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Proposed ADA Requirements May Affect Public Internet Use

Posted by Soulskill on from the allocating-the-best-e-parking-spots dept.

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.'"

1 of 420 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Fine with me by euphemistic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is what I thought until I did have to actually make standards compliant websites. I'm a web designer/developer for a government dept (not in the US though), and they require all websites and content to be accessible to those with disabilities and in regional areas with extremely low-bandwidth connections. I thought this would be hard, but making something standards compliant is really just a matter of checking a few extra things here and there, and adding a couple of extra features here and there, that's all it takes. It is actually less tedious and time-consuming than making a site work consistently across browsers. Got a video or audio file? Subtitle it or add a document which has a transcription. That's the hearing impaired taken care of. Low bandwidth audience? Compress those images and use them sparingly. Visually impaired? Make sure your designs have good text-background contrast, maybe add a text size changer in the website, and that's the low-level guys taken care of. For the completely blind, you just have to make sure your alt tags are in there, your CSS isn't a cryptic/poorly constructed clusterfuck and things are intuitively labelled.

    Only problem I have is that I have to buy a license for JAWS so I can test out my stuff on it; otherwise i use NVDA (open source & free download) just to make sure it's basically good.