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."
Re:Good news...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So now the web will go back to looking like 199 (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree with it; governments SHOULD be accessible to all. Note this doesn't cover private web sites. Most private web sites (by "private" I mean non-government) are shooting themselves in the foot if their sites aren't readily accessible to everyone.
Er, I must plead guilty, though. My Quake site (1997-2003) had spinning gifs (but not where they would interfere wiht reading the text), the background animated while loading (a Matrix-like pattern of ones and zeros that moved and disappeared), and no Midi loop, but a .wav of an edited to 20 second theme from the game. Rounded corners... But it was geared to the games Quake and Quake II, so it wasn't out of place. And it was accessible to the blind; I wrote the HTML and javascript in such a way that screen readers should have been able to parse, and images all had ALT tags.
OMFG, I created web 2.0. What have I done?? Please forgive me everybody! I promise never to do it again!
Re:Good news...? (Score:3, Interesting)
... Likewise, banks have to put braille on their ATMs, ...
Even the drive up ones! Also braille on elevator buttons in the parking garage.
I know businesses that ended because of the ADA (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Ding ding ding.
In my hometown, a hardware store couldn't afford to put in an ADA-compliant ramp for the one guy in town who used a wheelchair. When they said as much, he sued. The store, in the family for 2 generations, closed down because the owner couldn't carry the expense of the loan he needed for building the ramp- and the cost of the lawsuit. Result: he ended up working for nearly minimum wage at Walmart and couldn't afford to put his daughters through college. Another result: his two employees lost their jobs. The landlord lost a tenant (the store sat unoccupied for 2 years, in part because everyone knew that the first business to move in would get sued for not having an ADA-compliant ramp.)
He was not alone. [google.com]
Some people just seem to forget that the world doesn't owe them anything. If you're injured or born without the ability to walk, that's nobody's problem except your own. "How cruel", you say. But where do we stop in defining disabilities? If I have autism, does that mean I can sue a store for being too noisy and crowded? If I have a peanut allergy, does a Thai restaurant have to give you a hermetically sealed room and special food stored, prepared, and cooked away from everything else?
Move to a city where businesses can afford good handicapped access. Hire someone to spend an hour each week getting your groceries. There are hundreds of solutions other than forcing your problems onto others.
Re:So now the web will go back to looking like 199 (Score:3, Interesting)
Try reading that if you are colorblind
Actually it's quite simple, grey on darker grey. I feel sorry for the people who aren't colorblind, look at the red/green text, and wish that THEY were colorblind.
But don't worry, being colorblind isn't considered a disability. Even though you will be disqualified from a growing list of jobs.
Re:Sick of Political Correctness (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh, there is a braille version of Playboy. Issues of Playboy printed in braille have been published by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped since 1970.
Re:I know businesses that ended because of the ADA (Score:3, Interesting)
This just isn't the truth. The ADA requires reasonable accommodations - solutions that make sense and are affordable. In the case of a big business, this would definitely mean installing the ramp. In the case of a small business, this would mean finding a workable solution, that could be a ramp or could be a small staircase elevator, or could be having a call button that calls a couple of employees to lift the wheelchair user into the store. There are many different solutions that are possible, and as we know, there are still many businesses that don't have staircases. There are numerous resources available on the subject: http://www.adata.org/ [adata.org]
In the case of new buildings, they should be designed in the first place to be usable for everyone. It doesn't add much extra expense and the end result is generally positive for all (I certainly notice ramps a lot more now that I have a baby in a stroller). In the case of websites, design that is accessible for blind users and other people with disabilities is generally good for all -- think of well designed css, avoiding distracting design (that is bad for people with learning disabilities), good usage of appropriate image descriptions, etc. It costs essentially nothing extra to include those in a new website and everyone can appreciate it.
Frankly, if adding a little staircase elevator or having a ramp or finding another solution was so expensive that it put the store out of business, I think maybe this guy's business problems were a little bigger than he described them.
Re:Closed captions for internet streaming video. (Score:3, Interesting)
Video that is streamed over the internet, that would be required to have closed captions if transmitted over the airwaves, should be required to transmit those captions.
Eg, NBC captions all (or almost all) of their content when broadcast, but only a limited selection of NBC content is captioned on hulu.com.
Why should NBC be required to do that and bobsTVstation.com not be? Because they had the audacity to broadcast using EM waves once and therefore when they decide to do something on a completely different medium it should have the same regulations applied?
You want NBC to do that, and it might even be a nice feature, but what they do on the internet is not really something that should be regulated.
Re:Regulations.gov page isn't remotely 508-complia (Score:4, Interesting)
Part of my job involves compliance testing for internal web sites. The regulations.gov site is pretty good from a compliance point of view. Have you tried 'viewing' it with a screen reader (eg JAWS)? All of your 'insights' are wrong.
A screen reader does not just read the source of a web page aloud. It renders the page, then helps the user navigate through it.
I did not find any non-tagged images (ok, if you look at the source you will see some, but those are in comments and thus not rendered).
The graphical navigation tabs work correctly (the reader tells the user what the alt tags are for each area of the map, and allows them to 'click' on them).
Pop-up javascript is no more of a problem to a screen reader than to a sighted user. When a pop-up occurs the screen reader will say 'new window' and read the contents of it.
The embedded alert has exactly the same effect on a screen reader as it does on a sighted person - none, because it is never rendered.
The image tagged 'close' is a big red X that is displayed at the top of a pop-up window. If a sighted person can understand that clicking on that X will close the window (as opposed to meaning 'sign here' or 'treasure is buried here'), why would a person using a screen reader have difficulty understanding that a clickable thing tagged 'close' at the top of a page will close the window?
Lastly, tagging an unclickable image as "logo" tells the user everything they need to know about it - the image contains new usable information.
You need to remember that having a page read to you is already a much slower process than looking at it. Making non-ambiguous things (like 'close' and 'logo') as terse as possible while still conveying the correct meaning is the right thing to do.
Re:Good news...? (Score:2, Interesting)
While ADA was well intentioned, we need to fix the brick-and-mortar version of the law before even THINKING about applying it to websites. Period.
Re:I know businesses that ended because of the ADA (Score:3, Interesting)
See the ADA FAQ at http://www.ada.gov/q%26aeng02.htm [ada.gov]
Here are a few of the questions and answers:
Q. Are there any limitations on the ADA's barrier removal requirements for existing facilities?
A. Yes. Barrier removal need be accomplished only when it is "readily achievable" to do so.
Q. What does the term "readily achievable" mean?
A. It means "easily accomplishable and able to be carried out without much difficulty or expense."
Q. What are examples of the types of modifications that would be readily achievable in most cases?
A. Examples include the simple ramping of a few steps, the installation of grab bars where only routine reinforcement of the wall is required, the lowering of telephones, and similar modest adjustments.
Q. Must alternative steps be taken without regard to cost?
A. No, only readily achievable alternative steps must be undertaken.
Q. Will businesses need to install elevators?
A. Businesses are not required to retrofit their facilities to install elevators unless such installation is readily achievable, which is unlikely in most cases.
Q. When barrier removal is not readily achievable, what kinds of alternative steps are required by the ADA?
A. Alternatives may include such measures as in-store assistance for removing articles from inaccessible shelves, home delivery of groceries, or coming to the door to receive or return dry cleaning.
The ADA is very well written and did not become a fundamentally outrageous burden on our economy. All it has done is improve access for people with disabilities and really, all of us.