to troll, seriously wondering.
... I think it's great that these things exist, but does every devices have to be supported? WHy not just do the popular ones and dedicated ones? I also noticed they can be very expensive too if having to pay for them too. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
We do need laws to stop DRM from killing screen readers and other text to speech stuff.
There is a way to add captions that is non-invasive and which will soon be required. The legislation that is focus of this article is invisible but quite important.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Kurt Vonnegut wrote an excellent short story, "Harrison Bergeron", where this sort of legislation has been taken to an extreme. It can be found in his short story collection "Welcome to the Monkey House". Well worth the read, like most of Vonnegut's work.
> news websites? questionable.
I disagree, and so does the Department of Justice! Just as it is now settled law that their buildings must be accessible, soon it will be illegal for the websites of medium and large businesses to discriminate against people with disability. It is about time!
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
If there's a need for a disabled-friendly Blackberry or iPhone or whatever ... wouldn't the market invent one and sell it? Why should ALL of us pay for features we neither need nor want?
I see no disabled-friendly footballs out there. Nor hand grenades. Nor microscopes. Nor National Match quality .22 caliber rifles. Nor Porsche race cars. Perhaps might there be things the disabled should NOT be doing? Like trying to see ANYTHING on a tiny little screen, trying to punch tiny little keys and buttons?
As usual the KongressKritters are totally off-base, doing the politically correct thing, and not showing a lick of sense or moderation.
Morons.
Well first of all text-to-speech is a lousy substitute for text, and if you don't believe that why don't you try it for a day.
But that point aside, let's imagine there's a device that can read text and display Braille. Then let's imagine that all the publishers decide to publish their e-books in a format that no Braille display can read (say for DRM purposes, or to make them unreadable on a competitor's device, or because their layout people are too damned lazy to learn and apply open standards).
That's the issue of accessibility.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Government + gov affiliated + gov contracted sites should have a legal mandate to provide minimal accessibility. Other sites should get peer pressure. Paying to have good free tools developed to make this trivially easy to set up for private companies will probably be the most effective route though.
MORON?
Seriously, could he have picked more unrelated technologies?
We've moved from Braille to Broadcast, from Broadband to the Blackberry. We've moved from spelling letters in someone's palm to the Palm Pilot.
What does braille have to do with broadcasting?
What does broadband have to do with blackberry?
What does......what the hell is he talking about "spelling letters in someone's palm"...Helen Keller? And what does that have to do with Palm Pilots?
This guy is talking out the side of his neck (where the words don't pass through the brain first). He's comparing apples and butterflies here! Perhaps he's trying to get a handle on all this technology himself - is stupid a disability?
How exactly is the emerging 3DTV supposed to work for the blind in this perfect accessible world? -- 'OK Harry, I know you can't see this 3D boxing match, so I'll show you what just happened......hold your head real still - !!POW!!. Was that 3D enough for you?'
"Lame" - Galaxar
You are correct that catering to those with disabilities is not sufficiently profitable to companies this is happening in the open market. Which is exactly why we need legislation to raise the floor and make accessibility a fundamental cost of doing business for everyone.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Weirdly enough meeting coding standards set out in HTML is almost always good enough. Keep style separate from content. Have alt text for images. Braille readers will be able to ignore the css and make all that html goodness meaningful.
The ADA and other workplace protections say that you can't be discriminated against if you can do the essential functions of your job.
I'm waiting for the first appellate-level case where judges have to decide if it's okay to discriminate against someone if they can't use the corporate-standard handheld device but they can use a different, possibly much more expensive device, that is not the company standard.
Also, I'm waiting to see if any judge will dare tell any company "if you insist on using method A for corporate communications and it effectively discriminates against the disabled, I'll order you to allow disabled people to use method B and I'll order you to make sure method B is functionally equivalent to method A or I'll order you to stop using method A unless you can show that method A is essential to your business."
In other words, if a company either deliberately or tacitly uses non-accessible communication methods not because those particular methods are essential compared to accessible methods, but either as a smokescreen to discriminate or simply as a way to save money without caring about the impact on the disabled, I expect judges to rule against them.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
OK, fine, I don't know which has a higher data rate, but if you say it's Braille, that's good enough for me. The input to a Braille reader or a text-to-speech reader is the same, letters (hrm, what do the blind do in iconographic locales?).
So, defeating DRM is sufficient in both cases to make a commercial product. DRM can only exist when Government threatens violent action against those who would circumvent it. Remove the threat and DRM-defeats appear on the market.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
There was need to shut it down. That was an authoritarian move that could just as easily been handled with the DoJ coming up with a list of concrete steps the program must take before it can become a part of the official university processes.
For tax payers and the government, the results of such a study would not really matter, although I agree with you that it would be interesting to have the data. From a strictly financial accounting perspective, the cost of providing food, shelter, and some basic quality of life can only be more expensive than subsidizing gainful employment. Taxpayers and government are on the hook for the former even if they would disavow the latter. Unless one wishes to countenance warehousing, which we did for a long while in the U.S., this is good fiscal policy -- as well as being the better moral choice.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
I honestly thought this country had come far in support of people with various abilities or limitations. But, the majority of these posts prove other wise. I have never before seen so many people spew bile against their fellow human. The worst statements on here include the words "tyranny," "lowest common denominator," "pointless," "punishing." Each of the posts that use these words use them to illustrate the result of requiring content to have availability in an accessible format.
Allow me to make some corrections. Not providing content accessibility is "punishing," "tyrannical," and "pointless" to the individuals who require accessibility. Content that is not accessible is content that is only available to the "lowest common denominator," that would be you dear reader.
It's the 21st century. Technology can fix everything, right? Well, except for bigotry. Every time a bill is introduced that would impose an accessibility requirement on private sector, there is this massive out cry of government overstepping its place, of how the economy will be destroyed, and all civilization will be eradicated. BS, BS, and more BS. For 25 years following the passage of ADA, our economy flourished and civilization expanded.
No body is suggesting we put braille on paintings, perhaps chaboud should RTFA before postings stupidity. What is requested is that a debit transaction terminal be usable by someone who can't see the touch screen, I'm talking to you Target. What is requested is that web site creators provide navigational systems that don't require vision and the use of a mouse because it has an overly complex roll over menu system. You know this would make those sites easier to use with touch based devices too (smart phones). Oh, we unimpeded individuals wouldn't want that. Putting raised braille lettering on a television's inputs would not increase the cost of a television, it would make it so a blind person could figure out which phono jack is the video and which phono jack is the audio. Accessibility does not meant make it usable by the stupid, accessibility means make it usable.
Please drop the arrogant bigotry of "I can see and hear just fine. If you who can't you should just stay home where I don't have to see you."
Crippling debt, exponentially-increasing entitlement costs, addiction to empire-building, Wall Street raiding the American workers' pensions via their whores in the White House and Congress, Mexican drug cartels operating with impunity along the southern border while our young men and women die halfway around the world to bring our "way of life" to people who hate us, and this decadent bum is bitching about accessibility on mobile devices. Can anyone deny any longer that we are an empire destined for the trash bin of history unless there is REAL wholesale change in Washington D.C.? Hey Markey you fucking douchebag - why don't you propose some legislation to tax corporate profits generated overseas at a much higher rate than profits generated here in the US and bring some of the manufacturing jobs we lost back home, you fucking pig?
Yes, I am. The Kindle DOES support text-to-speech, and there are electronic braille displays that can be attached to a computer allowing the blind and deaf to access the machine and any content it can display (such as Kindle books). Think those solutions are inadequate? Well then it sounds like there's an opportunity for an intelligent and enterprising engineer to become very rich. You see, that's how this country USED to operate. It used to be a land where a person with a good idea could go from poverty to riches solely under the power of his own intelligence and motivation. But then people like you somehow got a foothold and started making everyone run the race of life with weights on. The GPP was right. Your attitude is, "if everyone can't use it, then no one can." The problem is, the utopia you are trying to create will collapse on itself when every last creative person has been robbed of their will to create. So in summary, you can go fuck yourself.
Wrong, the EEOC states that companies need only make "reasonable accommodation" for accessibility. Smaller companies with limited resources do not need to provide bathrooms for the disabled, wheelchair ramps, etc. Larger companies are expected to do so because they have more resources and have a greater likelihood of doing business with disabled patrons. The size of a business is the measuring stick used to determine what accommodations should be made. The same would be true for any web related accommodations. So no your blog that nobody reads and small mom and pop shops would not have to make any accommodations.
No one is asking that web pages be dumbed down. If businesses were beter about the basics, like alt tags and closed captioning, there would not be end-user clamoring for legislation.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
If the private sector recognized the market value there would not be end-users (with disabilities) loudly complaining to their legislators. Your vaunted "leading Internet companies", at least on the social media front, are part of the problem.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
I just returned from an embassy, I needed to do a simple thing, don't want to get into details, but the amount of paperwork, translation of documents that really didn't have anything to do with the question at hand, notarization of all documents, various signatures, etc., and then payments, payments, payments, payments, all of this means that there is an entire ARMY of people who are not actually producing anything and whose only reason there it seems to make things more difficult than they should be while charging for it.
That's all I see governments as - leeches.
You can't handle the truth.
Fallacy? Windows IS broken... Horribly... In fact, I'm making a fortune cleaning up viruses in my spare time from many of those broken Windows.
Require that all forms of public expression be accessible to the blind, deaf, and otherwise impaired, and you raise the cost of entry of doing such to the point that most people won't find it practical any more. How many youtube videos would disappear if their creator had to caption them? How many web pages would go away if they had to be accessible to the blind?
as requested in the other comment, my thoughts:
There are 2-3 million blind (enough) people in the United States alone to make this a hugely attractive market.
For mainstream products, possibly. Then again, mainstream products ride on high volumes, and sometimes a few millions really isn't that much. The thing is: If blind people were such an attractive market, then by the laws of the market, suppliers would be all over them to provide them with stuff. I'm not blind, and I don't know anyone closely who is, but from what I gather, that is not exactly the case.
This a potential multi-billion-dollar industry, they just need to get out of the way if they care about blind people.
They don't. In which country does the government care for anyone except themselves, really? What they do is listen to lobbyists. And the "we are all dying because of piracy!!!" lobby is a little bit larger than the "think of the blind people" lobby.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That's exactly the story I was thinking of. The beginning of The Incredibles alluded to that story, I thought, when superheroes were forbidden from using their super powers. It's funny, I grew up in a house where the rote response to my please of, "but that's not fair!" was "life's not fair." Imagine how mind-boggling it is for me to encounter a person who's entire paradigm revolves around the fairness of things...
The FCC has a call for public comment on this topic.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Looks like somebody got an exception put in for search engines:
(a) In General- Except as provided in subsection (b), no person shall be liable for a violation of the requirements of this Act ... to the extent such person--
as requested in the other comment, my thoughts:
Thanks, Tom.
The thing is: If blind people were such an attractive market, then by the laws of the market, suppliers would be all over them to provide them with stuff. I'm not blind, and I don't know anyone closely who is, but from what I gather, that is not exactly the case.
I agree completely. Part of it is that it's really hard. Ray's magazine reader was revolutionary. His gear was(is?) expensive (to produce and purchase). Groups have formed to issue grants, but if the manufacturer isn't compensated, they can't be produced.
Going digital greatly simplified this. There are screen readers for most kinds of computers. Even GNOME, free, has one. There's no factory to build, so the costs are greatly reduced, thus producers increase.
Now, I understand that the best screenreader is on Windows. Interpreting screen layout and window stacking isn't algorithmically simple. As I understand it, GNOME can't do as well because of patent protection (threats of violence from the Government) on the commercial software. One would have to assume that GNOME (backed by however many blind-people's foundations it could attract) would do worse than the commercial offering for this to be a net benefit to blind people. It's not even clear in this simple case that there is a utilitarian benefit.
Then take DRM'ed e-Books or periodicals. The problem is further simplified - data is linear, or at least semantically organized (like a newspaper feed) a priori - one of the hardest parts of screen and book readers!
But, as you mention the market isn't huge compared to non-blind people. Amazon only has so much money. They probably don't want to invest that in what would be for them a small return, when they can get a bigger return elsewhere. But for a startup (innovation always comes from startups) it's a juicy, lucrative market. But why can't they address this market? Artificial impediments imposed by the Government. Go ahead and try to break Amazon's DRM to help blind people - it's not even a viable business plan with the Sword of Damocles a horsehair away.
Last, but not least, most utilitarian arguers tend to set the value of Liberty to 0. This is demonstrably untrue. Whether you take King John being surrounded at Runnymede or the liberation of women in any recent society, the benefits of Liberty are clear and apparent. One better fully understand all the consequences of repressing Liberty before deciding that it's a good idea.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Yes, DMCA is a nightmare for the blind. Fortunately, there is an exception. See point (6).
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
The Web is an information medium. The same things that make the Internet work for search engines, RSS, and (someday) the Semantic Web are even more important for accessibility to people with disabilities.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Here is a good example for you. It used to be the case that set-top Closed Caption decoder boxes cost Deaf individuals a couple of hundred dollars. Economies of scale, now that TVs have had the circuit built-in for a decade, has reduced this to pennies per box. Even if you personally never use captioning, does that not appeal to your basic sense of human decency?
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
If you leave it up to the businesses to decide whether to be accessible or not, very few of them are going to conclude that it makes economic sense for them to do so. The result is that many (if not most) of the "non-mandatory" services people rely on, such as grocery stores for example, would not be accessible.
Now I'm not in a wheelchair myself and I don't know any friends or relatives who are either, but even I can appreciate that it would be very marginalizing for someone who was, if none of the local businesses they wanted to shop at, were wheelchair-accessible. Those are the bad old days, and we don't want to go back there. I like living in a society that is willing to absorb the cost of providing wheelchair accessibility, and other reasonable accomodation (like the above-mentioned heairing-aid loops at movie theatres) so that people with disabilities can still participate in our society and not be completely marginalized. I like the fact that every parking lot at supermarkets, etc. has reserved parking for people with such disabilities. Even if some businesses end up being forced to spend on accessibility features that turn out to never be used, its worth it so that if a situation does come up where they would be used, then they are there.
Example: For 8 years, nobody was hired at that workplace with a disability. Fine. But at least they could hire one, because their workplace is accessible. But what if they didn't have the accessibility? They would not even be willing to consider hiring that person, they would basically be forced into discriminating against them. I think its better for society to force a more level playing field up-front.
After all, imagine you're in a car accident a month from now: T-boned by a drunk driver, and you permanently lose the use of your legs. I bet you would be glad that you could still get around places like grocery stores, movie theatres, shopping malls... all because the society you live in decided to make accomodations for people in wheelchairs, whereever we reasonably could.
You need to get out more. There is now a modern and popular trend not to kick disabled veterns out of jobs.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
The cost of doing business, once you are not very small, is that no one gets to discriminate. What would be truly unfair is to not have that expectation for all medium/large companies.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Go ahead and try to break Amazon's DRM to help blind people -- the government has your back (see point (6)).
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
I think that's it. Companies might want to do the right thing, but unless everyone has to do it, the short term cost savings view wins the day.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
That must have been from local jurisdiction requirements. The Federal ADA requirements are actually pretty flexible when it comes to small businesses. Not that makes your acquaintances feel any better.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Weirdly enough meeting coding standards set out in HTML is almost always good enough.
Exactly. I don't think it's too much to ask, and as I said, it usually is beneficial to able-bodied users as well. If it's easy to parse, you can quickly extract the info you need using scripts and such.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The problem is web "designers" who "design" pages for a certain resolution, DPI and eyesight.
Ideally, the sizes of all images on a page would be specified in ems. But that runs into two problems. First, too many user agents (including Firefox on Linux) use ugly nearest-neighbor resampling when scaling images. Second, the subset of CSS that user agents implement has no way to specify the scale factor for use with the background-image and background-position properties.
As I understand the intent of the legislation, the only required subtitle tracks are those in the same language as each of the video's audio tracks. The rest are just nice to have if they expand your market.
The problem is that we as a society prefer force to persuasion in general. The same society that won't spend $20,000 on someone for a drug rehab program will happily spend $180,000 to lock that very same person up for a few years.
(hrm, what do the blind do in iconographic locales?)
You could always look it up on Google.
Sounds like you have a disability. Please report to your local ADA office to fill out some papers.
What it is actually leading to is an onslaught of groups struggling to be declared an officially recognized disabled group so that they can then start seeking special treatment for whatever ails them.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
So when GM declares bankruptcy, they are no longer required to comply with these laws? I've known the proprietors of companies with hundreds of employees that were barely squeaking a profit,or losing money. If profitability is the measure, it is a stupid one.
I also knew a small printing shop that was trying to hire their first employee. They couldn't because they'd have to build the wheelchair accessible bathroom and ramps. You're claim that smaller companies would not have to comply patently false, and would be discriminatory if true.
Just like sexual harassment, the definition of "reasonable accommodation" is set by the one claiming harm.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Hideous flash-encumbered websites are the direct opposite of accessible, and we all hate them.
Do you propose requiring Flash animated series such as Homestar Runner to be encoded with an audio description track?
Have alt text for images.
How would a web application's code come up with meaningful alt text for the image from a time-lapse camera which is substantially as useful to the blind person as the image is to a sighted person? Or for a CAPTCHA?
Don't mandate that each device be "accessible". Make an incentive to produce accessible devices. I really don't need a braille display on my iPhone because some people are deaf and blind. Instead make it worth it for Apple to either make or license the technology to make an accessible version of the device. (no need for the retina display!).
Else I will start demanding an LCD display be part of every braille display so I can have it "accessible" to me. They don't want what is extraneous on their devices as it just raises the cost with no benefit. Same for me thanks. Don't burden the whole of society in a really really stupid manner when the overall goal can be achieved in a simpler manner. Incentives for mobile devices or subsidy of them if they are accessible.
I wish that in the upcoming election in the US we can exchange the current capitol hill wags for people who can think. Even if they have noble goals, they need to mandate the social aspects not the technological ones. This is like mandating wheelchair access and alternate controls for every automobile. IDIOTS in our government with the best intentions.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Ah, very nice, thank you. For the record:
That sure seems to open up the way for an eBook DRM-breaking project as an input to a Braille display.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
the market did not magically move toward an accessible world or even toward universal design on its own. without the carrot of the 508 purchase requirements, and the stick of the ADA's potential applicability the enormous combined efforts of academia (gregg, john, wendy, et al.) and corporate interests (andy, cynthia, matt, alex et al. ) would not have been expended in the Web Accessibility Initiative or in the internal campaigns at IBM, Adobe, Microsoft which have led toward, not there yet, ever more integrated stories for accessiblity.
with WCAG2.0, and ATAG soon, we have a pretty good set of normative guidance for web content. ARIA and IAccessible2 / UIA spec out a good start to how we interface between content and applications across OS/Browser combinations.
none of this would have moved forward without the intervention of government regulations. the regs did not solve the issue, nor were they expected to do so. they set minimal conformance requirements, but led to better outcomes. market forces are good at finding solutions, but not good at seeking them; without the friction of laws the market is happy with the status quo.
the pouty psuedo arguement ( or neo-con pablum ) of costs is directly contradicted by the actual observed outcomes which have been cost _savings_ as the techniques coalescing in universal design are streamlining production of content and creating economies of scale thereby.