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Proposed ADA Requirements May Affect Public Internet Use
An anonymous reader writes "The Associated Press is reporting on federal officials who want to expand the application of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to require accommodations by public websites, call centers, and technology providers. Hearings are scheduled in Chicago, Washington, and San Francisco. New rules could be implemented as soon as 2012. 'For more than a decade, the Justice Department has interpreted the ADA to apply to websites that offer goods and services. But now that idea could be clarified, and timetables for compliance could be set. ... The Justice Department is considering making it clear that some personal, noncommercial content would not be affected.'"
I use a content management system which, if it does not already implement alt tags for all images, can be easily coaxed to do so. And I use (so far as I am able) standards-compliant markup, so this is not going to affect me.
It's even long been possible to have accessible flash. So what's the problem exactly? It's not like the web would lose anything but dead weight...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
equality but I am sick of mandated equality. Let the market decide
if store X does not want to cater to group Y (for whatever reason, infrastructure costs to accommodate group Y or simple dislike for group Y It should be the store owners prerogative.
In this day and age, if people are THAT upset about it, they can organize boycotts until store X either changes, or goes under.
here is a perfect example in NY
smoking indoors is banned.... NOW I believe the store should have a right to dictate whether or not they want to allow smoking in their PRIVATELY OWNED establishment
the customer will either complain, and ask that smoking be not allowed and not go back until it is, or if enough people are bothered, he will see it on his balance sheet and ban smoking himself.
the government getting involved is always the answer to a question NO one asked.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
There are too many flashy (pun intended) websites without any secondary way of seeing them. A proper public website should be navigable with a screen reader. As "Web 2.0" has marched on, it has only gotten worse. Some are even so user hostile that even those wanting a bit of privacy without Flash or javascript enabled are simply locked out.
Exceptions should be made for personal pages, but for organizations, governments, and commerce sites that deal with the public, there shouldn't be any excuse.
--
BMO
How is this not a first amendment violation? If person X, or lets say even company Y doesn't want to make their articles/website/cartoons/jokes available in specific format, what right does the government have to come in and do anything about it?
And why is this any sort of priority for the justice department? I have news for the feds, your airplane terrorist watchdogs are molesting children right now, find something more important to work on. Mkay?
Unfortunately I think this kind of thing is necessary.
You can't rely on businesses to go out of their way to provide access to a relatively small group of people because, and I say this with no intended cruelty, they're probably not worth it. You can argue about PR and being "good guys" .. but at the end of the day, money is what makes the decision.
Unless you sell a very niche product, chances are the amount of business you do with disabled persons probably won't come close to covering the costs of providing access.
I think you really do need "the man" to come down and dictate that you have to make efforts to accommodate disabled persons.
Lets just hope they don't do so in a way which actually makes things worse (which they will, they always do..).
"What's likely to make people anxious about changes to the ADA is uncertainty over what those changes will involve."
Not to mention the possibility of large fines when my (commercial) websites aren't compliant with some obscure requirement in the new guidelines. And the cost involved in me dropping the 10 other things I'm doing to read the guidelines, check all my websites, make sure they're compliant or if they're not, spend time and money to fix them.
So, no, my anxiety is not just about "uncertainty over what those changes will involve".
(And people wonder why small businesses are not hiring!!)
I'm all for making sure handicapped people have access to necessary services... however *requiring* movie theaters to provide closed captioning devices at every seat is ridiculous. Watching a movie is is not a life necessity. If the demand is there, and the people that need it are willing to pay a price that makes business sense, then the theaters will have Closed captioning equipment. If it doesn't make business sense, then they won't.
What the fuck is with the government wanting to tell *PRIVATE* business who they have to make non-mandatory (ie. entertainment) products available to?
ADA is mostly bullshit anyways. Hey, let's also make sure we have a wheel chair ramp for bungee jumping, because you never know when some cripple with deteriorating bones might want to plunge down a hundred feet with only their legs attached to a giant rubber band. Why not require the same Closed captioning devices for normal theater (plays) as well? How about all sporting events too? Gotta have CC devices at the seats so you can hear the refs calls. Maybe we need to throw some braille street signs in there too, wouldn't want the blind to be discriminated against when driving a car, you know?
The bottom line is, if there is money to be made, some company *will* do it voluntarily. If the market can't support it, oh well, tough break, it doesn't happen.
Well I kind of see the point of those who say the government shouldn't force private businesses to run their business a certain way. But I also see that that is the same argument of the manager who refused to serve black customers at the Woolworth's lunch counter.
It boils down to the age-old questions: the conservative asks "what kind of government can we tolerate?" and the liberal asks "what kind of society do we want to be?"
So I think you're going too far to say "there shouldn't be any excuse --" private property rights and general freedom from government interference are strong and valid arguments. On the other hand I don't want to turn back the clock to 1963, either. Life is better with civil rights legislation. It's easier to be proud to be an American. So I'm inclined to take your side and say to Web site operators, "suck it up, follow the law."
I also think the government should be the first to implement its own usability requirements... stating with the Web site of the court that handed down this decision.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I always figured it was because the keys were mass-produced, and it's cheaper to just make a few more with braille still on them then to create special "Drive-through ATMs"
I have food allergies. I expect an honest answer if I ask you a question about ingredients. If you don't know, tell me you don't know and I will go somewhere else.
I do NOT expect everybody on earth to remove all traces of soy from everything so that I don't get sick. That's ridiculous.
You want to know what's also ridiculous? I have seen parking spaces at busy malls that go unused for YEARS because they are handicapped spaces. Why are there so many spaces when there are so few handicapped people? I appreciate the spaces for people like my friend who was handicapped for many years, but even he agreed that the sheer number of spaces was way too high.
I like America's sense of caring for certain unfortunate groups, but the balance is too far the other way these days.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Actual reason for braile on drive up ATMs: it's cheaper to make one model of ATM buttons and have some that don't get fully used than to make two molds for ATM keys
That analogy just doesn't hold true on the internet. There are dozens of browsers, hundreds of protocols and underlying technologies that were designed to present information visually, often in a multimedia format. An ATM serves a single purpose -- even just the tiny section of the internet we call the web serves a nearly infinite number of purposes, and have so many competing technologies and layouts, ways of doing things, etc., that applying any kind of standard to it is largely a waste of time. The protocols that run the internet and the design decisions and processes that created them are organic, occasionally irrational (browser cookies come to mind), and surprise the hell out of anyone who's studied it in any detail that it works at all. Bottom line: It's gonna cost a lot of money.
"The Justice Department is considering making it clear that some personal, noncommercial content would not be affected.'"
And 'some' is where the whole thing falls apart. I see no such legislation saying that the government is willing to pay web designers (or their companies) a stipend for the labor required to make their site ADA compliant. And even if they did, the conversion/update costs would vary wildly from site to site, with some needing very little work and others requiring a complete overhaul. It is neither fair, nor reasonable, to expect any business to redesign their websites to be accessible to 5% of the population. And not to be callous, but from a business standpoint -- why would you try to market to a small portion of the population that lives on disability checks? They don't have much disposable income, so it is unlikely they'll be buying whatever you are selling.
And excemptions for personal or noncommercial content is questionable as well -- we've already had states try to force people to buy a business license for running a blog that (le gasp!) had a few advertisement banners by calling it a "commercial enterprise". The government is still (30 years on) completely retarded when it comes to understanding how the internet works. I mean, they still think pissing away billions on copyright law enforcement is doing some good.
If these people are serious about making the internet more accessible, they need to start by investing money at the head of the problem, not papering over its ass -- they need to get involved in standards committees, work with companies to produce protocols, technologies, and access methods that simplify the process of organizing and processing information that is usually presented visually in a non-visual way. And they're going to have to deal with a lot of resistance from advertisement companies and private industry that have thrived on bypassing standards, screwing things up, and being generally annoying in order to eek out a little extra profit.
Projects like NoScript and AdBlocker are damned useful for this because they cut out the crap on a webpage and reduce what's there to what is important ... rather than listening to "Breaking news -- A fire has broken out in... try out the new 2007 lexus... 2031 West 94th street, where a mother of three was ... have you tried new Charmin Ultra?" You get the idea. The first step in accessibility is clutter elimination and reducing the design to its barest essentials; Because while we can browse through a page in a few seconds, when you have to LISTEN to the page being read to you instead of speed reading, now you're looking at minutes of time.
Just a thought...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Yeah, well, I also keep pointing out to people that the original design of HTML was intended to make it easy to build documents that would be readable on a very wide range of screen sizes and shapes. This was done by "marking up" the document with hints to the rendering software about the structure of the document, so that the software could format it sensibly on whatever screen you had, or even with no screen for the visually impaired or for people (e.g., drivers and airplane pilots) whose eyes are busy elsewhere.
But the "designers" sorta took over, and worked from the attitude that they were producing a work of art that should only be produced in exactly the same format that they designed. They specified the exact size, shape, and screen position for everything, and did their best to make sure that it wouldn't work well any other way.
With luck (and a bit of encouragement), maybe we can develop a new breed of designer whose aesthetic is based on clarity and comprehensibility for all, not just those with the best eyes and the biggest screens. And maybe we can get the browser makers to add a switch that disables all size= and width= attributes, to help defeat the designers' efforts.
Actually, people are always complaining about the way my screens are covered with lots of small windows, each using the smallest fonts that I can read. This window currently uses a 10-point font, which most people looking over my shoulder can't read because they're farther away than I am and/or don't have eyes as good as mine. But that doesn't matter. I have some visually-impaired friends. And sometimes my only Net access is via my G1 phone or my wife's iPhone. So I'm learning to design for them. Now if I could just figure out how to persuade people to pay me to work on such "design". I think it'd make the world a better place. But I've found that most professional designers, as well as most professional managers, don't agree with me.
(And my Mac's silly 2-finger resizing just spontaneously shrunk my font to maybe 8 points. But I can still read it. And it should be readable on your screen, regardless of its size. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
/offtopic
who says my male, erogenous nipples go unused?
They aren't erogenous. Guys just don't get off on nipple play unless they're on drugs or something. Maybe they just can't stand having to play with themselves for hours at a go on the off chance they'll get a happy for their efforts, I don't know... but the vast majority of men put their dick in their right hand and pull. I know this because I've caught them waaay too many times doing it. I will be well and truly shocked the day I walk in on a guy laid back in bed looking at pictures of naked girls... and have his hands down his shirt instead of his pants.
P.S. Lefties, I don't mean to leave you out. There's nothing wrong with fapping with your left hand, no matter what your dad said.
P.P.S. Mods -- have a sense of humor. Alternatively, don't mod this comment and instead get up, walk over to the bed, and prove me wrong. -_-
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Its also a typical case of mission creep. Every bureaucracy must justify their existence and continue to expand in order to justify more money and more people. These federal monsters need to be clawed back before the US faces European rates of taxation to pay for it all.
With luck (and a bit of encouragement), maybe we can develop a new breed of designer whose aesthetic is based on clarity and comprehensibility for all, not just those with the best eyes and the biggest screens.
Oh god, please. I hate when sites look good at one and only one resolution (whether 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, or any of the newer ones, though most coding to a specific size don't go above 1024x768). They are too narrow sometimes, and too wide others. Frames, tables, and everything else that make it impossible to view reasonably in any size other than they designate.
Learn to love Alaska
Not to mention the possibility of large fines when my (commercial) websites aren't compliant with some obscure requirement in the new guidelines.
As the fines and penalties becomes stiffer and the rules become more complex and difficult, will we end up with ADA trolls who find ADA issues and then either offer "remediation consulting services" or an anonymous phone call to whoever enforces the ADA?