Website Accessibility a Legal Issue? 218
geekwithsoul asks: "Target is being sued because its website is not usable by the sight-impaired. While this story from the San Francisco Chronicle is from February, I've seen surprising little coverage of it in either mainstream or tech-focused media. Is the threat of legal action the only really effective way to get companies to create accessible (and thus standard-compliant) websites?"
"From the article:Considering how much accessibility and standards support is available in modern web browsers (well, except for that one we all know), and a rising probability of legal exposure for sites not meeting these needs, is there really any excuse for online retailers and others to not make their websites accessible to all?"'Advocates for the blind said the lawsuit is a shot across the bow for retailers, newspapers and others who have Web sites the blind cannot use. They chose Target because of its popularity and because of a large number of complaints by blind patrons.'
DUH (Score:2)
Re:DUH (Score:3, Interesting)
Accessablity is something that goes pretty close hand in hand with Googlebot, Guliver and all the other spiders out there being able to get around within the site. So it's a good idea to do the work as you get both blind users and a good indexing.
There is too much fancy crap in a lot of web sites anyway. I don't visit target to see fancy HTML and flash. I visit to buy stuff.
Accessibility not just for the blind. (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider what websites or programs need to do in order to be usable by a blind person. First of all, they can't have clutter. They need to obey standards. (eg. W3C, for websites) They need to have a good, well-designed user interface, in general.
Notice how all of those things have very positive results for regular users, too? Blind people probably see websites much as a regular user would see them through a text-only browser like lynx. I
Re:Accessibility not just for the blind. (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, isn't this the same as the government specifying that people with disabilities must be catered for in real life? Why should things be any different on the internet?
Should all buildings have wheelchair ramps? To an extent, I think so, yes. Obviously it would be ridiculous for all homes to have wheelchair ramps. What about stores, shopping centres and government buil
Re:Accessibility not just for the blind. (Score:2)
Re:Accessibility not just for the blind. (Score:2)
Re:Accessibility not just for the blind. (Score:2)
Re:Accessibility not just for the blind. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a friend who's completely blind and uses the web a lot. Some sites are a major pain and some are completely inaccessable, but most are reasonably accessable to him using yasr and links. Very few sites now require msie and he's pretty-much given up on Windows. 98 is unstable, upgrading to XP would require a faster computer and a later version of JAWS which is mega-expensive.. We're still waiting for a useable version of gnopernicus but one of the great things about Linux is that almost
Re:Accessibility not just for the blind. (Score:2)
Re:Accessibility not just for the blind. (Score:2)
Re:Accessibility not just for the blind. (Score:2)
Re:Accessibility not just for the blind. (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Con tent&ID=3 [section508.gov]
Why shouldn't blind people be able to access a website just as easily as a sighted person? In the UK its as good as law that a site be accessible to persons with sight or hearing disabilities. I personally have no problem with
Re:DUH (Score:2)
On the other hand, going down a path popular in the XHTML camp, where you put all your content in DIV tags organized in a logical sequence then use CSS to position everything (see h [zengarden.com]
Re:DUH (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, "putting all your content in <div> tags" (you mean elements, not tags) is only going to harm the accessibility of
Re:DUH (Score:2)
Since you should probably only have one h1 anyway, you're probably safe with not even using a class.
Re:DUH (Score:2)
Baiscally, I make my websites look as 1994 as possible without style sheets, then I go back and add the styles I need to make it look this way on screen, this way in print, and so on.
Re:DUH (Score:2)
A couple of people seem to have misinterpreted me, I am in no way condoning <font> . In fact I wrote a user stylesheet to kill <font> completely [userstyles.org]. I'm pointing out that even <h1> coupled with <font> is better than using <div> elements everywhere.
This doesn't style <h1> elements of class foo. It styles <h1> elements that have an ancestor of class foo. To do what you want, you need something like:
Re:DUH (Score:2)
The same could be said for wheelchair ramps and automatic doors. Does that make it OK for buildings to exclude them?
Re:DUH (Score:2)
Re:DUH (Score:2)
Exactly. So I would ask geekwithoutsoul, who asked this:
Does the law say anything about web sites?
With text like "the complaint is based on the theory" in TFA, as opposed to text like "the complaint sites law X, section Y, paragraph Z", I think this is more a publicity stunt than an
Sue the Lawyers!!! (Score:2)
And by doing so, the blind are not able to access legal info/services at the same level as those with sight... Thus, they are being disadvantaged because the lawyer was negligent in hiring a good webmaster. It would be like a law office without a wheelchair ramp for the handicapped....
Re:DUH (Score:2)
If it were a government website, the I'd say it needs to be 508 compliant.
If Target's shareholders say "Make our site 508 compliant" then Target has to listen, not the whinings from a group of blind people who really are just the puppet for the lawyer who has it out for anybody with money. It's the same lawyer that sues mom and pop stores for not having door wide enough for wheelcha
CAPTCHA is a biggie (Score:5, Interesting)
A major problem in the accessibility of the World Wide Web lately is CAPTCHA systems [pineight.com] that distinguish sighted humans on the one hand from bots and blind humans on the other. For instance, Slashdot itself uses a CAPTCHA. Has anybody had success in getting a Slashdot account created through the e-mail method specified in the Slashdot CAPTCHA's alt text?
Re:CAPTCHA is a biggie (Score:2)
Re:CAPTCHA is a biggie (Score:2)
Re:CAPTCHA is a biggie (Score:2)
A) CAPTCHA is easy to get through - just have a friend read it to you
B) He doesn't expect everyone to go out of their way to accomodate him.
But will a judge agree? (Score:4, Interesting)
I know a blind guy going into computer science who thinks any blind person who doesn't have a friend who will get em past a CAPTCHA doesn't belong on said website.
Unless the blind person lives alone and the site needs a CAPTCHA for every transaction. For instance, as of the beginning of 2006, Blogger required this for every post [google.com]. Some sort of landmark case of the form American Foundation for the Blind v. (some major site) might have repercussions in the field of spam prevention.
Re:CAPTCHA is a biggie (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:DMCA (Score:2)
The DMCA has nothing to do with CAPTCHAs. The DMCA has to do with breaking encryption to circumvent "copyright protection", i.e. ripping DVDs so you can back them up, or transferring your iTunes music to a non-iPod player. (Conveniently, the DMCA creates artificial markets and legal monopolies, and makes it a crime to do anything about it.)
Unfortunately, yes. (Score:2, Flamebait)
Don't forget that too many websites are driven by marketoids whose world revolves around bullshit. Bullshit being the absence of substance, it is clear that those bullshitter will try to hide their absence of content behind smokescreens made out of Javascript and flash.
And marketoids consider themselves artists, and there are no people more willing to shove useless crap down people's throats than artists.
Re:Unfortunately, yes. (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly why is Target responsible for this students civil rights online?
Until someone passes a law requiring businesses on the internet to
Re:Unfortunately, yes. (Score:2)
But it is a lot faster.
Asking your Senator or Congressman means you have to get them to make a bill, introduce it, get it passed, etc. That is a long process. And that assumes that you can get them to do that over the corporations that don't want that bill passed (and will donate more money than you'll ever make).
Filing a lawsuit gets you instant publicity, which can be parlayed into capital to use with your representative to get a bill passed. Either way, t
Re:Unfortunately, yes. (Score:2)
ADA Does Not Apply to Websites and Videogames... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:ADA Does Not Apply to Websites and Videogames.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:ADA Does Not Apply to Websites and Videogames.. (Score:4, Funny)
No no no, you don't understand.
This is America. You sue the band for making you need the hearing aid in the first place AND sue the hearing aid company for a poorly performing product. If you're good, you also sue the venue and the band's promoter. If you're real good, sue the city who gave them a permit to perform in the first place! After all, their loud music damages hearing (see case #1 for the precident) and thus is a known dangerous product.
Sometimes impossible... (Score:4, Insightful)
I try to create standards compliant, accessible websites, but the boss is worried about any emergencies that might pop up and require their immediate attention. Without being able to pull away from programs that change the pages around and aren't really aware of standards, I may not be able to do it at all.
(Side note: if anyone knows how to force the 'Reaver to leave my code alone, could you reply, please?)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sometimes impossible... (Score:2)
Re:Sometimes impossible... (Score:5, Informative)
I use Dreamweaver as well, and faced the same problem when I first started using it years ago. What you want to do is go into Edit > Preferences > Code Rewriting and deselect everything you don't want it to do. In addition, I also always turn off the auto close tag option under 'Code Hints' on the same dialog menu.
Dreamweaver is actually very capable of turning out standards compliant and accessiblity friendly code, it just needs a little tweaking when dealing with less than clueful users. Macromedia [now Adobe] had been fairly responsive to the concerns of the standards community, specifically The Web Standards Project [webstandards.org] which had a task force focusing on just Dreamweaver and standards compliance.
Re:Sometimes impossible... (Score:2)
Re:Sometimes impossible... (Score:2)
Dude, instead of backing down you should talk you boss about his concerns and - this is the important part - address them. You are being paid to do that. If he worries about emergencies that require him to change the company's website, I think it is your job to calm him down, provide alternatives, and fix shit.
Re:Sometimes impossible... (Score:2)
Re:Sometimes impossible... (Score:2)
Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering how much accessibility and standards support is available in modern web browsers (well, except for that one we all know), and a rising probability of legal exposure for sites not meeting these needs, is there really any excuse for online retailers and others to not make their websites accessible to all?"
How about "We reserve the right not to do business with those we choose not to do business with without explaination?" This is about a lot more than just website accessibility- it speaks to (but probably won't come up) the constitutionality of the ADA itself.
Re:Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:2)
Target can still decide not to let this guy -- or, even, any blind person at all -- conduct business with them. Having to make allowances for a disability does not keep you from turning people away.
Re:Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:2)
That might have been true prior to 1988, but since then, Target is subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988 just like everyone else. If you can't write a website everybody can use, you might as well just rip out the wheelchair ramps, throw away automatic doors and lose the handicapped parking whi
Re:Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:2)
Target MUST take all reasonable actions to accomodate persons with disabilities.
They MAY, even with the ADA, turn away persons who happen to have disabilities without stating a reason why. So long as they can show that the mere cost of complaince was not the issue, they are free to randomly turn away anyone and everyone that they want.
(I mean, provided that in doing so their managment fulfills their fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders, that is.)
Re:Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:2)
Sorry, but absolute XHTML 1.0 compliance IS reasonable action to accomodate persons with disabilities. This was very brutally easily avoidable on their part. Why must you defend stupidity and promote the destruction of established standards?
I mean, provided that in doing so their managment fulfills their fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders, that is.
No. Complying to the letter of the law fulfills their fiduciary
Re:Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:2)
Sorry, but absolute XHTML 1.0 compliance IS reason
Re:Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:2)
I never expected to see the day when you and I agree on a social issue. Is it cold in here? What's that pig doing in the sky?
Re:Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:2)
Re:Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:2)
Re:Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:2)
Re:Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:2)
Re:Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:2)
Re:Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:2)
No, that's what passes for hate speech in the US. Canada does maintain a right to free speech, which is why you're wondering what happened to the complaint instead of what happened to freedom of speech. The US, by contrast, does not: Hence Cindy Sheenan and that senator's wife being arrested and charged with disturbing the peace because they wore t-shirts the president
Ah, so "no blacks allowed" is okay with you? (Score:2)
Rights got to be balanced. It is what makes real life so difficult. How do you balance the right of target to make its website the way they like it with some peoples rights to live a normal live despite a physical disability.
My freedom to form a club of people I like is offset by the rights of other people to join clubs they wish. So whites only golf clubs are a no-no.
It all depends what you consider more important. The freedom of people with
Re:Ah, so "no blacks allowed" is okay with you? (Score:2)
And yet you can't join the Knights of Columbus without being a Catholic, the Freemasons if you're an atheist, or Mensa without having a certain IQ. Clubs based on accidents of birth or upbringing aren't nearly as endangered as you think.
It all depends what you consider more important. The freedom of people with bad eye sight or the freedom of website design
Re:Freedom of Association maybe? (Score:2)
I sort of agree but.. (Score:2, Interesting)
And where does it end? do all bilboards have to be in braile?
What about a site which contains questionable material? should wh
Most pictures do NOT say a thousand words (Score:2)
I pretty much doubt the blind would even care very much about the kind of pictures that speak a thousand words. I at least haven't seen lenghty and detailed descriptions of famous works of art in museums so blind people can enjoy them.
So your image gallery of ehm nature shots is save. No need to describe each nudy shot in details in the alt attribute.
However for most of the images on a normal site this does not apply. Take for instance images serving as navigation links. The oh so cool animatited letter l
Re:I sort of agree but.. (Score:2)
According to the website validator at w3.org (I believe...) it's an error to have an image with no alt attribute.
But, if you add an alt attribute, and make it a blank string (alt=""), it doesn't complain. Why!? It seems to me that if it's a graphic element with no need for an alt attribute it should be fine to leave the alt attribute off and save a few bytes of download. Is there a logical reason behind this? Or is the va
Re:I sort of agree but.. (Score:2)
to use alt="" as a way to ensure that automated testing kits don't complain, and using it on all your images and whatnot, is just as wrong
the problem in your example is relying solley on automated testing for accessibility. all an automated test can do it tell you the things that are *definately* wrong, leaving lots of stuff that must be expert checked
Re:I sort of agree but.. (Score:2)
The pedantic answer is that alt is defined as a required attribute in the DTD, and the validator's job is to check documents against that DTD, no matter whether that DTD makes sense or not.
However, the distinction between a missing alt attribute and an empty alt attribute is a good one to make. The absence of information is not the same as information of absence. Basically, a missing alt attribute mea
Think before you alt="" (Score:2)
It seems to me that if it's a graphic element with no need for an alt attribute it should be fine to leave the alt attribute off and save a few bytes of download. Is there a logical reason behind this?
Yes. Requiring the alt attribute encourages web developers to think before they leave out the alt attribute. And even for spacers and other graphic elements where you have thought about it and decided that a lack of text should replace the image, once you use gzip compression, a tag that uses <img alt="
Re:What the World Wide Web is (Score:2)
i think the internet is more than just a network, it means the stuff that its used for aswell
World Wide Web is an application that runs on the Internet. When you said "the internet is a multimedia info source", you meant "the World Wide Web is a multimedia info source".
But that's beside the point. Tim Berners-Lee intended the World Wide Web as an information source, full stop. It has nothing to do necessarily with multimedia.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Accessibility is easy (Score:2)
There's no accessibility benefit to using XHTML 1.0 Strict. Most people are better off with HTML 4.01 Strict until browser support for XHTML is better.
Completely UN-informative (Score:3, Insightful)
I recommend against using XHTML -- too many problems w/ Internet Explorer (and even Safari will render some things slightly off what you're used to, even when it's co
Re:Completely UN-informative (Score:2)
It's better to code to the standard than code to a single broken browser. XHTML degrades gracefully: IE users will still get to see it, though (by Microsoft's arbitrary decision) not as cleanly as they would if Microsoft took the time to read the writing on the wall (ie, published standards everyone (but them by their own arbit
Re:Completely UN-informative (Score:2)
Don't be silly, you don't have to choose between XHTML and Internet Explorer-specific code. XHTML isn't "the standard", it's a set of specifications, and there are others to choose from. HTML 4.01 Strict or ISO-HTML are better supported than XHTML and just as much of a standard as any form of XHTML (ISO-HTML is actually a standard, HTML and XHTML are just specifications published by a vendor consortium).
The grandparent wasn'
Strict vs. Transitional and <li value="13"> (Score:2, Insightful)
The best way to ensure accessibility is to simply use XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS.
Given IE's inability to display documents sent as application/xhtml+xml, what is the advantage of XHTML [slashdot.org] 1.0 over HTML 4.01? And given the mistaken deprecation of the value attribute of the li element in HTML 4.01 (and the subsequent removal from Strict), what is the advantage of Strict over Transitional if you abstain from all deprecated elements and attributes with the exception of li value?
make sure it validates with the
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Strict vs. Transitional and (Score:2)
In a country without useful legislation, yes. (Score:3, Interesting)
To stay accessible, you need to ditch table-based HTML filled with JavaScript widgets and unnecessary Flash navigation. Consequently you need to explore CSS, and guess what hamstrings adoption of CSS's more advanced features?
The other issue is the crap-awful screen reader market. JAWS ignores code designed to separate out screen readers from visual browsers, Apple's technology works only with Safari, and none of these companies have been sued for not doing their job either.
Yes (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, there's a lot of ignorance to fight. The average PHB assumes that creating a website that the blind can use is an arduous task, but this is not the case. If you build your website correctly the first time around, you essentially get accessibility for free.
If, on the other hand, your website was built by the average clueless Dreamweaver jockey, then you'll probably have to spend money retrofitting your website. But that's the clueless web developer's fault for doing it wrong in the first place. Sadly, it's in their best interests to tell the PHBs how hard it is, and the PHB's aren't qualified to know when they are being told a pack of lies.
It's only in unusual circumstances that accessibility is difficult when you include it as a requirement from the start of the project. However, typical managers go on what they've been told, and what they are told leads them to avoid accessibility unless they really need to address it. Lawsuits are a good way of getting them to address it.
Don't assume that accessibility and standards-compliance are the same thing. They are not. You can create accessible sites that don't conform to the specifications, and you can create inaccessible sites that do conform to the standards.
It's also worth pointing out that avoiding being sued isn't the sole reason to make your website accessible. It can often improve various semi-related features of your website, such as search engine rankings and usability. According to PAS 78, the accessibility guidelines published by the UK's Disability Rights Commission, Tesco and Legal & General got great returns on their investments into accessible websites.
There's more information about that last bit on Bruce Lawson's weblog [brucelawson.co.uk]. Highlight:
Re:Yes (Score:2)
At no point did I claim that it being good for you is the reason why it should be mandatory. Mandatory accessibility is intended to protect minorities, not nanny businesses.
Next up (Score:2, Insightful)
Where have I heard an issue like this before? (Score:2)
Ok, I'm from Tennessee... (Score:2)
sue the screen reader companies (Score:2)
Re:sue the screen reader companies (Score:2)
Re:sue the screen reader companies (Score:2)
Re:sue the screen reader companies (Score:2)
Yeah. Courts generally expect that you get what you pay for. Commercial products should perform better than the free alternatives they compete against. If they can't, they shouldn't charge. At best, it's false advertising to charge money for a product that is obviously inferior to the free competition. Examples off the top of my head (and by no means complete): Trillian Pro as a Jabber client (woefully inco
Re:sue the screen reader companies (Score:3, Informative)
The biggest problem is the classical case of Garbage In - Garbage Out. The vast majority of pages out there on the web have no logical structure, no text equivalent content to non-text content - there's no way a piece of technology can do that without an advanced form of AI.
This isn't a problem browser and assistive technology vendors can solve on their own. This isn't a problem web developers can
Re:sue the screen reader companies (Score:2)
Re:sue the screen reader companies (Score:2)
A much easier job than making a "screen reader" is making a "markup language read
Sue sue sue (Score:2, Insightful)
Legal requirement in Ontario (Score:2)
If we can make websites work with all the browser, (Score:3, Insightful)
who happen to need a bit of accommodation.
As suggested in a recent
communicating with Folks with Disabilities (FWD's, a.k.a. PWD's)
It's just that easy. And... from experience... I can tell you:
It can really make you appreciate what you take for granted, ie,
finding out how life can be without sight or the ability to walk.
Mind-expanding... a bit like emerging from one of those "gotta
crawl on your belly" caves, on a spelunking trip...
Both are better than drugs, I'd suggest...
I had a friend... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I had a friend... & knowingly violating the (Score:2)
The penalties for crimes are different depending on whether the crime was committed knowingly or not.
Therefore, your friend's website, while being done in best intentions brought into focus the fact that the rest of th
ADA Website Compliance = Section 508 (Score:3, Interesting)
See:
http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/ [access-board.gov]
How do I know? Before the U.S. Post Office looked at our web-based secure file transfer and messaging product (MOVEit DMZ), they required us to pass this requirement.
You can see a short version of our "yes, we comply" statement online here:
https://support.standardnetworks.com/moveit/doc/e
Among the interesting bits: to meet full compliance we added an option that allows our administrators to add a "skip repetative navigation" link to the top of the page; this specifically allows audio readers to skip directly to the unique content on the page.
Re:ADA Website Compliance = Section 508 (Score:2)
Man, I wish IMDB had a "skip repetative navigation" link! I have a Treo 600 and Sprint's slow-ass Vision service and the only reason I finally got a cell was to look up movie information. IMDB, and most web sites, are painfully slow and force me to g
Private vs. Public (Score:2)
Rights? (Score:2)
There was already a case about this (Score:2)
The 11 Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling in 2004 [com.com].
I have to say that I'm very much against these rulings. Making websites accessible to the blind is trivial if the website is designed properly in the first place. It's only difficult
I disagree (Score:2)
A multi-million dollar judgement a
Re:Troll / Flamebait (Score:2)
I agree - But that has no relevance to the topic at hand.
Quick note of history... Before the modern web, a very similar but text-only medium existed, called "gopher". From an informational point of view, it worked just as well as the triple-dub, yet never really caught on before the web put the final nail in its coffin.
Why?
Modally-specific mediums exist. No amount of standards compliance will ever change that. The blind c