Websites May Require Visually Impaired Access In California

So my little site, with a few tens of thousands of dollars for development, will have to waste precious capital on the chance that one or two blind people will want to feel pretty pictures?

In the last few years I volunteered with a local elementary school. They had a $13,000 annual budget for all office supplies and discretionary classroom spending. Teachers spent their own money on pens, markers and colored paper. Then an ADA-related lawsuit made the school district spend over $1.5 million to upgrade disabled access - at a school that already had disabled bathrooms, a working elevator, wheelchair ramps, etc. 100 years of their discretionary budget were wasted to give the school - I kid you not - disabled urinals. And still they go without classroom supplies, art instruction, physical education instruction, etc.

The ADA-chasers can go screw themselves.

A dumb law in california? No way

Duncan, slowly but surely regulation creep will sink it’s imperious claws deeper within the blogosphere.

Unfortunately … shades of things to come.

So many businesses already flee California due to over regulation and over taxation. I wonder when we will reach the tipping point when a mass exodus occurs and California tax revenues tank. It’s an opportunity for other states who can restrain themselves from over regulation, although that is pretty tough for governments.

Sounds like a great way to slow the pace of online innovation in the Valley. I, for one, might move back to NY if this sort of regulation starts creeping up on us. I just don’t have time to pay serious attention to issues like this until my site has proven itself viable for the long-term. I’m simply too busy working on improving functionality for the vast majority of my potential user base. It’s simply impractical, unless you’re a big ‘utility’ like Target.

Thats just stupid…whats next Driver licenses for the blind?

This isn’t stupid my any means. It is the right thing to do. If this requirement does become law be on the look out for optimization firms and code to meet regulations. It doesn’t have to be a pain to implement such requirements, unless people make it.

http://answers.nobosh.com

I wouldn’t call it stupid, but I wouldn’t call it practical either. Sure, most websites could stand to improve their accessibility (it’s really not that hard) but to make it a legal requirement is plain silly.

Quite right, California. A person’s limitations should be a burden on everybody else and impose all sorts of duty’s on society to meet their special needs…at no cost to that person, of course. Good show!

This is just another example of the needs of the one - no matter how ridiculous those so-called needs - will become a burden for the many. Yes, I do believe in making things accessible to the disabled, but there comes a time when cost and practicality - and good old common sense - needs to outweigh the vastly over-reaching piece of law known as the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Paco’s point about how the ADA leads to the spending of money in areas that override the mission of that area in which they are spent really hits the target - and Arrington’s point about an industry growing around this new ruling just goes to show how the ADA and other laws of its ilk are exploitable (though I do not believe that Arrington meant to be ironic).

The ADA can be a menace, and it can lead to some ridiculous circumstances (thankfully some more ridiculous than tragic, like school children going without supplies so one more toilet can be built). In fact, it was an implementation of the ADA - in a bathroom, no less! - that led to me starting my new web site!.

I’m not sure about this but I think the size of your business does affect what measures you have to take to become accessible. So for a company like Target, with vast resources, they would have to go to pretty great lengths to be accommodating.
This is how it works for building modifications. If your a tiny mom and pop business you are required to make your premises accessible within the constraints of your resources (which would be small). But if your a state government (with vast resources) you are going to have to make your buildings completely accessible, even if it’s a big expense. It’s all relative, that’s my understanding at least.

I see the trolls are out in force on this topic.

Folks, accessibility isn’t that hard if you’re sensible (even ajax techniques can be done accessibly) and ultimately actually makes your site more usable for EVERYONE! Not to mention the benefits from the “natural” search-engine optimisation of a well-marked-up website.

In my view, the onus should be on the makers of operating systems, perhaps in this case browser developers to accommodate the visually impaired.

That, and perhaps a requirement to meet web standards so accessibiltiy functionality in said browers work properly I think would a reasonable accomodation. Placing all the responsibiltiy on vendors like Target seems a little short sited, and yes, an impediment to the industry.

This isn’t a new law. They’re existing laws that a judge has ruled do apply to websites.

The questions to ask is what are the chances a disabled individual or group is going to sue you. And if there’s a good chance, what are you going to do?

If you answer “nothing,” then you deserve to be sued.

An accessible website does require a degree of human judgement — for example, when captioning pictures. Decent operating systems even have accessibility technologies built in. But they’ve got to work with something usable, which is where individual creators have to come to the table.

Look, before commenting further, would it kill any of you to at least skim a couple of chapters of, for instance, Mark Pilgrim’s “Dive into Accessibility” (free to read online) and get educated about what’s actually at stake? Because the ignorance levels on display are pretty disappointing.

So, how will this affect porn sites? LOL
Seriously though..this could potentially be a pain on photo hosting sites, etc. unless the law wouldn’t apply to “user generated” content.

It would be nice if everyone would take accesibility to heart, but the holdouts can always be crowdsourced to services like http://pornfortheblind.org/

Also @John above, this is no laughing matter and a problem we’re working hard to solve.

How Selfish. Instead of re inventing the wheel, all they have to do is ask a friend or family member to help them.

This could have implications in stifling creativity in Web Design. Flash navigation could all but disappear.

If you don’t like any one’s service - just do not patronize them. Don’t ruin it for everyone else!

Agreed. What is wrong with the concept of free markets, as our original democracy dictates? Capitalism also works in a free-market approach. If there are so many blind people (as I am also partially blind) that dictate enough demand in the marketplace, the supply will deliver. But to mandate a law saying every website must abide by these new design criteria just for the blind, is not free or open marketing. There are other means in which the blind can utilize the internet… I think in a capitalist society, a 3rd party marketer or company should engage in making a solution for the blind, instead of imposing rules on everyone else unecessarily.

http://www.blimptv.net

This is a bit strange. Do we also require magazines to bring out editions in braille? Or supermarket packaging to have a sound explanation? Sure it is a good idea to make things accessible to everyone, but certainly suing websites over not having text descriptions of their images is a bit ridiculous.

Thierry, the web is one of the few environments that CAN be made accessible with relatively little effort. Why are we so determined to deny even these simple concessions to the disabled?

Angelina, capitalism is historically very bad at inspiring people to do the right thing, which is why governments pay for hospitals and fire/rescue services. The point is also that there aren’t enough people with visual disabilities to form a market, so capitalist entities have to be forced.

“Miss Universe”, you seem to be suggesting that the disappearance of flash navigation would be a bad thing? That’s very funny! You were serious? Please allow me to laugh even louder!

@18: Oh no, Flash navigation is going away! The horror!

My similarly-named co-commentator Nick Caldwell is 100% right on. While I agree that this law applied generally might be impractical, it’s intentions are quite positive and will, if anything, result in higher quality code for everyone. Being ADA compliant is far from the only reason why you should worry about or consider writing accessible code.

Check this good article http://joeclark.org/appearances/atmedia2007/
“When accessibility is not your problem”.

Why not to use Opera and similar browsers to scale webpage size up to 1000%-2000% on 32” monitors if blind want to access sites and see everything?

Blind vs Target is another example of stupid American law system.

Dang, I just finished a really cool map-based app.

Now what do I do?

If the screen enlargement stuff is left to the user via some method like the one that Alex (@23) mentioned, I don’t think it should be so difficult to put in some alt tags for pictures and change up the ajax a little to accommodate.

The flash stuff I’m not sure how to handle. If California enforces this I’m sure they can also provide some council to help companies make their sites more friendly to visually impaired. I certainly wouldn’t mind making our site more accessible.

Changes in the Valley…actually the Valley is the place where all technologies change.
Nice article!

Hi folks.

This is an wonderfull blog.
I´ve puted a link in my colective blog
(http://atribulacoeslocais2.blogspot.com)

Thanks and continue this good work.
João

“Anna Smith” and “João” are comment spammers.

This kind of crap bugs me no end. I wonder if it will mean going back through thousands of our company’s archived blog posts and adding alt tags to photos that are mostly decorative illustrations and not important to the content. Our file names are more or less descriptive — I wonder if that counts.

What a joke.

Folks,
I strongly encourage reading the order before jumping to too many conclusions here.

According to the order, “…the court dismissed plaintiff’s claims to the extant that they are based on Target.com features that are unconnected to the stores.” In other words, the only ADA issues here have to do with items on the website that support in-store features. The plaintiff is arguing (and the court agreed) that they cannot access the full feature of the store (a potential ADA violation) without the accompanying feature on the site.

Second, the judge didn’t disagree outright with several of Target’s defenses regarding reasonable accommodations (an acceptable defense within ADA law), only that “the court declines to decide, at the class certification stage, which of the declarants’ purported injuries constitute violations of the ADA. Those questions reach the ultimate merits of this action.” In other words, the judge didn’t rule that Target.com and/or Target violated the ADA or whether their activities make suitable accommodations for the blind. Instead, she ruled that the class action suit to determine whether Target violated the ADA may proceed as Target didn’t successfully prove why the court shouldn’t allow the suit to proceed.

I’m not a lawyer, but have considerable practical experience in these types of actions. Ensuring accessibility is not a trivial matter for some types of sites, but it can be accomplished reasonably in many cases. Check out The Web Accessibility Initiative of the W3C for details. The content guidelines provide direction as to how to make your site accessible, and as Nick Caldwell points out above, “actually makes your site more usable for EVERYONE! Not to mention the benefits from the “natural” search-engine optimisation of a well-marked-up website.”

Cheers.

Lowest common denominator strikes again! Let’s build things for everyone all at once, let’s dance around a tree and sing songs about unity and solidarity! Oh, wait, we can’t. Because there are people that can’t dance or have no legs and that would offend them Fuck the blind. I make websites for people that can see. I write music for people that can hear — what’s next for California, mandating that I need to write songs that deaf people can hear clearly? Private companies should make any site they want — a site for grilling meat isn’t “accessible” to vegetarians but who the hell cares. This is CA government intervention at its best. If there are any blind people reading this — is this big enough for you –FUCK YOU. Take a swing at me, no doubt you’ll miss. Thanks. I needed that.

I’d say the internet is ubiquitous enough to warrant some governmental regulation on accessibility for the disabled, but I don’t think the technology is standardized enough to make meaningful laws yet. I agree with some previous posters, the burden shouldn’t necessarily be all on site owners like target, when there are some things that could make the process simpler at the browser level….

For anyone interested in learning more about the case’s background/Judge Patel’s recent ruling, check out http://onlineliabilityblog.com.....nd-update/

-Michael

Max (#31) is right. Same sort of thought process is going on in our (USA) educational system - dummy it ALL down to the lowest common denominator because we don’t want the lazy stupid people to feel bad because there are smart hard working people around them.

The lazy stupid bleeding heart people are the ones supporting government controls like this.

Free market is the only way to do this. Making sites accessible to the disabled is great! The onus is on the site owner. Leave it at that.

Last I heard this Target case only applied to websites that also had physical storefronts?

“the court clarified that the law requires that any place of public accommodation is required to ensure that it does not discriminate when it uses the internet as a means to enhance the services it offers at a physical location.”

I would gladly comply, but ONLY AFTER all of the newspapers started doing LARGE PRINT versions first.

What the hell, do they think that just because it’s on a computer that somehow it magically makes it easier to change layouts, sizes, etc?

Why don’t we change the highways and cars while were at it? How do the public libraries deal with this issue?

So, how do I test my site to see if it is accessible to the disabled?
Is the Government going to hand out free screen-reading software and speech synthesis hardware?

How is this discrimination? funny - now we’ll need to code multilingual versions of our site too, after all, we wouldn’t want to exclude anyone who cannot read English.

You have some soliders coming home without arms, legs, eye sight, hearing, etc…

I’m suprise to see 67% corporate companies didn’t pay larger IRS taxes to support disability.

You know what made Microsot stock jump higher back 1980s? I remember 1986 Microsoft deliever Windows 3.0. There’s accessible tool on control panel. All microsoft team got rich.

You know what made IBM stock jump higher?
http://www-03.ibm.com/industri.....94103.html

You know what made Google stock jump higher? It’s because of this…
http://labs.google.com/accessible/

@31… You better watch your comments. Corporate companies do get nasty. They use IP address and store in database. Let say you want to to get a job and you send resume. Most likely you will never get hired or you will get layoff in 5-7 years. Most corporate companies want to reduce lawsuits against people with disabilty.

In C corporation, you pay double taxation.

This is something that has been coming for a long time. A very long time. How long can we continue to ignore visually impaired people’s use of the net. However, this could cost the tech world substantially. Its a difficult situation.
I would personally ensure that sites;

1. Have alt tags for images
2. Ensure they can be read by text based browsers.

But beyond that, I think any mandatory changes will be detrimental

Perhaps if accessibility had been taken into consideration before the rush to extremes of Ajax and Flash-based applications, those who care nothing for the accessibility of their sites to blind and visually-impaired people wouldn’t be whining at the prospect of having to make reasonable accommodations now. Just because you can do a thing technologically does not make it the right thing to do. I don’t have a great deal of sympathy for those who got caught with inaccessible tools and now must backtrack to make them useful. Accessibility guidelines for Web sites have existed for many years, and it is the gratuitous use of scripted applications that has thwarted them.

I also find the frequent use of “they” in regard to disabled people in this thread disturbing. Are there no disabled people where you live and work? Do you really see people with bad (or no) eyesight as some sort of inconvenient and slightly dodgy nuisances, like the homeless? Do you really think disabled people surf the Web just to find companies they can sue? Could it simply be that blind people want to shop at Target.com? And can you seriously suggest that providing a wheelchair-accessible bathroom has ANYTHING to do with making Web sites accessible to blind users? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

It comes down to a simple bottom line: I make my living on the Internet. I’m also visually impaired. If Internet tools I need are not accessible, I can’t work, shop, or visit your site and partake in what you have to sell. Would you prefer to support me with your tax dollars, including my living expenses and health care costs, or would you rather make your tools accessible so that I can do my job, earn a living and contribute my tax dollars to society, and my disposable income to you or your advertisers? Come on. Which is it?

This “news” is over a year old, the only thing new about it is the “class action” status.

And this only applies to “bricks-and-mortar stores”

All that alt-text is good for your SEO anyway, stop crying.

Speaking of discrimination, the very nature of their proposal discriminates against the hearing impaired -

So, let’s start with YouTube, since Google has the most money to spend on this.

As soon as each and every video on their site includes Closed Captioning, then let’s take on the rest of the sites. Until then, it’s just a few congressmen trying to make a case out of something which they really don’t understand.

The needs of one? Lowest common denominator?

Not only are those comments insulting but they’re also extremely ignorant. Take 2 minutes and research some statistics regarding disability…I think you’ll be shocked by how many millions of people with disabilities (just in California) that this could improve access for (http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-17.pdf).

According to the 2000 census, one in five U.S. citizens has a long-lasting condition or disability. 3.6% of the entire population, according to the census, has a sensory disability (sight or hearing).

Obviously a big part of this discussion should be about who the law applies to regarding website access and how it is applied, though most of the comments so far reveal a larger issue of ignorance or denial.

There are various motivations to bringing a site up to speed accessibility wise. If you sell anything online, it’s absolutely stupid not to have a website that is accessible to people with disabilities — they make up a very sizable % of the general population AND the online audience. Plus how much more convenient is it for anyone to be able to purchase groceries from Peapod or goods from Target, etc.

As of about 12-16 months ago, Target didn’t even provide “alt tags” for the products on its site. That is one of the most basic things anyone with a website can do to improve accessibility. Many of the other ways to improve accessibility involve best coding practices (ie…writing valid code and using XHTML/CSS instead of tables), along with a few other simple concepts.

It’s not rocket science. Do it to improve your bottom line, to improve community relations, or just to know that your site is accessible to more people. That’s never a bad thing.

-Andrew

Shelly,

Not at all - it is just the added expense of modifying current sites which I take issue with - it’s no business of the Governments.

Perhaps the Gov’t is seeing this as a legislative back door - if they can begin mandating who/what the Internet is supposed to be, or what accessibility issues are to be in place, then what comes next?

I’m all for 100% accessibility, but I am a one-man IT company - who’s going to pay for it?

Am I now being discriminated against because I don’t have the necessary time or capital required to become compliant with such proposals?

Andrew - the URL you provided with your comment is WCAG1 priority 1 compliant, but fails 508 and WCAG1 priority 2 testing.

Dr Frd,

I think tech. is evolving too slowly and some lateral thinking and cross fertilization of ideas would help.

Should Radiohead make sign language videos for the deaf?

This is the equivalent of dictating that every book published must also be published in brail. Stupid.

Shelly:
we use Ajax and/or Flash to make sites more usable to common people. It’s an advantage for them because it makes sites faster, easier and opens up a lot of new possibilites that would be extremaly clumsy or impossibile to implement using plain old “static” HTML.
So, forcing everybody to a lower common standard would make a site accessible to the blind, but worsen the experience of all the others! Which is totally crazy!
Otherwise you’ll need to provide two designs: one for the blind, the other for not visually impaired people. That means twice the time, twice the mantainance, twice the problems and twice the cost!!!

In case anyone is keen on misinterpreting the one-line reference to my work by Alex above, that presentation (and the later online notes) described the specific edge cases in which Web accessibility is not the *developer’s* problem.

I’m pretty much interpreting all the faux-resentful and faux-appalled comments above as indicators that the commenters are lousy developers who never bothered to learn Web standards in the first place.

It’s nice to see this comment stream getting back on the tracks of reality.

I think that in general, no web designer in the world has a problem with making things accessible, if they are given the time and the money needed to make it happen.

What coder in the world doesn’t wish to have his/her creation(s) utilized by the largest audience?

The proposed mandate doesn’t take into account the amount of time and people required to become “compliant” in their eyes - but then again, this is your Government talking, the people who print the money, remember? To them, a $1,500 dollar per plate dinner is what the “common man” is used to.

@Joe Clark - oh please, perhaps I spoke too soon.

You chirp about web-standards, and yet, the XMLHTTPRequest isn’t included in the standards.

Do you want standard standards compliant web-pages or do you want web-based applications which break the standards, yet simplify functionality for the masses?

You cannot have both.

Shelly and other in favor of this retarded (oops, developmentally disabled, oops, law with mental retardation…) law — this should be a free market issue. If a website developer that happens to have e-commerce on their site (Target, for instance) decides NOT to make the site accessible — that’s their choice, they will, of course, lose business from the visually, hearing or otherwise impaired. A Wal-mart, for instance, may see this as an opportunity and make their site accessible. At some point, Target would have felt it in their bottom line and done something about it. You can make an analogy to the ADA and physical spaces if you’d like, but I think it’s overreaching to do that. As for Blueberry Ln — I’m not shocked by the statistics — they still show that people with disabilities are a vast minority and I shouldn’t have to code for them unless I choose to. This isn’t a discrimination issue, it’s a market issue. Again, I don’t write books for the illiterate, etc…

As a note — on a plane last week. Sign on the bulkhead re: safety issues — “If you can’t read, or understand English, please speak to a crew member.” Ummmm… it’s like the braille signs at a drivethrough window, what. the. fuck.

@Blueberry Ln. - XHTML may be a standard, but it is not cross-browser compatible. Anyone who works in this space already should know that HTML 4.01 Strict is the only DOCTYPE that will allow a site to look and function the same across all browsers.

Although I agree about tables… hate them in all cases where they are used for layout, instead of displaying tabular data.

Alt tags are no big deal, being compatible with screen readers is a reasonable goal, and allowing the user a reasonable way to resize text and still have the layout function is common sense. The problem I have is that when you look at the application and enforcement of ADA in the brick-and -mortar world, you find that small businesses are often hit multiple times with complaints even when they are doing their best (and spending all they can afford) to comply.

And yes, there are career disabled people (often with law degrees) who use the ADA as their primary source of income. Don’t believe me? Search Google for ADA small claims and/or ADA lawsuit.

What we NEED in the web world is a set of safe harbor guidelines, which currently do not exist, that would make compliance clear, and limit liability accordingly. Only with such safe harbor will sites comply, and without it we could see more web-only companies leave the US for India and other well-connected and poorly regulated locations.

Echoing others I agree that although this is a pain just because of it being a new setting, a new project, a new change etc. There are some great resources out there to help out. In actuality, one of you coders who figures out a quick way to do the adjustments could make a killing charging customers for $1000-$2000 a piece to take care of it for them. Or, what about a widget (I know there are a lot of widget companies out there) that the blind can install and then it overlays sites and helps out. In the bubble years I think there were one or two companies that did that. Potentially, for something like that there could be government money to be paid. The TTY providers (the guys that do the sign language for video phone conversations for blind people) are government funded and make a huge per minute rate (it would blow you away how much they make).

Regardless, here is a pretty good resource here to take a look at. It even gives a website to go try out.

http://www.webaim.org/articles/visual/blind.php.

Mark

By the way, I meant deaf people for the video phone conversations.

@ Michael Bailey - ‘now we’ll need to code multilingual versions of our site too, after all, we wouldn’t want to exclude anyone who cannot read English’

I saw that one coming (within these comments). That should really be up to the webmaster and what audience they care to reach, IMHO.

Speaking of which -
what about a 3rd party-provided, ‘translator-like,’ site
(or a portal, or something like Anonymizer, etc)
that a visually-impaired person would use to visit site through -
couldn’t using such an ‘middleman tool’ possibly offer existing website ‘translation’ to provide the desired accessibility?

I wonder which Presidential candidate will get behind this ‘website accessibility’ issue?

I’d hate to see sites ‘blocking access’ to those whose IPs reside in CA -
Oh wait, that’s not possible…much to the frustration of Big Brother, I’m sure.

satisfying the the lowest common denominator and adding the sophisticated functionalities on top of that is what I see as accessibility. Provide the basic functionality for the blind. With some little effort and interest to learn web standards and few simple accessibility guidelines, the developers can incorporate bare minimum accessibility in the designs. May be your entire site may not be accessible but there are few simple accessibility mistakes you can avoid to make the site readable for the blind.

for all those who think we should forget the blind completely and develop websites for normal people, for 10 seconds imagine yourself as blind. They have every right to use the web.

But imposing a government law is not a good thing and no company would want to spend money over a lawsuit filed by a blind person.

Making a new website accessible for blind will not cost you anything extra and its a good practice to do that.

Hi, this is I.R.A. Dumbass and I represent the Americans with Low IQ’s Association (DUMB for short). We are lobbying Washington to have all websites dumbed down so that people with ultra low IQ’s can understand what they say. We are here to warn you that we simply do not understand words like “navigation headers”, “visual impairment”, and “websites”. We are lobbying a class action lawsuit against TechCrunch and all of it’s subsidiaries, including Target, Pan Am Airlines, and Pornotube.com. Our lawyers have assured us that they aren’t in it for the money at all. They just want the entire world dumbed down so that everyone understands everything ever in the history of everything ever. Please comply or you will be found to not be in compliance.

Sincerely,
I.R.A. Dumbass
E Pluribus Unum Esquire

Some of these comments are offensive and ignorant. I believe the web should be accessible to everyone. It is the place that a majority of folks go to for medical information, help with government services, paying bills, and communicating with people. When we do not code correctly or use free accessibility testers or provide web alternatives we are denying folks access to the same information that people who do not have disabilities have… That is inequality folks.

There are a lot of wonderful websites that are Accessibility friendly like http://store.apple.com and many others. Also when you do not have an accessible website - you are losing money. For whatever money you spend developing a accessible website (which should be a small amount) more than likely you will make that money back and more because it broadens your audience. Not just the visually or hearing impaired but seniors who have limited vision and hearing and others. People should stop being so narrow-minded about who should have the right to use the web. We all should.

@Chandra - I cannot help but agree with the
‘can’t we all get along approach’ that you’ve presented.

Hey -

here’s an excuse/opportunity for another top-level domain to be created!

https://www.target.access - a nice positive spin on this one
https://www.target.blind - this one is too ‘targeted,’ right? (pardon the pun)
https://www.target.special - this one is too general, right?

I’m still waiting on the .xxx to be passed (it’s been shot down twice now, I hear)
A .xxx top-level domain would assist…

-single parent households
-households where both parents work
-those parents who allow computers to be placed in their child’s bedroom
-less tech saavy parents and grandparents, too.

Did I leave anyone out?

@ Max - your comments display exactly why this is a discrimination issue.

@ Dennis - ADA cases are common because a lot of businesses don’t take the time to find out how to be compliant, or they cut corners on purpose to save money. ADA cases are not common because of a few well to do “ADA lifers” that make their living by suing businesses. That’s not to say that some of the cases aren’t filed frivolously…but that happens in every type of case handled by the court system.

In many cases (pun), a reasonable accommodation is requested well before it goes to court. I’m guessing that Target missed several deadlines brought by the plaintiff(s) to improve the accessibility of their site. They didn’t meet the requirements of the request, or they were too slow, so they were sued.

Not all requests are reasonable, but for the ones that are, it’s smart to go ahead and spend a little to get it done right. Would have made for a nice press release from Target, anyway.

I can’t believe all the whining over this. I like the posts that try to point out cost-effective solutions better than the ones who try to claim that capitalism has historically been accommodating to disabled people. Haha, how dumb can you get?

I once asked my boss about accessibility for our site and he said, “For a company with limited resources, we can’t be expected to implement it unless our bigger competitors are forced to do it, too.”

So if there’s no law, that’s a reason to not do it. Basically, all the people who have been ignoring it have been asking for a law. It really isn’t that hard and it’s the right thing to do. Just be happy that you don’t have to go install handicapped rails and ramps everywhere (which is also the right thing to do). Web designers have it easy when it comes to accessibility.

I see web designers and consultants getting really excited on the topic as this is a new revenue stream for them.

The key issue is enforcement.

Accessibility is an area where Dojo really shines. http://dojotoolkit.org/book/do.....dijit/a11y

Dojo is an open source JavaScript/Ajax toolkit, and for the 1.0 release, all widgets (Dijits) will have accessibility support.

For those not using Dojo, the documentation on our site is still really useful in understanding how to create accessible web applications when you rely in a lot of Ajax practices. IBM in particular has put a lot of time and effort into making this easier to do, both from the developer side and from the browser and screen reader side.

If Target doesn’t make its web site accessible, then Target has made a business decision that it doesn’t care about business from the blind. And that’s their right. The problem is when we start legislating this crap, and it gets out of control, the way it is in my kid’s school, where “adult minders” are walking around watching “needs help” kids on a 1-on-1 basis, when the money should be going to much more sensible things.

You can’t do everything for everyone. Sorry, you just can’t. Deal.

If it was extremely easy to cater for the needs of the disabled when developing web sites & apps, Im sure more people would be positive about such things, and would do it so they could put a shiny badge on their site and feel all worthwhile inside.

But I imagine the realities of living up to these responsibilities are not too tidy in the current web 2,0 era. On the one hand better browsers and greater use of web standards and having proper compliance should help. On the otherhand AJAX and friends probably makes things worse.

Im sure we already have laws like this in the UK and all but the largest organisations and institutions tend to ignore the issue completely, perhaps assuming that the software or hardware which the disabled use should bear all of the responsibility.

Anyways I wouldnt be half surprised if the sites which are the best experience for peoples with no disabilities are also the best for those who may be impared in some way. I think the world would be a better place if there were some institutions which existed to promote ecellence in User Interfaces, and had penty of people working for them that had various disabilities, and all of this could be rolled together with existing web standards & best practice etc. Then operating system, browser and AJAX libraries could have more of this best-practice and disabled-friendly stuff built in, making it more likely that developers will act responsibly because it will be far more practical for them to do so.

Meanwhile as the baby boomers start to retire these issues are only going to get more important, think I’ll go patent me the anti-shake mouse.

Here’s an idea!

Create super high quality drop-in accessibility software that websites can license from your company? You’ll make a fortune.

Who could you hire to make this software quickly, easily and professionally cross platform?
We’ll do it. Email us via our contact form. We have made accessibility software before, and we would love to do it again for some enterprising company with VC backing and a dream. Click my Chris link and use the contact form if you want to risk the capital, on what is sure to be a mandatory requirement, and a secure market for this not-yet produced software.

A. You take your risk capital and hire us to create the software

B. You tell all websites in California they can abide by this new law for only, say $99 for a license, which is platform independent and locked in to 1 single machine or website via crackproofing.

C. You watch the money come tumbling in, pay back the VC sharks and swim in your new olympic sized pool.

Q&A:
Q: Why not India or China, they work for free after all?
A: Because they suck, and not only do they suck, they can hardly read English, the language of choice in California, barring Spanish.

Do you have the software to effectively create and manage builds for this type of software?
A: Oh hell yeah,
flickr.com/photos/8606487@N03/1507113327/
flickr.com/photos/8606487@N03/1507113277/
We also have a barrage of BSD open source frameworks to use.
Our coders have completed college on this side of the Atlantic and hold real, non-cracker jack box software engineering degrees.

Q: Why wouldn’t you do it?
A: We are not in the business of risking money. That’s what our clients do. We are in the business of taking specifications for software, and building said software for customers.

So is that why there are brail buttons on the keypad at drive up bank tellers. The blind drive up, cash a check and then drive out on their way….. great!!

How can software such as Chris described be built?

Just to be clear, what I am talking about is a server side IIS filter dll, and or Apache module which would go in /etc/httpd/modules/xx__accessibiltiy__xx.so

Which would be sold and deployed as a windows installer for IIS, or as an RPM for Linux, tar for Apple XServe. This deployment would deploy the software, and restart the web server.
From there on, all html would be verified and the accessibility tags would be added where they are needed. Thus making it impossible not to comply with the law.

We can do this with our MSDN developer volume subscription, and our high cost proprietary C Apache module templates which we boilerplate for our customers at no extra cost. We can also maintain this software for years with an SLA.

Beat the market at it’s own game by licensing accessibility complaince software. We’re up to the challenge of making it for you RIGHT NOW.

Did I say HTML, I meant anything that outputs HTML.
Using hooks your dedicated programmer will grab the output of php, shtml, and every other Apache module and filter it before it goes back to the client’s browser. Same for IIS. Hooking output like that is not easy. You need people with a first rate edu. Contact us.

To sweeten the deal, your dedicated programmer, under my supervision will add a GUI control panel to set the module’s parameters to determine the way accessibility should be added to the output that goes to the browser.

Your customers will never see a cumbersome command line or text configuration file.

It will look hawt, like Paris Hilton in the burger commercial. We know how unsavy webmasters can be. It will be like the easy button at staples to work, and we’ll even write you out a massive FAQ for the sales website. We’ve been doing this for customers for years. When you see a neato program on the internet and you think the company makes it. No, it’s actually us. Like generic rebranded supermarket items(ie laundry detergent), we can do that for startups.

“Web designers have it easy when it comes to accessibility.”

LOL, yeah and we have it easy when we get to create different code for “cross-browser” operation too - there’s another place where the “standards” were interpreted in different ways.

Oh, and something which I would like to know, since a few people mentioned eCommerce - How does a blind person read their account number on a credit card? It’s not in braille - do such cards exist?

This is quite simple. Web Development is a skilled profession. It requires a variety of creative and scientific talents, and a dedication to learn and maintain high standards. Computing in general moves quickly, software on the internet faster still. If you are a web developer, it is your job to keep up.

Therefore, if in 2007 you call yourself some permutation of a ‘Web Professional’ but do not implement accessible solutions as a matter of course and principal please stop. Stop lying to your clients that you are a competent web developer. Stop lying to your peers. If you are not aiming to publish the most accessible solution you can when you build a site then you do not qualify to call yourself ‘professional’.

Web Development moved on. We left behind tables and proprietary scripting. Now in light of capable tools we have left behind inaccessibility too. Web Standards are the enabler of that movement (and yes, there are accepted extensions beyond that base, such as Ajax). It doesn’t fix old sites, but it means that there is no acceptable excuse to sell new inaccessible shite to a client. If you’re doing that then you simply don’t know how to use your tools, so learn.

Accessibility is not a feature. It’s the web.

If you’ve read that and really, truly believe that for some reason accessibility doesn’t apply to you, or that you should charge more, or some other pathetic excuse, I suggest that the web has left you behind.

I’m not sure where I stand on legal enforcement. If everyone did their job we wouldn’t need it, but the industry is full of cowboys so perhaps we do. The enforcement of it beyond individual cases will be interesting to see.

@72… I like that idea. Hmm… Why didn’t CC# companies or banks come up with that idea?

I saw Jamie Fox ray charles movie. It doesn’t say… It might be intersting to develop accessible credit cards for blind and people with dsability. I wonder what’s security like. I remember I asked my school teacher back in 1982. How does blind read money? She told the class.

“People have be honest. It is up to you to do the right thing. It makes you feel good.”.

Although agreed with their concerns, but that is ridiculous and so dumb….#72 credit cards in braille….wow that would be interesting and very secured as well.

http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

Ben Ward is right. Creating accessible websites is simply the normal way of doing things if you’re a professional. And it doesn’t cost any extra time or effort: there’s a ridiculous amount of FUD and plain ignorance on display in these comments.

Oh, and as for the people pointing to braille on drive-thru ATMs as accessibility gone mad, just stop and think for a minute. ATMs are made in a factory. They’re made the same way regardless of where they’ll end up; on the street, at a drive-thru, wherever. It would cost more to make non-braille versions ’specially for the drive-thru.

And this comment by Michael Bailey would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic:

“Oh, and something which I would like to know, since a few people mentioned eCommerce - How does a blind person read their account number on a credit card? It’s not in braille - do such cards exist?”

Michael, take out your credit card. Close your eyes. Feel your card. Dolt.

“This is quite simple. Web Development is a skilled profession.”

Web devs are the lowest ring on the programming food change. They are the least skilled generally speaking. Imagine your web designer doing assembly language code for instance.

So with that being said, the point of “stupid proof” could be a filter at the ASAPI level on IIS, and at the Apache output level with a module on Linux and Mac.

This concept would be a huge seller, because companies know that web devs are not the brightest bulbs, and it would be like a piece of insurance. At that access point as a module for the server output, it could implement things like image recognition and use context from the rest of the XML block to provide descriptions making the html accessibility compliant.

The HTML/XML output would be cleaned up like the “tidy” does, except for accessibility compliance. The reason the MSHTML component in IE mashes up CSS so badly is BECAUSE web devs were so bad the MS IE developers attempted to correct bad XML blocks for them. If they change it to fast(not over years) it would ruin their own compatibility.

If you are really blind and really need to surf a website, why not just ask one of the people that regularly helps you through life to surf , with you. If I was blind I would ask someone if I could borrow their eyes to use the internet.

If someone really wants to help the blind, create an audio based internet just for them, its possible, so do it, it could be really interesting anyways.

Ask someone to surf for you, problem solved, no redesign necessary.

The amount of ignorance around is staggering. I don’t want to comment on the details of this case or the ADA, but it’s pretty obvious that regulations ensuring that disabled people are able to lease somewhat normal lives are necessary in our society. Now, the needs of the disabled have to be weighed against the costs of dealing with those needs - and in general, that’s what the laws and regulations do. Yes, there are exceptions; sometimes the law isn’t as flexible as it should be and sometimes the people who administer those regulations demand unreasonable things. But those are the exceptions; most of the time these laws do a lot of good at little cost to anyone.

The idea of letting the free market decide what should be done is hilarious. If we let the free market decide what to with the disabled, the free market’s decision would be to ignore or better yet, get rid of them. Free, totally un-regulated markets are a path to disaster, because unbridled competition will inevitably lead to the abandonment of all moral restraints in many industries.

Adam Smith did a very good job explaining free markets in The Wealth of Nations, but people seem to skip over the parts about rational actors and perfect information being required for free markets to function properly. And the reality is that humans rarely have access to all the information they need to make rational decisions and that human brains aren’t designed to make rational decisions anyway. In the real world, businesses have often discriminated against people of different races, religions, physical capabilities in irrational ways, and if these problems were just left up to the free market to fix, such discrimination would probably continue indefinitely.

Finally, much of what is being talked about in relation to this case is nonsensical; no one is proposing that all websites be fully accessible to the disabled. This is a specific, narrow case. There may be less narrow cases on this matter in the future, but nobody is about to force every MySpace user to make their pages accessible to the blind, even if it is true that those pages are often detrimental to the eyes. Given its lack of connection to reality, this discussion might as well be about the dreaded coming “Internet tax”

That should be ISAPI not ASAPI of course. I am used to working with Apache and apr sources.
We could do a beta milestone on such a product for X company within 6 months on one or more platform. A possible selling point could be a scare tactic showing a web developer and VC in jail for not complying with the ruling.

@jeremy - that’s not Braille, you idiot.

Hi Everyone!

Internet Tax. It’s funny

Some states don’t accept Internet Taxes. Most corporate companies don’t like Internet Taxes either. Internet Taxes can’t create jobs & economy, but it can create massive inflation. I like when government can’t fix mortage & Oil price problems. LOL. If internet taxes comes… heheheh.

I love to see biggest Internet crash in century.

Other companies like Amazon, Google, Ebay, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Digg, etc… They can’t make money the same way it was before. I bet they refuse to pay triple corporate taxes on C or S Corporation.

Most internet companies might have difficult time to acquire startups. They have to pay internet taxes.

If Internet Taxes comes. I’ll will be stop using Email.
I bet Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Youtube, Zoho, AOL, Venture capitalist will get extreme piss off at Congress. They spend large amount money on Internet server.

@Chandra - I cannot help but agree with your ‘ can’t we all get along’ approach.

Perhaps a new top-level domain opportunity here?

http://www.target .blind - too limiting/specific
http://www.target .special - too general/patronizing
http://www.target .access - this one has a nice positive spin to it

I’m still waiting for .XXX to pass (I hear it was shot down twice already)

As for the braille on ATMs -

kinda scary having it on the drive-up ATMS, right?

Don’t get me started on how I gotta take an extra step and choose ‘ENGLISH’ as my language when using my ATM card.

Can’t I just (voluntarily) tell my bank that I want ‘ENGLISH’ to be automatically chosen for me everytime and have that language preference recognized whenever I transact, so to speak? But I digress.

Here’s interesting part….
There’s internet tax war on going on between rich versus greed.

If you run S or C corporation. you pay four level taxes.
you workers have to pay 5 to 7 local, state, and internet taxes, phone and internet email boxes. If you company can’t generate revenue. Heheheh….

I love to see Greedy lobbist attacking rich interent companies.

So has anyone else recognized that this ruling could create much greater implications than just Websites? If this ruling stands, wouldn’t it also hold true that any sales flyer printed for the newspaper should also be provided in brail for the blind? Shouldn’t every magazine and / or book be provided in brail as well? How about Billboards? Shouldn’t all billboards also be created in some sort of audio format so the blind could ask their drivers to stop so they could listen to the sign for Target?? I mean this comes down to the First Amendment Rights and Freedom of Speech.. if Pornographer’s can generate and print anything they want based on Freedom of Speech, then companies should certainly be able to choose whether or not they want consider blind people who use the internet as a large enough target market to spend 10’s of thousands of dollars to rebuild their website. Just another instance of our government taking our abilities to make our own decisions. We have to long allowed Political Correctness to take a higher precedence than our first amendment rights.

Wow, this thread is eye opening. I thought the message about web accessibility had been getting through!

I’m willing to bet that the people in this thread who aren’t bothered about the accessibility of their sites have never watched a screen reader user actually use the web. It’s a pretty amazing experience - for one thing, they generally run the speech synthesizer at a speed that’s absolutely incomprehensible to people who aren’t used to it (it just sounds like garbled noise). They can surf the web with a screen reader significantly faster than I can with my regular vision.

Once you’ve seen that, it becomes obvious that throwing road blocks in their way is very difficult to excuse.

Adding accessibility after the fact is difficult, but if you design with accessibility in mind from the very start (using unobtrusive scripting and progressive enhancement for example) you’ll find that