http://easy-money-4u.blogspot.com

P.S to the first poster, if your spending “tens of thousands of precious capital” on a small site and its not accessible then you’re ripping people off.

Not that big of a deal. Your thinking too big here. You have visions of making it work with brail printers and expensive stuff. The software is free.

Second, anti-discrimination laws exist not because a few do-gooders decided to do something “nice” for the poor unfortunates. These laws were enacted because it is good for all to make a society as inclusive as possible. Equitable societies promote better economies, reduce crime and create healthier, more productive individuals. If you have such a problem with taxes and laws in a particular state/country, why don’t you live somewhere else? You have the choice, but instead persist in having your lifestyle unimpeded at the inconvenience of others (just like you are accusing disabled people of doing).

Third, those you who think this ruling will start a wave of nuisance lawsuits, requiring every business big or small to be 100% accessible, come on, get real. No reasonable disabled person is expecting the world to be 100% accessible, 100% of time. It’s pretty clear the privileged majority is too self-absorbed to ever see the big picture re: promoting stronger societies as per above. Most disabled people know by now not to put much faith in the motivations of TABs (temporarily-able bodied). Disabilities have existed since the beginning of mankind, and look how far we (haven’t) come. Disabled people are simply asking for a little more return on investment (you may be shocked to hear that disabled people pay taxes too!) Why are disabled people expected to share more of the burden but consistently receive less?

I could go further and make the argument that improving equity is simply the “right thing to do”, but it is clear many of you are primarily concerned only with “the right thing to do *for me*”, so appealing to your (non-existent) sense of compassion is worthless. Get over yourself, you are a tiny speck in the grande scheme of the universe (not to mention everyone experiences disability at some point of their lives, so don’t think for a second you are somehow “better” than those whose experience more prolonged or severe conditions). Imagine for a second how frustrating it is to be told continually that you can’t expect accommodation if you don’t speak up, but when you do dare to assert your rights, you are told you are being unreasonable (frequently by people who have no clue about the actual costs of accommodation, as seen here).

Remember: accommodation isn’t about giving something “special” or “extra” to a small minority, it is about removing barriers THAT NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. It’s those of you who persist in portraying yourselves as martyrs in the pursuit of progress who are dragging everyone down, not disabled people.

I must first say that I am incredibly disappointed at the sheer number of uninformed comments against web accessibility and the concept that everyone, including people with disabilities, ought to be afforded equal participation. I want to say a great deal about these comments, but I could probably write a novel and still fail to get my entire point across effectively. So, I’ll just bring it all down to one simple question.

If you had a spouse, brother, sister or close friend who happened to become blind or visually impaired, how would you treat that person? How would you want to see others in society treat your spouse? Wouldn’t you want her to be afforded as much accessibility and equal participation as possible? Wouldn’t you? Some may say that emotionality doesn’t belong here. They would point out that this is business, not personal. I would, of course, beg to differ.

All most of us really want is reasonable accomodation. Ignoring our sincere requests and doing nothing for us does not constitute “reasonable” by any stretch of good character, the law, morality, etc. Accessibility laws, like most other legislation, are needed simply due to the fact that there are companies and people who refuse to listen and make an effort to take reasonable steps to do the right thing. Though I do understand the business implications, I think being accessible isn’t usually very difficult and it can cost much more in the long run to fight these legal cases against us than it probably does to simply do the right thing and become more accessible. Why not just do the right thing, everyone? It isn’t so bad. Accessibility allows us to participate, and everyone can feel better in the process.

I would invite all of you to read The Heart of Accessibility Evangelism at http://blog.blindaccessjournal.....elism.html and work together with us to raise awareness of accessibility and make the online world the level playing field it can and ought to be for everyone, including the blind and visually impaired.

If you found out that your sister recently became blind, wouldn’t you want her to be afforded all possible opportunities to put her life back together? If so, that means she would need to be afforded equal opportunities to live, learn and work. This would include spending her hard earned money. How would you want to see her treated by others? Would you accept her being frequently left out in the cold or hung out to dry? How would you feel if others locked her out of full participation, insisting on retaining their ignorance despite constant attempts at educating them to the contrary?

Please, please, please, everyone, let’s have some heart here! I think most people have the potential to be kind hearted. That’s all it takes. It is the initial first step. I don’t expect everything handed to me on a silver pplatter. All I want is to be heard and reasonably accomodated in ways that allow me to enjoy all the same opportunities as those afforded sighted people based solely on the fact they’re able to see. Accessibility is a right. This is really quite similar to concepts such as desegregation and equal rights for women. We can’t help it we’re unable to see. It is a condition that is completely outside our control. We didn’t ask for it. We’re not demanding that you do everything for us, either. Please, just allow us to be as independent as possible. If we are granted more accessibility, we can be more productive in society overall. More productivity means less burden on an already overtaxed welfare system. Aren’t these and many other reasons worth spending a little extra money once in awhile in order to do the right thing?

Within disability discrimination legislation there’s usually something called ‘reasonable adjustments’ (to use English law terminology), and factors come into play such as the resources of a company (the expectations of a one man’s outfit does not equal a large corporation). There’s such things where a disabled person would not expect to succeed in a claim for discrimination, where a bodily function was a central part of something.

For the record and to be transparent here, I’m deaf and my ears are next to useless. Audio content is entirely wasted on me. My main issue right now is the internet is becoming more inaccessible (1999 was great!), due to the increased video content online. I would expect organisations such as TED to provide subtitles. Why are people so intent on excluding certain groups of people?

For the record, in the UK I’ve already threatened to sue the BBC (on a formal basis) to provide accessible content for their video. Not because I want the money (it can go to the cat’s home for all I care), access is a million times more important to me. I want to be part of society, and for *anyone* to exist with a society structure, we all have obligations otherwise let’s all just re-enact Lord of the Flies shall we?

Websites are not immune from the real world, and they are businesses, just in the same way as a shop is. Cyberspace is not a unique entity where real world rules don’t apply.

On one blog that I co-author, we provide full transcripts of signed content video (with no money behind us). If we are able to dedicate resources to do this, then anyone on here is perfectly capable of doing the same.

What if tomorrow, you woke up and 80% of the internet stopped working for you? You couldn’t check movie listings, you couldn’t buy things, you couldn’t check your bank accounts, nothing. You write a letter of complaint to your bank and they reply back to say sorry, not enough people have complained about this problem, so we’re not going to fix it. I have a funny feeling you probably wouldn’t roll over and say “ah, it’s as the free market dictates, I shall accept my lot as an unlucky minority”

But that’s exactly what disabled people have to do. While you avail yourselves to online services every day, disabled people have to fight for even basic access to many, many websites. And it’s not just the disabled - as you get older, you’ll start to get annoyed when sites don’t let you re-size fonts or if the colour contrast is too low for you to read the text. You might not wake up disabled tomorrow, but one day you will certainly wake up old.

Designing for accessibility is a solid, professional way to develop websites — techniques like progressive enhancement make accessibility make sense from a software development perspective, a project management perspective, as well as an accessibility one. Please educate yourselves a little before dismissing fellow human beings who just want to live a normal, modern life.

It seems impossible to have a reasonable discourse on protecting the rights of minority groups here. I guess that’s why this Target court case is so important - its a test whether the rights of minorities online are actually protected under US - or Californian - law.

From the reaction here, its evident that the concept ‘free market’ is more important than the civil rights of people - and that’s a shame. The free market has failed disabled people the same way it has failed other minority or repressed groups of people in its long, turgid and embarrassing history. The free market brings out the selfishness of people, and removes the obligation to work with a social conscious.

The internet is an enabler of people - it gives them the opportunity to live a better life, one of dignity and self-respect. For disabled people, it offers independence. Does anyone in this thread know what independence is, and why its so valuable? Its not obvious from reading the comments that any value is placed on independence.

Here Target - which runs a typically simplistic website - can make a few small changes to improve the site to make it accesible to blind and visually impaired people. They’ve chosen to ignore the polite requests, wasted the time of experienced web developers advising them by finally rejecting the changes after a long consultation. Target have given disabled people in California no option but to escalate the matter. Its surprising that the free market hasn’t brought any common sense to Target - a really small investment versus the millions of dollars of legal fees to perhaps reach the same end result.

The free market has failed Target - a simple cost/benefit analysis will clearly show that. This legal action should have been unnecessary. But considering the obvious blatant ignorance within this thread and others - and perhaps this is a true reflection of the knowledge, civility, social acceptance levels of Silicon Valley.

I shall not be cheering when Target lose this case. The upside will be the confirmation that the rights of disabled people to participate equivalently online is protected - as it should be. The downside would be to demonstrate the complete and utter failure of technologists in California to be decent human beings, and show even the smallest levels of social responsibility and conscious.

If anyone would like the detail of our findings, for any of the sites listed please don’t hesiate to email me; lshaw@sitemorse.com

We carry out a monthly review of;

US Gov State Governors Websites
http://survey-beta.sitemorse.com/rt/273/b9d19bc6

US Gov State and Territorial Government Websites
http://survey-beta.sitemorse.com/rt/271/19d0c7df

US Gov Federal Agencies
http://survey-beta.sitemorse.com/rt/269/9aa3211c

Sure, I jest, but some can draw a parallel to the Governments way of thinking.

Come on, it really isn’t that difficult!

Screen readers have excellent support for helping their users navigate through tabular data that is marked up in a table - especially if the table has proper table headers and other accessibility related markup. Search for “accessible tables” on Google for literally dozens of good tutorials on the subject.

HTML is accessible by default - it takes someone doing it wrong to make it inaccessible.

The Germans have a good word for Accessibility: barrierefreie (barrier-free). As developers, we need to stop putting barriers in people’s way.

That said, should this move forward and it is decided that Target’s website is indeed running afoul of the ADA…who will decide when and if Target changes their site and is acceptable?

For the rest of us doing business on the web, will we have to fear that if someone comes to our website who is disabled (blind or otherwise) and doesn’t find it to their liking that we too will have to hire a lawyer and spend who knows how many of thousands of dollars to fight or settle (sounds more like extortion to me).

Someone like me who has a variety of injuries that can limit what I do has to learn to live with those limitations. I live in a beautiful mountain community - should I sue my state for not having smoother paths for me to walk on in the parks? Maybe I should sue because the mountain trail is too steep for me to walk? Maybe they should build an elevator so that I can visit the top?

Every attempt should be made to make things as user-friendly as possible, and wherever and whenever possible people should make every effort to accommodate people with special needs, but there are times when it just doesn’t work. The web is a visual medium, much of it can be made fully accessible to the blind and visually impaired, but not all.

And for all of you that keep mentioning that tables should only be used for tabular data - how long before some website owner is sued because a visually impaired person using a reader could not view the data on the table?

And I guess for those purists about coding, only those who are “professional web designers” should be allowed to build websites? What a loss for the world at large if all the family-run, hobby, and other websites made by people who may not even know what CSS is are all removed from the web because they did not use ‘proper’ code and make their websites fully accessible.