ADA Doesn't Apply to Web 827
djmoore writes "A federal judge has ruled that the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) does not apply to the Web. U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz dismissed with prejudice a suit demanding that Southwest Airlines make its website more accessible to the blind, saying that the suit would create new rights for the disabled without setting appropriate standards. Judge Seitz also rejected plaintiffs' claim that the Web is a 'place of exhibition, display, and a sales establishment,' one of the twelve categories covered by the ADA, on the grounds that the law only covers physical places." Our original article has more details.
fost priest (Score:-1, Insightful)
This doesn't exclude the Web from courtesy (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Umm.. (Score:2, Insightful)
When is a horse not a horse? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the area of online jurisdiction is going to be a legal gold mine of study in the near future. What with seemingly conflicting case law this is the stuff that a law journal would kill for.
Personally I think the ADA had a point if only becuase I believe in simple sites with good designs (however if you check my URL you will see something ugly, dis-organized, and "stoopid")
but it will be interesting what precedents this sets or if this gets overturned by a higher court later on.
Thats like.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Umm.. (Score:1, Insightful)
None of that matters if you are BLIND.
insane ruling (Score:3, Insightful)
1. graphical buttons should have names (you know, the things that pop up when you hover your mouse over a graphic) so the blind can tell, w/ a text reader, what the button is supposed to do.
2. people put up "text only"/"low bandwidth" versions of their pages up all the time. It is not difficult.
In short, southwest doesn't want to be assed to hire competent frontpage monkeys.
Good, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
1-800-IFLYSWA works for blind people (Score:5, Insightful)
The best analogy I can think of is a building with both stairs and a ramp to access it. If this lawsuit was successful, it would be like compelling the owner of said building to make the stairs accessable to disabled people when there is a perfectly good ramp. Why should Southwest have to change their website when there is a perfectly good phone number?
I'm sorry to say I agree with the court ruling (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me start by saying that this comment does not make me feel morally superior - in fact the opposite.
The truth of the matter, is that there are multiple considerations (ignoring the specifics of the law for now).
1. The cost to existing and new websites would be extremely high to implement ADA standards. In addition, this could easily shut-down smaller businesses (i.e. those akin to yahoo stores etc...) and those serving small niche markets. A good example of this was a small Australian site selling serialR/C Servo controllers for less than 50% of the cheapest US-made part.
2. The web is not a physical space. I agree with this one also. While I really, really am sympathetic to the disabled, and wish to help-out whenever possible, at what point does the ADA/public-regulated support end? Should highways have bumper-car lanes for those with poor eyesight? Should the stock market have a slow motion exchange for those who need more time to think?
I would support a federally funded (not run) program to provide tools making it easier to design/implement/test sites for accessibility, but c'mon folks - we can't even get HTML compliant browsers...
what do you think would happen if the feds mandated a HTML-ADA spec???
Re:Quite Right (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:1-800-IFLYSWA works for blind people (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, if the guy had called, complained that he couldn't navigate the website because he's blind, asked for the reduced rate anyway, and been denied, then he might have a valid complaint.
Dinivin
Re:Thats like....Indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
If this had made it through, everyone that displayed *anything*, *anyway* would be liable.
If you are on the radio, you must make a visual display for the deaf.
If you display a sign on the front of your store advertising a special, or even own a billboard on the side of the highway, you must accomodate the blind.
The list of possible extremes is endless.
Well isn't that just dandy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Being a web designer, my main goal is to get my work "seen" by as many people as possible. This includes anyone with a disability, as they're people, too. I say bad form. The ADA should apply to ALL situations, allowing ALL people to do whatever they can within any given limitation. If software exists to help a blind person "view" a website via audible text playback, then they should not be singled out like this.
Web sites already cater to the hearing impaired (duh), but does the ability to see entitle them to more? People with vision problems (blindness or otherwise) should be granted the ability to "view" whatever site they choose, be it with a text reader or otherwise. This decision will make those with disabilities that render Internet use all but impossible out to be second class citizens again, which is why the ADA was enacted.
If anything, we're going to see a whole mess of discrimination lawsuits come out of this. And we all know what kind of chaos can ensue when someone files a lawsuit. If you're in charge of web content, I'm urging you to ignore this court decision and go the extra mile for people with disabilities. If you do, at least one person out there will certainly appreciate the extra effort, and you'll avoid a costly lawsuit in the process (aka CYA)...
Re:This doesn't exclude the Web from courtesy (Score:5, Insightful)
The web, and the world for that matter, should not be designed around the lowest common denominator.
Yes there are times when you want to consider disabled people in what you're doing - but it should not just be a default requirement. This will lead to people thinking that airplanes should have their cockpits designed around [Insert Disability Here] or any other thing.
Why not have firearms designed for people who have no arms?
The world is designed around people - as they should be. You think that the NBA should be required to modify the rules of basketball to allow people with no arms? No. you wouldn't even consider that - so your statements that "If you can't view it in Lynx, you're a bastard for writing it." is shortsighted (pun intended)
Certain aspects of technology can and should be adapted for people with usability issues - but it should not be one of the fundamental design requirements - unless that is the primary market for said technology.
wow, who bought off the judge? (Score:5, Insightful)
if a store or even a private club doesnt have ramps or handicap access they are swarmed upon by the bees that are the ADA... but when it comes to accessability via electronic means it doesn't?
heck most of these places are required to have TTY phones and operators to handle calls from the deaf, why the decision to ignore the blind?
Re:insane ruling (Score:5, Insightful)
2. people put up "text only"/"low bandwidth" versions of their pages up all the time. It is not difficult.
I don't agree. Maintaining and testing two UI's on your product is considerably more difficult that maintaining one. Especially if your content is dynamically generated in multiple languages. I get that with a well designed architecture with good separation between the presentation and logic layers makes this easier but it still requires a considerable effort for very little incremental gain (i.e. you will not see a considerable jump in people accessing your site)
Re:Thats like.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention..southwest does have an 800 number.
Re:wow, who bought off the judge? (Score:3, Insightful)
You just don't get it, do you? (Score:2, Insightful)
But if you are offering a public service, you are subject to the laws that govern such matters.
Re:I'm sorry to say I agree with the court ruling (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm sorry to say I agree with the court ruling (Score:5, Insightful)
The cost to new sites is zero. Using HTML properly gets you ADA compliance. The HTML standards were designed very carefully to accomodate different types of client, including non-visual. The only problem arises from those who incorrectly try to use HTML as a graphic design medium
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Umm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thankfully, given the number of idiot webmasturbators that commit this stupidity, this isn't quite true. Gecko-based browsers (Mozilla, Galeon) will resize any text, even if the idiot that composed the webpage specified a fixed font size.
Still not much help for the totally blind, however. It seems that what was asked for (alt text and a way to skip nav bars) was not that bad. Now that they've won the suit, Southwest should consider doing it anyway as a gesture of good will.
Re:Quite Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a very important distinction, which is why I'm going all off-topic here.
That said, I personally agree with legislation to mandate or regulate accessibility online.
The DMCA protects the haves, which is why we didn't need that legislation.
This accessibility legislation would help the have-nots, which is the only reasonable excuse for additional legislation (ie, to help those that actually need it as opposed to want it.)
Re:That's too bad (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with your opinion of flash, though. It is pretty lame.
Re:Quite Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Sharing information is the _only_ thing the web is about. It's all just 1s and 0s. If you're not doing any sharing you must be looking at a black screen, however seeing as how you seem to be reading Slashdot and sharing your opinion with us, i rather doubt that's the case.
Sure, a lot of places put a price on the sharing of information, either monetary or social, but once the price is paid sharing commences. Every pixel you look at and every byte you send out is information being shared. When you're not sharing information you're not using the web, you're just sitting there doing nothing.
Re:Quite Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Why must we have a new law every time a new technology comes along? Wouldn't common sense be to use existing laws to govern new things, in the spirit of the old law? We have so many laws, governing the minutia of everyday life, that no person could possibly be expected to know or follow every one. What we need is a reduction and simplification of laws, not an expansion to explicitly govern every imaginable situation.
That doesn't make any sense. The DMCA took away rights people already had with regard to copyrighted materials. Do we really need to fight for peoples' rights again every time something new comes along?
Re:This doesn't exclude the Web from courtesy (Score:2, Insightful)
For example, how many of the young people nowadays graduating from colleges and univiversities and starting careers in web development are even aware of Lynx. A text only browser? Hard to imagine for many people nowadays. I've heard of it but I can honestly say I have NEVER seen it or even heard of anyone I know using it. I've been doing web development for several years now. The ones that come after me? forget it.
Fact is, most new developers aren't even aware of the alt tags and what not or even how they would aid the disabled. And I think most developers would have difficulty comprehending how a blind person would even use the internet let account for their disability somehow.
While I sympathize with the disabled and certainly encourage developers to create disabled-friendly website, I could not even think to go so far as to mandate it. Where would you draw the line? If an airline could get sued, what about a commercial porn site? (seriously, think about it). How about average joe-shmow hotmail account user?
It's scary the direction a lot of this political correctness is going these days and its refreshing to see a judge use common sense instead of implementing some precedent that create a whole whack of problems. Just look at what's going on with the obesity-problems in the airline industry. On the one-hand you have a group of people "disabled" by obesity fighting the practice of charging obese passengers for two seats. And on the other hand you have a woman suing the airline because she is now disabled as a result of being crushed by the obese passenger crammed into the seat next to her. (I don't have a link but the story is on BBC).
There is Hope! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:insane ruling (Score:1, Insightful)
imagine a blind and deaf person (ok, their life sucks)
then, the fact that most of the blind are using browsers that read back to them. I'm willing to bet they aren't using IE, and there's no guarantee a javascript on-mouseover would work.
oh, and first they have to see the image to mouse over it.
I bet most of them use a purely keyboard interface.
one more reason for friendly page design.
Re:This doesn't exclude the Web from courtesy (Score:5, Insightful)
I am in complete agreement with your view.
Also, I would like to see every one of these "imposing" initiatives be imposed on government FIRST. Let the makers of the laws deal with the consiquences and iron out the problems, in the process creating a market that may (or may not) spread through the rest of the economy/society.
Examples: electric/hybred cars - if the entire GSA fleet was composed of these cute little beasts there would be a LARGE base of parts supply, infrastructure, etc. for the "civilian" folks that want to buy them. Don't believe it? Look at the HMMWV, Jeep, etc;
solar/alternative power initiatives - let the government try running a building on methane and windmills before forcing "Joe waiter" to have to pay for the ramp up;
the web example at hand - mandate EVERY government website at every level for every purpose be accessable to everybody no matter what the disability. as the standard evolves others can use it as they please for added accessability to their websites.
Just 2 examples that I like without taking 3 hours to make the post
The genisis of this outlook came when I saw a local government badger, fine and harass small businesses all the while their own courthouse was inacessable to anybody but the fit (and the zillion steps were no picnic for us either).
Before anybody pipes up about how much it will cost, that is exactly the point. The beurocrats need to see the cost and trouble of these impositions before dumping them on us.
Re:Thats like.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Surely most businesses could ignore the disabled without any major hit in their bottom line. These people are in such a minority that they would be ignored by the market without enforced accessibility guidelines.
How much impact do you think a phone call or an email would make on a multi-[b|m]illion dollar corporation? Lawsuits are just one way to be heard and sometimes intervention by law is the only chance these people can get.
Re:Good, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you have to maintain dual websites? The changes necessary to make your site accessible to the blind are generally such simple things as using ALT tags for images and make your HTML valid. In fact, the ALT tag has been required (i.e. NOT optional) since at least HTML 4.01 [w3.org].
So really, 90% of the work of making your web site accessible to the blind involves just doing what you should be doing anyway.
Hey, why not help those with ADD? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't ignore my disability as well. Let's stick up for those who can't see, hear or concentrate to use the web!
Re:1-800-IFLYSWA works for blind people (Score:1, Insightful)
The point of the ADA is to provide equal access. Even SouthWest does not claim their phone service to be equalivalent access to their website. In fact, if you dial 800-IFLYSWA, an automated recording states: "Lower prices may be available at southwest.com" To follow your analogy, the "perfectly good ramp" also has a *TOLL* added to it that people using stairs do not have to pay! SouthWest is not the only one that is providing non-equal benfits to web users over telephone users. Several places will justify lengthy hold times on the phone with automated messages stating that "you can reach us faster on our website at..." SouthWest does *NOT* provide a perfectly good phone number for getting the same prices. And there website which contains 34,713 IMG tags of which only 682 have ALT attributes (less than 2%) is discouraging a specific disablity from being able to get those discounts because they are too lazy to populate that 98% containing only 364 unique references with ALT tags. So, in this case, not only does the ramp have an additional toll charge but the stairs could be made into a ramp at the cost on a single day for a single web developer.
THere's no toll booth (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:For the Blind? (Score:5, Insightful)
So blind people can't sit in the back seat and have someone drive them through the ATM lane at their local branch bank?
So manufacuturers of Automatic Teller Machine hardware should stamp two different versions of the buttons -- one with braille for the walk-up ATMs, and one without for drive-ups?
It makes sense to have braille text on all ATM machines, financially if for no other reason.
Two points (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is an important fact. Being blind and using an inherently visual medium is always going to be difficult in some way. Coupled with the fact that the judge recognized that there are no guidelines from a generally accepted authority means that there wasn't anything for Southwest to comply or try to comply with.
2) The person could always use the phone and talk with a real person. The problem with disabilities is that human beings can adapt. Computer cannot. The ADA made things accessable (wheelchair ramps). Once inside, people can help deal with the individual disability.
For example, say a disabled person comes into a clothing store. They need help.
a) Say they are visually-impared. The employee can help describe colors and styles and pick out correct sizes.
b) Say they are hearing-impared and are mute. The employee and customer can communicate through written notes.
c) Say the employee is in a wheelchair. They may just need the employee to reach clothing for them.
The ADA does not say that all stores must have little tags on the clothes that give a verbal description when you press them or require everything to be at a height so that a person in a wheelchair can reach them.
A computer cannot adapt. Humans can. You cannot expect the WWW to give a disabled person the same abilites that a physically human being can. We do not have enough programmers to program each and every scenario on every page. Guidelines are nice, but no amount of guidelines will be sufficent at this time to make it as accessible as picking up a phone or actually going to the mall. An online clothing store is going to always rely on pictures to convey information. It will be a long time before a Clippy's great-great-great-grandson or granddaughter can come on and answer questions asthetic questions about the particular piece of clothing for blind people (or in my case color-blind people).
Brian Ellenberger
Re:Quite Right (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, you can use that technology in whatever manner you please, but if you're building a site that isn't accessible to the blind, or isn't readable in any browser, your really missing the point.
There exist better technologies for doing graphic design. If you want graphic design, use PDF. People won't view it as much, because people are looking for information, not fancy graphics.
Re:insane ruling (Score:3, Insightful)
The court seems to ignore 42 USC 12181(7)(F) which lists the following among several types of "public accommodations"
It seems to me this judge misreads the basic statute as well 42 USC 12182(a):
The "place of accommodation" in this case is Southwest Airlines itself, in-so-far as it provides "travel services" per 42 USC 12181(7)(F). The website is not the "place of accommodation", but rather is one of the "services" provided by the place of accommodation.
Re:Quite Right (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm sorry to say I agree with the court ruling (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually this sort of thing has been the goal of standards organizations for a while. Pick up a "hype-ography" of XML and you're almost certain to read that XML is supposed to make information accessable to people with disabilities. They'll tell you that data (such as airfares) should be represented in XML and XSL will specify how it should be displayed. There are already web page readers that exist (as plug-ins to browsers) so they would simply download the audible presentation stylesheet. As for the price for the consumer, such products are likely covered (in some part) by health insurance or MediCare. On their end Southwest would simply be implementing the server side of an inernationally (and privately) developed standard which exists now.
If Southwest airlines is going to offer exclusive faires on their website, then they must legally make those faires available the disabled, whether it be through a text-to-speach plugin or (cheaper) through toll free number offering the same fares. Such a scheme would lower the "extremely high" costs: simply add a text to speach tag to your existing site which says "Call 1-800-sml-shop to hear exclusive online offers. If a person is physically capable of using a service (like air-travel) then they should be able to purchace that service just like any other customer.
Finally, as far as this precedent extending American law to the Internet; you have to keep in mind that Southwest airlines is an American corporation (at least I assume they haven't "moved" to the Bahamas yet), therefore they have to obey the same laws. sony.jp certainly violates the ADA (if the web-text plugin can't handle Southwest.com then what the hell is it supposed to do with Kangi?), but that's fine because it's outside US jurisdiction - like any company in Australia.
If companies, and governments are going to move into the online realm to enjoy the savings of paperless operation, then they'll simply have to bring the less fortunate among us with them.
Re:insane ruling (Score:4, Insightful)
Then why don't you save yourself a bunch of work and only put up the "low bandwidth" site? I don't think that I've ever seen a bloated website where the additional "functionality" was worth the slower downloads (even with broadband) and browser bugs (even with IE).
Re:Umm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two problems with that: First, Judge Seitz ruled that the law does not cover web sites, because they are not mentioned in the part of the law that enumerates the places covered (42 U.S.C. 12181(7) [cornell.edu]. Judges are not allowed to make new laws, however minor.
Second, she ruled that no standard for the degree and kind of effort involved exists, and that it was improper to impose a burden without specifying the limits on that burden. Again, for her to do so would have been to usurp the role of Congress.
Re:Quite Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Exaclty. Add 5% more code and companies could, potentially, make those 5% of the people new customers. For many companies, that represents a large, untapped, resourse of new customers.
How many of you are actually disabled? (Score:3, Insightful)
I am myself hearing-impaired and this means that I fall under the ADA. When I went to college I could get them to give me a note-taker if I'd wanted to.
There are many things I can't do that aren't covered by the law -- for example I've been getting interested in birding. But I can't hear birdsong for the most part, and I have no directional hearing. So any calls I do hear -- I can't tell where they're coming from to take a visual look to see what made the noise.
I accept that shortcoming, as I accept many others, because I know that my disability prevents me from doing some things. But I don't feel that I should be less able to access, say, the Internet -- just because it's not a "physical place". If web pages required sound in order to function rather than sight, I'd be in quite a fix.
Should it matter what it would cost to fix that problem for a webmaster? No. Why? It's discrimination, plain and simple. It sends the message 'We don't want you deaf people coming in here.'
Might as well put up a sign that says "No (insert ethnic group here) need apply."
Re:Quite Right (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is the DMCA has done more harm than good for the vast majority of the online community. And the DMCA truly does nothing to "define how Copyright functions in cyberspace". Rather, it removes many previously established rights that citizens had with respect to copyrighted information that they had legal access to (i.e. fair use, first sale doctrine, limited time copyright, as established by legislation and judicial precedent), as well as squelching academic speech with respect to important technologies like encryption.
Frankly, I don't believe that getting extremely technical in judicial decisions or in legislation is a good idea at all, frankly, since technology moves too fast anyway. If we have to legislate now how HTML 4.0 compliant text should be presented, will we have to legislate in the future how SVG should be presented? Don't you think a bit of judicial commonsense and a bit of accomodation by businesses to the existing ADA legislation by making normal HTML compliant web pages as a fallback for accessibility make everybody happy?
I won't turn this into an ad hominem attack, but frankly, I think the parent post was modded up because the poster has "Dr." in front of his name rather than any particularly insightful commentary.
Re:This doesn't exclude the Web from courtesy (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, like that Helen Keller, who's accomplishments I'm sure have been exceeded by you, gifted, as you are, with sight and hearing. Let's just repeal the ADA, round up all them "lowest common denominator" types, and put them away somewhere.
The world is designed around people - as they should be.
People, "as they should be," have both brains and hearts. Brains that ought to be capable of making website modifications necessary to ensure that the information they are presenting is accessible to most people, including the blind and deaf, given the technology that exists for rendering content for them. Hearts that ought to make people compassionate enough to want their hard work to be accessible by as many people as possible.
Your NBA analogy is completely inapplicable, for reasons so obvious they aren't worth enumerating. It is hardly essential for anyone to play professional basketball. The question is, will the Internet become essential for performing any of a myriad of tasks people want or need to perform? If the answer is yes, then eventually it needs to be accessible to people with common disabilities. I agree with the judge's ruling in this case, but were I blind (and if the claimant's assertion that Southwest Airline's website is extremely difficult for blind people to use is true), I'd take my business elsewhere. The problem with website designers ignoring accessibility standards is: what if there isn't an "elsewhere"?
Michael
How accessible should a Web site be? (Score:3, Insightful)
But how far must we go before "reasonable accommodation" means unreasonable allocations of development resources? One of our information designers just completed an accessibility overview of our site using section 508 and WAI guidelines, and the list of accessibility problems was somewhat discouraging: lack of alt attributes in img tags, complex table layouts, incompatible navigational elements--even the language used in our site copy could be regarded as difficult to follow for those with cognitive or reading disabilities. The cost to refactor our site architecture to conform to these guidelines would far outstrip any additional revenue we might gain.
On the other hand, we have a toll-free customer service number, staffed 24 hours a day, that allows you to access all of the products we offer for sale on the Web. So, is that "reasonable accommodation?" Or must we cater to every person with any type of disability, even if such a disability might prevent them from even being able to use the products we offer?
Re:Quite Right (Score:4, Insightful)
So our laws should ensure justice, but only for the downtrodden? Not that I think that the DMCA is just, I just don't think that classism should be used in an argument, and even if it were, I don't think that's fundamentally what differentiates the DMCA from this law.
Disability laws require special treatment to ensure a minimal level of human decency. Everyone else should be given a level playing field in the eyes of the law. That's the difference.
Re:That's too bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You just don't get it, do you? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I create a website and I don't think to put in the effort to make it easier for disabled people to read then someone should tell me. If I'm told and I still do nothing and it's still a big issue for you than leave and don't come back.
I have the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and if I'm such a schmuck that it makes me happy to ignore the needs of the disabled on a website I create then I have the liberty to do so, and no one has the authority to take that liberty from me.
Re:I'm sorry to say I agree with the court ruling (Score:3, Insightful)
If I try and I fail, but I respond adequately to complaints, that's called Due Diligence, and I'm within the law.
If I don't even try, and I ignore complaings, then I'm probably breaking the law.
Re:Sort of a pity (Score:3, Insightful)
You know why Lynx is frequently mentioned? Because it ignores your precious design. Not because its backward, but because with Lynx I don't have to wait for your Flash intro to finish before I can buy my airline tickets. I don't have to wade through six Orbitz pop-ups before I can check my flight schedule. I don't have to look at your "haute-couture" yellow and pink color scheme that the market department called "trendy, hip, and sleek". The issue is many things, but the lack of technology is not one of them.
The other tine in this is that Lynx most closely mimics what most common screen readers "see" when translating the web into speech. It ignores all of the s used for formatting rather than presenting tabular data. A screen reader will break down these tables into rows and columns, which is great fun when a screen reader tries to "interpret" a jigsaw'ed graphic that makes up a site's entire homepage. You sift through eighty links trying to find a single one, all of which have no alt tag.
One more thing: You want your e-Commerce site to deal with the government, directly or indirectly? All of this is a moot point. You'll have to do sooner or later, so suck it up. Do you want to fix legacy code or learn how to develop for the Web properly in the first place? Up to you, pal...
Re:Idiot. It matters to the LEGALLY Blind (Score:2, Insightful)
She didn't say that better accesibility is a bad idea, or that the legally blind don't need it. She's just saying that the current law doesn't require the web to be accessable to the blind. It's her place to interpret and apply the law; not to make new laws.
The next step now for the National Federation of the Blind, is to lobby the governemnt to make new laws that do explicitly apply to the web.
Re:Why let this go to court? (Score:2, Insightful)
The court did mention in a footnote that they're surprised Southwest didn't just fix the problem anyway, given the financial benefits to doing so. The truth is that it's not entirely Southwest's problem; some screen readers do just fine with Southwest's website and some do not. Part of the blame has to rest on the manufacturer of the plaintiff's screen reader. (Disclaimer: I work for a company whose screen reader does work with Southwest.com, so I might not be entirely unbiased.)
physical distininction (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quite Right (Score:5, Insightful)
One law is designed to bring (wrt physical mobility) inferiors up to equal levels with superiors, while the other is designed to (wrt to ownership of assets) push inferiors (those that don't own the copyright) even furthur down the ladder of equal opportunity.
I certainly agree we shouldn't allow justice to operately slowly on the basis of classism. Even us semisocialists realize you dont want to kill all wealth-generating motivation by continually removing people from the top of the food pyramid. Its more like, when you only have 24 hours in the day, effort should be more focused on bringing equality to those who dont have it instead of furthur solidifying the advantage some people have. Thats why I took exception to the original post and the comparison it made.
Why technology drives law (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a new concept in law, quite an old one, in fact, that the world changes out from under the law and laws have to be reinterpreted, or even remade.
He uses the example of wiretapping laws that were created when the land-line telephone went into widespread use. Until then, you couldn't be a party to a conversation without physically being present, either to hear the conversation or to read it.
Search and siezure applied to physical space, and the founding fathers had intended the limits on search and siezure to protect conversations (especially conversations about influencing the government). Telephones came along, and a guy up on a pole could listen to a conversation in a private residence down the block, without a warrant to enter the premesis.
Lessig explained that the decisions about wiretap law presented the judiciary with a choice - should the law protect the physical space (wiretaps okay) or should the law protect the conversations in the physical space (wiretaps not okay).
There are legal terms for each of these alternatives, although I don't remember them. History is that the judiciary went with the intent, not the letter, of the law set down by people who had no concept that something called a telephone would ever be invented. The judiciary could have justified the decision either way; they had to make a choice. (Whether we like the choice or not is incidental; they're judges and they have the power to make unpopular choices.)
The invention of the telephone directly caused a need for new law to be made, in order to interpret an older law that was being superceeded by the technology.
That's why you sometimes have to make/change law for new technology.
Read Lessig's book. He's a good writer and he is on the forefront of adapting our laws to the planetary network.
Re:wow, who bought off the judge? (Score:2, Insightful)
Might it simply be that the judge ruled for the reasons he cited; a lack of standards? Some of us are quite satisfied with this sort of conclusion because we've grown very tired of courts legislating from the bench. That this particular judge feels no compelling need to invent the necessary standards in a court room is no shame, as far as I'm concerned.
The ADA knows damn well the necessary level of detail required in standards used for regulation. They wrote most of them. They knew better than to throw this into a court room expecting some judge to wave his magic wand. If their goal was motivated by achieving greater accessibility, I'm sure they would have approached it differently. That isn't the goal.
The goal of the ADA is to grow in influence and resources. Their particular modus operandi is blackmailing institutions, thereby building credibility as a political force. The real story isn't the heinous cretin of a judge backhanding the disabled. The real story is the massive failure of the ADA in their attempt to railroad their latest bad guy of the month. The only tragedy here is lost potential billable hours for ADA and private claimant lawyers. I guess the judge didn't feel like playing along.
So get over yourself and your self-righteous indignance. You're a fool pawn played like a violin by leftist marketing.
Re:How accessible should a Web site be? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well lets look at your list of problems (I have run accessbility checks on many sites and know that the results often look rather bad..)
Alt text - This is a no brainer from the start, all images should have alt text, period. If its some kind of image setup only for alignment, then use alt="". This is usually one of the more time consuming actions made when sites are "made accessible," but really there should haven't have been this problem in the first place.
Complex table layouts - If you have very complex nested tables used to layout the positioning of your pages you can use embedded links to allow people to jump to specific areas of the page. This is a weak work around, but cna save you from a total redesign. It can also be done pretty quick, you might not get a accessibility certified sticker from something like Bobby, but it would make the site 'accessible.'
Incompatible navigational elements - Its the navigation right? So that usually means the same thing repeated over and over on all pages (heck, it should be a template call). Just work through the process of allowing for navigation links to work in screen reader/text browsers.
Language - I'm assuming this comes down to items like "look at this" and "click on the picture of the bear" and such? This, like the alt tags, could be time consuming. Again, on a redesign this can be an issue, but on initial web designs it should be just understood to stay away from such things. In relation to reading disabilities, if your site was usable by a screen reader, it wouldn't matter if someone had a reading disability, they would have a screen reader.
Re:This doesn't exclude the Web from courtesy (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, I know everyone has their own opinions but I think it's pretty sad that moderators thought this guy was "insightful".
Lowest common denominator? How offensive. No, wait, you're right, making cockpits accessible to blind people and making DIGITAL websites accesible to blind people are the exact same thing. How insightful. Cause you know, we give blind people a driver's license today, don't we? Oh wait, we don't. The ADA is about making "REASONABLE" adjustments to make the lives of people who are disabled easier and more equivalent to the lives of the able-bodied.
The real problem here is that the web lacks standards. The WWW is supposed to fix that but apparently they hold no weight because neither Microsoft (who is a partner of the WWW), nor Netscape, nor Mozilla, or any other browser displays any page the same. So what good are following the WWW disability standards if the browsers aren't going to use them correctly. Regardless, there are some really basic things you can do to make your page more accessible -- none of which are as hard as making a fucking cockpit accessible to the blind. Remember, this is the DIGITAL WORLD. Every time I go to Slashdot I get a page completely customized just for me. No one had to rewrite all the code just for my lowest common denominator. So why is it so hard to include a couple alt tags, and think about the millions of people who visit your site without sight or hearing?
If you want to make a personal webpage, or do a crazy design: fine, do whatever the hell you want. But if your a company or an information source (Southwest is both of these) then you have the responsibility to make your site accessible to as many people as possible.
People who make stupid analogies are just like the Nazis.
Re:Quite Right (Score:4, Insightful)
Correction: your web is about sharing information (incidentally, so is mine), but there are a lot of people who believe that the web is about interacting, and animation, and movie trailers. Although those are not my preferred uses, it's not my call to say that they're wrong and my way is the only correct one.
For comparison, look at the people who use Usenet to distribute binaries. That wasn't the original goal of the system, and many people don't go anywhere near alt.binaries, but that doesn't stop the files from pouring in.
Re:Sort of a pity (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I agree with the ruling -- I don't think that the government should force somebody to make web paged text-accessible. I excercise my choice to avoid graphics-laden sites without text access, and encourage others to do the same. The appropriate way to fix these sites is pressure from users, not by legislation.
Re:Quite Right (Score:2, Insightful)
The "purpose" of the web is defined by those who use it.
Re:Umm.. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll bet if someone had approached Southwest and offered TO HELP them with this problem, instead of filing a frivolous lawsuit, this problem might already be history.
After all, it isn't in Southwest's best interest to alienate customers.
This was just a play for money by an unscrupulous lawyer. Bang, dead, there I said it!
I have to agree with the judge... (Score:5, Insightful)
The ADA has two purposes. The first one is to eliminate any discrimination towards individuals solely on the basis of their disability. Therefore, the argument must clearly present that "his disability and only his disability" is the root cause of his inability to access tickets at the reduced rate.
Well, one can argue that universal access doesn't apply. For instance, individuals without computers or internet access don't have access to the web site either. That eliminates the sole "disability discrimination rule" that the suit is based upon. If the judge would imply that SWA would be forced to provide a remedy, the customers that don't have computers could naturally sue along the same grounds. I doubt that the judge will let that happen any time soon.
The second purpose of the ADA is clearly define and legislate uniform standards of access for disabled individuals covered under the "universal access" portion of the ADA. While it is true that the government has officially legislated web standards for "public sector" (government) sites, the same is not true for private sector sites. SWA falls under the private sector. Therefore, there isn't a legislated standard for them to follow.
Result. Case gets thrown out. The ADA doesn't apply. Next case.
Legally, the decision is correct. Ethically, that decision is debatable. SWA should learn that this case will hurt them in terms of bad PR. And while SWA should give him the reduced rate, they are not legally obligated to do so.
Also, I can safely point out that price isn't that much of a factor. The person sitting next to you in that plane has most likely saved more on his/her flight than you have...
Re:Sort of a pity (Score:3, Insightful)
Aren't you the guy I saw this morning, driving his Ford Model T on the highway, doing 30 mph?
If you want to make a car analogy, from your arguments I'd say that you're the guy driving his huge SUV down the road, where the four-wheel drive and extra power of an SUV are entirely unnecessary, and the added gas consumption and safety concerns all in all make it a bad choice. (And an extremely common choice that many will defend to their last breath.) Yet you choose it because you think your selfish desires are more important, and because somehow you think it's more "advanced" than something that makes sense.
The web can and does work well with a text browser. I don't use one (mostly I use Mozilla), but I should be able to. Honestly, how can you justify not supporting a text browser unless your content is intrinsically graphical? And, words are not intrinsically graphical, I don't care how beautiful you think your design is. I'm not even saying that you have to make all pages nothing but single column white on black text. Just use decent web design and standards, and Lynx can adapt. Make it as beautiful as you want, just don't insist on using brain-dead tools that don't understand standards and clean layout. It's not such a big deal, or at least it wouldn't be if folks like you didn't feel so justified in grabbing on to whatever is new and shiny at the expense of what really makes sense given the situation.
I'm not defending outdated browsers. Indeed I wish Netscape 4 would go away, and I wish that none of us would have to go through the annoyance of supporting it's horribly buggy CSS implementation. It's obselete, and has been passed by. That to me is the Model T. Lynx, and text-based browsers, on the other hand, are a different story. They're not just old; they are an implementation of the web for a completely different platform. There's no reason why the text content of the web shouldn't be available on the "text" platform, unless the "new and shiny fluff" critereon is really so important.
I find it very interesting that the majority of people posting here who are saying "I should be able to visit the entire web using a 1980's, text-only browser" are kids.
I suspect you don't know my age. I also suspect it is at least 10 years greater than yours. Maybe you should grow up a bit and attain some perspective before going around calling others "kids".
-Rob
Re:Quite Right (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why we have the W3C, so we can establish what standards there are. We don't need laws, we just need to agree what is considered standard and not use the rest. IE5-only restrictions, for instance, are non-standard, which alienates those who are using Linux, don't want IE, or are otherwise restricted to text only (console users, blind, etc.), and you can't legislate out stupidity, so what is a law going to do?
Re:How many of you are actually disabled? (Score:3, Insightful)
Might as well put up a sign that says "No (insert ethnic group here) need apply."
I disagree. Ethnicity does not inherently prevent or disallow someone from e.g. reading or listening.
Why is this judgment in question? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is it OK for the government to violate my right to present information the way I see fit and my right to do business with the people I choose in the manner I choose?
Why do people think that our only rights are the ones enumerated in the Bill of Rights, in direct contrast to what the ninth amendment explicitly says?
What compelling national interest using powers specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution allows them to restrict my rights in this manner?
I don't want to spend the extra effort to make my website accessible to everyone with every conceivable type of disability. As far as I am concerned, it is their responsibility to make my site accessible if they want to view it. If they want to donate the resources required to do this, or come up with a general, client-side solution that requires no extra work on my part (that means: no ALT tags, no text-only pages, etc.), great!
Hell, if disabled people were simply grateful instead of indignant, I might even donate the time to make my site more accessible.
But don't expect me to expend more resources to make your life easier. Anyone who feels entitled to the fruits of my labor just because I have something they don't have should go form their own socialist country elsewhere where they can violate each others' rights to their hearts' content.
This country was founded on a different concept---that of individual responsibility and personal freedom---that is being eroded with law after law and court decision after court decision. Is no one else concerned about these violations of our rights?
Re:insane ruling? (Score:2, Insightful)
The remaining legal issue would then pertain to whether the company's webserver location can be considered a "place of accomodation" and whether the website can be considered a service or privilege offered by that place. This judge evidently does not.
Not that I agree with the judge. But this is evidently a matter of legal interpretation rather than "insane" reasoning.
Next target: Playboy (Score:3, Insightful)
This is getting ridiculous. I can understand public access for blind people -- ramps, elevators, etc. I can understand brail. I can understand certain features in public buildings to help the blind. But I'm gonna have to kill someone if someone sues McDonalds because they're doors aren't "wide enough for 700 pound poeple to fit through" or sues the movie theaters because their seats don't accomadate 500 pounds worth of ass.
Telling companies to redesign their websites is a violation of free speech. It would be like mandating that Michael Crichton also release his books in brail, and threatening to fine him if he doesn't. Companies shouldn't have to spend millions of dollars making sure that the 0.1% of people who are blind can use their website easily.
And private websites certainly shouldn't have to accomodate the disabled. If I have a website with some opinions by myself on there and lots of other political stuff, and then have a little link saying "buy my T-shirt", that does not make it a commercial site. Its still a private website, and I should be able to do with it whatever I want.
I'll grant you that if the web were more friendly for blind people, it would be a better web:
1. There would be no unnecessary images. All web-sites would look like those of FSF.org.
2. The only places where pictures or sounds would be would be for screenshots or things like that; there wouldn't be banner ads, and structural features of a website wouldn't rely on graphical barriers.
But forcing companies to change their websites evokes free speech issues.
Re:ADA=DMCA (Score:4, Insightful)
now that i have your attention, look, most /. readers, myself included despise the DMCA because precisely it infringes upon our freedom. and that is the problem. the ada specifically takes away freedom from some, to give "access" or in other words, privileges to others. how so.
Bad, bad, bad comparison.
The philosophy behind freedom in a society such as ours is that one should only limit freedom once it begins to harm the health or freedom of others. Hence, at least according to the philosophy, we have freedom of speech, unless we create a clear and present danger, or unless we commit slander/libel. We have freedom of assembly, but that doesn't give us the freedom to assemble on somebody else's private property.
The DMCA limits freedom of expression in completely nonsensical ways. It outlaws tools which can be used for entirely legal purposes, and outlaws even telling people where to find those tools. It limits freedom in the name of preserving certain others' abilities to-- limit freedom! It's completely contrary to the philosophy of freedom in our country.
On the other hand, the ADA is one case where your freedoms to design your building are being limited precisely because without those limits, you can infringe upon the freedoms of others. If you're building a place accessible to the public, then the public, theoretically, has the freedom to come and go. But, unless you make your building accessible for the disabled, certain folks don't have that freedom. So, the ADA limits your freedoms to prevent you from exercising those freedoms in a manner that infringes upon the freedoms of others.
Don't try to compare the ADA and the DMCA. If anything, that will only lend credence to the DMCA. The last thing we want is a whole set of people concerned with a different issue thinking that supporting the DMCA might help their issue.
(By the way: those keys at the lower left and lower right of your keyboard that say "Shift" on them: they are for making capital letters. Thought you might be interested to know about them.)
-Rob
Re:insane ruling (Score:3, Insightful)
Then just make one UI that is accessible. It really is pretty simple.
Well structured and tastefully laid-out HTML is all that is needed. If someone is whining that JavaScript just has to be used, then use it in a way that doesn't affect the displayed content. In other words, use JavaScript only for validation and other basic client-side processing--it should never be used to generate the UI.
Re:Quite Right (Score:2, Insightful)
Academically, yeah the web is about sharing information. However, it is also a marketing media for business.
If you look at the web from a business perspective, it's a worldwide stage where companies compete for attention and sales. The web is a medium for advertising and marketing where information is shared in a way that needs to impress and convince the consumer to buy a product or service. That's where things like flash and good graphic design improve the chances of impressing a consumer. Such features create emotions, which are proven to work better than facts in advertising.
To bring this back to the topic at hand, sites (including the airline website in question) are designed to address the needs of the company's target market. Perhaps blind people aren't part of the airline's target market. Whether or not we feel that blind people (or other disabled people) should be considered in that target market then becomes an issue of the public telling a company how to run their business.
Is that what we think should happen? All companies should sell and service all sorts of disabled people? Sure, I would love to see more companies think about accessibility. But to enforce it by law may not be feasible, relevant or necessary for a good proportion of companies out there.
Re:How many of you are actually disabled? (Score:3, Insightful)
If web pages required sound in order to function rather than sight, I'd be in quite a fix.
This is an excellent point.
I would note that if, say, you were on a site that had previews of music, a deaf person shouldn't be surprised if he weren't able to listen to the samples.... Nor would it make any sense to outlaw putting such samples online. If the point is sound, then somebody who can't do sound just must miss out. But that's OK. (There are lots of sites on the web which either don't interest me, or which are inaccessible to me due to, for instance, a lack of proper advanced education. I don't begrudge those pages to the folks who are interested, however. I do begrudge it, however, when a bank or other "general access" site requires specific software; that's an entirely gratuitous limitation.)
Where it's a travesty is when the information doesn't intrinsically require sound, but then it is coded in such a way that it becomes inaccessible without sound. Similarly, if the information on a webpage is textual, it is a travesty not to code it in such a way that those who require text-based readers can cope (including blind folks who use some sort of text-to-speech device).
-Rob
Re:How many of you are actually disabled? (Score:3, Insightful)
[snip]
As for the racism comment... what I had in mind was the notion of rejecting someone because of some attribute about them that they can't change. I can't give myself perfect hearing any more than someone can change the color of their skin. Maybe it could have been said a little better. Hope that clarification helps a little.
Quick question here: you say in your first paragraph that non-disabled taxpayers, such as myself, should pay for (or subsidize) accessability tools for the disabled, tools that we do not need to use... [stay with me here]
And in your second paragraph, you say that the essence of your argument was that this discriminates against a feature of someone that they can't change.
Well, I can't change my non-disabled status (and don't go being silly like saying I could poke my eyes out), and I am economically discriminated against because of it - in that I need to pay these higher taxes and you don't.
There's a double standard going on here, even though it's not politically-correct to admit it. Yes, it would be nice if everyone started on an equal footing, but physical disabilities are not the only ones - there are mental disabilities (including simply sub-par IQ), emotional disabilities (from bi-polar disorder to SAD), economic disabilities (my folks don't have a house in the Hamptons), social disabilities (thick glasses and a pocket protector do make it tough for you to get along in society), etc. The physical ones are just a LOT more visible.
Question - are you willing to subsidize all of the people with Seasonal Affective Disorder who can't make it to work in the winter? Are you willing to pay higher taxes to support them? What about people who, like myself, are photophobic? Will you pay my bills through the summer, or subsidize sunglasses for me?
Of course not. And I'm not saying you should, I'm simply saying that there is a double standard going on here, and at some point we need to step back and take a look at what is really a 'right' and what is a 'privilege'.
-T
Re:I'm sorry to say I agree with the court ruling (Score:2, Insightful)
In other words, art. Does *everything* have to be useful, efficient, and informative? Can't it just be pretty?
Flash is big, slow, needless and just another excuse to dazzle your audience to a point where they neglect to notice the fact that there's no meat in the sandwich.
No, animated GIFs are big and slow. Flash is actually quite efficient in its use of bandwidth. Flash does things visually that you *can't do* with HTML. What would you like to me to use?
And, please, don't point me toward any of the "hilarious" Flash cartoon sites, because they, in more ways than just this, don't count for much.
I don't think that these are any better than you do, but since we're not talking about the value of the content here, just the transmission of that content, how good it is is irrelevant. So, um, how do you expect those folks to actually distribute their content if not with Flash?
Re:Two points (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but the Web is not an inherently visual medium. There is nothing inherently visual about the comment you posted or the words I'm typing now. I could just as well be listening to your post read aloud and dictating my response by voice.
There is nothing inherently visual about buying airline tickets over the Web.
Aural CSS standards far behind too (Score:2, Insightful)
with the ruling essentially removing requirement for sites to comply, it seems that all of CSS2's recommendations regarding Aural CSS are moot if sites don't implemenet it.
One hope, however, is the eventual coming of many non-visual browsers (i.e., car browsers, pocket radio browsers, or whatever people dream up), which will make Aural CSS incredibly important for us to have a richer experience of non-visual webpages!
Re:How many of you are actually disabled? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, You need to reshuffle your priorties. There is nothing stopping you from providing a free service to site that aren't compliant. If you think this is so important then you can offer to bring commerical sites up to accesibility standards and maintain them at no cost to the site owner.
Of Course using your time and money will require more of a comitment than taking the easy way out and forcing others to meet some social goal that you claim is desirable.
Re:I'm sorry to say I agree with the court ruling (Score:3, Insightful)
First, I completely agree with you. People should be doing this, it is painfully stupid for them not to take more care with their web site, and it is inexcusable for people to use javascript that requires particular browsers.
However, the question at hand is if a company should be COMPELLED to do a good job with their web design.
Step away from the particulars of web design for a moment and forget about how simple it should be for them to fix this, assuming they have some competant web person on staff.
The generic form of the question is "Can we compel someone to do some small thing they already ought to do just because it also benefits some other person or group?" and if we boil it down another step, it's really "Can we compel someone to do some small thing for another person or group?".
If we say "Yes, it is acceptable to compel one person to do some small thing for the benifit of another person.", doesn't it follow that we can also say "Yes, it is acceptable to compel Marick to do some particular thing for some particular person."?
In case you don't recognize it yet, this is the slippery slope of slavery. Tred carefully.