Dept. of Justice Considers Web For ADA 296
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CmdrTaco
from the this-can-only-end-well dept.
from the this-can-only-end-well dept.
beetle496 noted a blog entry saying "The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on the Accessibility of Web Information and Services Provided by Entities Covered by the ADA (i.e., State and Local Government Entities and Public Accommodations). You can read the fact sheet, or the entire notice. In short, the Department is seeking comments on their desire to revise regulation to 'establish specific requirements for State and local governments and public accommodations to make their websites accessible to individuals with disabilities.' The Department is seeking specific comment on many things including the standards they should adopt, and if there should be any exemptions for certain entities (e.g., small business) before they publish their Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. This is amazing news! The impact that this will have for individuals with disabilities cannot be overemphasized. It is time for our digital society to forever include individuals of all abilities. The period of public comment is open for 180 days."
Regulations.gov page isn't remotely 508-compliant (Score:5, Insightful)
and yet they are collecting comments on establishing more standards that go beyond 508?
Most of the pics aren't tagged, the graphical navigation tabs are useless to a screen reader, and the page is full of popup javascript.
It contains an enbedded alert that may be read off by an interpreter: "Regulations.gov will undergo a scheduled maintenance outage and will be unavailable Saturday September 19, 2009, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. (ET)" Thanks for wasting time with last year's outage info.
Come on, can't government provide GOOD examples of accessible resources ESPECIALLY when gathering suggestions for how current rules and regs can be improved?
Re:Good news...? (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF?
If a business doesn't cater to anyone handicapped (I guess it could happen), or just is ignorant enough to not do so and lose that business, that should be up to them.
No one is holding a gun to the person accessing a site, nor should they be holding a gun to a private business to cater to any specific crowd.
Re:Good news...? (Score:2, Insightful)
The Reversal of Freedoms Act of 1990 doesn't care about such things!
First step (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good news...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should websites be exempt from these requirements?
Because I shouldn't have to hire a lawyer to make sure I'm complaint with thousands of pages of State and Federal regulations when I publish a webpage?
Re:Good news...? (Score:3, Insightful)
The ADA doesn't force record shops to offer only products that can be enjoyed by the deaf. So I don't see any reason why it would require web cartoonists to offer only products that can be enjoyed by the blind. Just put some fucking alt-text in there and make it navigable by screen reader. Yes, that should be taken care of by good design, but precious few people care about good design.
Re:Good news...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe because the web is a medium and not a place?
I'm all for requiring public physical places to be designed with the needs of the disabled in mind. This only makes sense and I think has made a tremendous difference for both the legally disabled and our generally aging population but I don't think the web is the equivalent of a public place. I think it's a medium more akin to a newspaper or book.
Would it make sense to REQUIRE all book publishers to publish extra copies in braille for example? I can certainly see the value of regulations which said that if the publisher (or website author) doesn't do it themselves a third-party service provider must not be prevented from (legally) making the information accessible but to require all websites to do it themselves would put a huge burden on website authors and may just cause a lot of people to stop putting information on the web unless they need to or their is a compelling commercial reason to do so.
Let's look at a project to scan in material from old books and make it available in image/pdf format for research. If the information were required to be accessible it would add a significant amount of work and cost to the (already expensive) digitization process. In my own case where I am putting up some very specific historic and technical material which I am making no money on I might just stop doing it. This would be a net loss for the spread of knowledge.
These types of regulations work best when they encourage people to do the right thing but do NOT just stop anything from happening. eg. If people stopped building public places because of the expense of ADA compliance the ADA would not make sense on a societal level as public places have value. The same goes for websites.
Re:Just add cost (Score:4, Insightful)
how much will this cost tax payers.
I'm guessing just about enough money to fight the war in Iraq for 5 minutes. Auditing and recoding government websites will probably cost several million dollars, but that's peanuts compared to most government spending, and it's more than worth it to make sure disabled people have access to the government they help pay for.
Re:Good news...? (Score:1, Insightful)
What's more, rather than modifying a particular feature - e.g., modifying the entrance to have a ramp, modifying buttons with letters on them to have another set of letters on them -- we're talking about forcing translation of one form of content to another. This is in many cases, absolutely ridiculous. If I have a website for a painting gallery, sorry, but spending the extra time to change the pictures to words or requiring the removal of interactive animations (as horrible as they usually are, sometimes they're good) is a completely unnecessary burden. If a record label has a website, sorry, but deaf people aren't their audience. If my company develops audio or visual apps that don't make sense for deaf or blind people, then requiring my company to spend the extra time to cater to this non-audience is idiotic and wasteful.
And as difficult as it is for websites to survive based solely on ad revenues, this will make it that much harder.
Re:I know businesses that ended because of the ADA (Score:5, Insightful)
Home Depot lost a competitor and WalMart gained a low wage employee. Sounds like the ADA is functioning perfectly.
Re:Good news...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should websites be exempt from these requirements?
It depends on how broadly you draw "public accommodation". Take computer software in general, for example. Should the government ban the release of software (open source software in particular) that does not have special support for those with disabilities? What if instead it is provided as software as a service? Does an SAS application become a public accommodation just because it is free? What if it isn't?
Like many things, the reasonability of such requirements depends on how strict they are and how hard they are to implement. Banning websites like Google Maps on the grounds of inaccessibility would be pernicious. But there might be something an online mapping application could do that would make it somewhat more accessible. If the government does not draw the requirements with some considerable care, they could become fodder for decades of lawsuits.
Drawn carefully though, I think such requirements would be a good idea. An online travel ticket / reservation site is an excellent example of what should properly be considered a public accomodation. As should most sites that offer goods for sale, or provide reference information. Websites run by businesses should be held to a stricter standard than free services provided by individuals, though.
Re:Good news...? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and because we're 100% sure that the oh-so-enlightened Obama administration would never, ever use such a provision to quell free speech rights (unlike that bad ole' satan-worshiping Bush). It's going to be a total coincidence that "Justice" department lawyers only contact Web site owners who publish views opposed to the current administration's policies.
This year, they've contacted the NRA about their non-compliant Web site, while ignoring NOW. Once the sheeple vote in 2012, they'll be harassing PETA and ignoring the Chamber of Commerce.
In fact, I've been shocked, shocked! to find out that the Democrats are owned by lobbyists just like the Republicans. Not the SAME lobbyists, of course, but just as much a wholly owned subsidiary. Whodda thunk it?
Great for disabilities, bad for property rights (Score:4, Insightful)
It'll be great for those it benefits, but what about the further infringement on the right of a person to put what they please on their own website? If they don't cater to a particular audience, that audience doesn't have to visit the site. Not that this is specific to this aspect of the ADA; the same applies to brick-and-mortar stores as well. What gives anyone the right to use legal force against a business owner who doesn't configure his property so that it caters to particular people?
(Here come the negative mods in 3...2...1...)
Re:So now the web will go back to looking like 199 (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem with the current system (IMO) is that--as always--regulation and government-created scarcity has lead to efforts to game the system and unintended consequences out the wazoo.
This results in things like a morbidly obese patient slipping the doctor a $100 and getting a handicapped placard. So the fatty who most needs to walk the extra 100 ft a week now parks as close to the ice cream aisle as possible. Or to people either holding on to their placards after they've expired or making fake ones.
When I worked in construction in L.A (putting myself through college) with my dad's company I saw two projects canceled because of the cost of complying with the ADA. One was a parking structure where the powers-that-be decided that it wasn't sufficient to have the "correct" number of handicapped spaces on the ground level--there must be an elevator in case some handicapped person parked in a non-handicapped spot on the 2nd floor and couldn't use the stairs.
Unintended consequences, my friends: it's the gift of government that keeps on giving and giving and giving.
And you can be sure that any effort to label the Web as a "public accommodation" will be evenhandedly applied by whichever of our two corrupt parties is currently in power. They'd never even think of using the "Justice" Department to harass website owners whose sites are ideologically opposed. Never, ever... pinky-swear, cross their hearts and hope to die.
Re:Sick of Political Correctness (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, this isn't about the deaf being able to hear music.
This is about every citizen having equal access to government, for example.
If you don't know the difference, then I think I've figured out what your particular disability is.
Your insinuation that everyone gets their "fair share" of harship and that this is no different for, say, a blind person than anyone else... yeah, that's nothing short of laughable.
Now it woudl be easy to assume that you have no physical disability based on your comment. Alternately its possible that you have some (most likely minor) issue that your extremely proud of overcoming "on your own", in which case I guarantee there are ways you haven't even thought of that your daily life is affected. Either way, I'm willing to bet you have at least pretty good use of your eyes, ears, and arms.
So try this: if I'm right that you have use of your eyes, go through one day wearing a blindfold. All day. No peaking, for any reason. Now imagine doing that every day of your life.
If you don't have use of your eyes, then instead try going through a day having immobilized your writing-hand arm in a sling. Again, no use of that arm for any reason.
Then we can haev a conversation about your "fair share" of hardship.
Re:I know businesses that ended because of the ADA (Score:4, Insightful)
If he was renting the building, isn't it the landlord's responsibility to to install the ramp?
Re:Good news...? (Score:3, Insightful)
well, unless you are one of those people who insists on using Flash and Javascript for every damned thing, and considers creating a less "feature filled" version of your webpage to be an undue burden.
I consider the Federal Government telling me how to design my webpage to be an undue burden.
Re:I know businesses that ended because of the ADA (Score:3, Insightful)
They were more likely perfectly capable of doing so but that doesn't mean that the "could" in a legal sense. Perhaps that city had regulations that only allow licensed contractors to perform that type of work.
Re:I know businesses that ended because of the ADA (Score:2, Insightful)
Some people just seem to forget that the world doesn't owe them anything. If you're unemployed, that's nobody's problem except your own. Move to a city where you can find a job.
There's a difference between losing your job because of economic factors and losing it because of some new regulation or bureaucrat.
Not really related to the ADA but one of the most absurd things I ever saw was when OSHA fined my employer because we had a space heater with a uncovered fan in our maintenance shop. The fact that the space heater was mounted 20 feet off the ground and would require a ladder to reach didn't move the OSHA folks -- they still fined my employer. I guess someone could accidentally bring a ladder over and accidentally stick their hand into that fan or some such.
Re:Good news...? (Score:5, Insightful)
That has nothing to do with ADA, it's just a tired old joke. It's a very simple application of the economy of standardization.
Let's say I build ATMs.
If I'm going to build 10,000 ATMs and I have to make the the buttons, why in the hell would I make TWO kinds of button, one for ATMs that need Braille and one for ATMs that do not? That doubles the cost of my key molds or machining equipment, and I have to keep track of separate inventory of assembled ATM models and separate replacement keyboards.
Instead, I'm going to make one ATM model, offer different casings for it depending on whether you want a standalone or one that's built into a wall, and I'm done. I have exactly one ATM model in stock, and when you call and order one, I ship one.
When one of your customers in a fit of piqued rage about the fact that he has to deal with those little dots on the buttons busts it with his ever-present whiskey bottle, I can replace that keyboard with the secure knowledge that it's ADA-compliant even if it doesn't need to be, because it's cheaper to make them ALL compliant.
Standardization leads to a lot of little things like this. It's usually a lot cheaper to standardize on a part that has ALL of the features you could possibly need across as many applications as possible than to make specific parts that fill the exact feature set for each application.
Random example:
Why do you think Southwest is almost invariably good about having working aircraft where they need them? Because they fly only one basic model of aircraft. They've centered their entire business model around flying routes that can fill the 137 seats in a 737-300 or 737-700 (they have a few 737-500s with lower seating capacity for specific routes, but it's a small amount of their fleet). Their pricing adjusts dynamically to make sure that their planes fly nearly full.
All of their mechanics can work on any of their airplanes, all of their pilots can fly any of their airplanes, and if a plane breaks down or is horribly late they can (with very few exceptions) replace it with any aircraft in their fleet without having to worry about finding one with the right number of seats, a qualified crew, etc.
Re:Good news...? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, you will likely have to face a bunch of pissed off people lined up in the proper direction waiting their turn.
Having a handicapped person doesn't give you the right either to just do as you please, and hinder the normal people from going about their business in the normally prescribed manner.
Re:So now the web will go back to looking like 199 (Score:3, Insightful)
Except they mentioned possible exceptions for small businesses...which to me, means they ARE considering forcing these regulations on NON-govt. websites.
Welp ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess like everything else we over-tax and over-regulate, soon we'll drive all web hosting out of the United States.
This is going to be a hell of a country to live in 10-20 years from now when absolutely no business takes place here. :)
Re:I know businesses that ended because of the ADA (Score:1, Insightful)
Or perhaps the whole convenient story is a bunch of made-up horse shit.
Re:So now the web will go back to looking like 199 (Score:1, Insightful)
Never before has so much been done for so few.
I will never forget that.