Joe Dolson: Accessible Web Design

For a major issue in accessibility, I have to say that this really hasn’t seen much press. Granted, major lawsuits tend to move slowly — - glacially, you might say. However, given the fact that the last announcement concerning the National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corporation lawsuit was in September of 2006, you’d expect some kind of blog coverage on the latest announcement.

In fact, I found it difficult to find anything about it at all, at first — - I only became aware of it because I was talking to a web development manager from Target. (Articles are now easy to find via Google News.)

At any rate, the major news is that the lawsuit has been granted federal class-action status.

Granting class-action status allows blind people throughout the country who have tried to access Target.com to become plaintiffs in the suit, which alleges violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Associated Press

Further, the Judge (Marilyn Patel) ruled that changes in Target’s web site since the date of filing do not provide grounds for dismissal of the suit.

Judge Patel’s order Friday noted that Target has modified its Web site some since the suit’s filing to make the site more accessible to the blind. Target claimed the suit should therefore be dismissed, but Judge Patel ruled against that argument. Associated Press

Turning the suit into a class action may place additional pressure on businesses to start considering web accessibility a priority. One can hope, at any rate!

See also: Update: Target ruling may force retailers to adjust Web sites (Computer World)

My new article at Matt Bailey’s Accessibility Blog: Web Accessibility and International Law, looking at the issues raised concerning liability of companies concerning the use of their websites outside their geographical jurisdictions.

The post talks about the issues raised in the article “Computer-based exam discriminated against blind candidate” at Out-Law.com.

Hat tip to Kim Krause Berg, who is in turn tipping her own hat to Rosie Sherry. Article at The Register.

Although it’s interesting to see another lawsuit on the inaccessibility of a software product, this suit is fundamentally different from the Target lawsuit currently in process. That lawsuit, dealing with a commercial website’s accessibility level to the general public, has the potential to set a landmark precedent for website accessibility. No United States law currently explicitly states that a commercial website must provide any level of accessibility. This lawsuit could potentially provide a precedent which would interpret existing law as having this requirement.

This Oracle lawsuit, however, involves software which is a) not a website and b) was purchased by the state of Texas for use in their state human resources department. The fact that the lawsuit is associated with a government entity makes this a very different case. Texas state law as well as Federal law clearly address the issue of accessibility of government technology: the state of Texas has extensive guidelines concerning accessibility which should be referred to when constructing web sites or other electronic or information resources:

House Bill 2819, 79th Regular Legislative Session

State agencies must ensure that state employees and members of the public with disabilities have the same access to electronic and information resources as state employees and members of the public without disabilities, unless providing that access would impose a significant difficulty or expense on the agency.

The provision of a necessary piece of work software which does not meet these standards is a direct contradiction of Texas state law. This lawsuit will not have the same impact, legally, that the Target case has.

That’s not to say that it’s insignificant, however. It will help bring issues of accessibility to a greater awareness, as well as encouraging a large software company to make accessibility a greater consideration for their own products. It may not result in a major new interpretation of law, but should certainly result in better software for the human resources department of the state of Texas.

Courtesy of Kim Krause Berg, a great summary of accessibility policies by country.

A big deal is frequently made of Section 508, the United States accessibility guidelines, WCAG 1.0, and the accessibility rules set by the UK: The Disability Discrimination Act. But what if your primary audience is in Belgium?

Even though very, very few countries currently provide laws requiring accessibility for privately owned commercial sites, it’s always a possibility that this could happen: it’s a good idea to keep your eyes on the regulations currently applicable in any given country.

Better, of course, is to just make your site as accessible as you reasonably can and figure that whatever legal changes occur you should be in the clear &mdash at the worst, you’ll fail their stringent requirements but have clearly demonstrated your efforts!

Although I’m an enthusiastic supporter of the principles of accessibility, the practical definition is challenging to really pin down. Given the widely criticized WCAG 2.0 and the sometimes questionable expectations of Section 508 accessibility guidelines, I’m have to wonder whether a legal accessibility requirement is really practical.

The problem is, to a degree, in the fact that in order to enforceable, the law would have to be very precise about what constitutes "web accessibility". Since experienced web developers can hardly even bring themselves to agree on the subtler details of the subject, it seems possible (and even probable) that a government prepared definition of accessibility would be severely lacking.

Read more: Is Legally Mandated Accessibility a Benefit?