Although I’m not a lawyer, I do pay some attention to the nature of legal issues surrounding web accessibility. They’re murky, but this article attempts to shed some light on how the law covers accessibility issues on the internet.

Hope you’re able to get some value out of the article!

New Column at Practical eCommerce: Accessibility and the Law
Copyright 2004 – 2010 Joseph C Dolson, Accessible Web Design

Read more at the WebAIM blog: “Target Lawsuit Settled.”

No legal definitions established today, I’m afraid to say. Although this is a victory on behalf of the claimants, who were awarded substantive damages on their claim, there was no establishment of any kind of legal precedent.

This is primarily due to one singular item in the settlement:

2. No Admission of Liability. By agreeing to and voluntarily entering into this Agreement, there is no admission or concession by Target, direct or indirect, express or implied, that Target.com is in any way inaccessible or that Target has violated the Unruh Civil Rights Act, California Civil Code §§ 51 et seq., the Disabled Persons Act, California Civil Code §§ 54 et seq., the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12181 et seq., or any other federal, state, or local law, regulation, order, or rule.

National Federation of the Blind vs. Target Corporation, Final Settlement

This statement clearly delineates a complete denial that there were any contradictions of law involved in the Target.com suit.

Ah, well. It is still a victory!

Target Lawsuit: Settlement Reached
Copyright 2004 – 2010 Joseph C Dolson, Accessible Web Design

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)

More News on the Target Accessibility Lawsuit
Copyright 2004 – 2010 Joseph C Dolson, Accessible Web Design

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

Accessibility and International Law
Copyright 2004 – 2010 Joseph C Dolson, Accessible Web Design

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.

Oracle being sued for inaccessible software package
Copyright 2004 – 2010 Joseph C Dolson, Accessible Web Design

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!

International Accessibility Legislation
Copyright 2004 – 2010 Joseph C Dolson, Accessible Web Design

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.

Imagine, if you will, that the government criteria for accessibility required the use of the accesskey attribute. (They don’t, but just imagine it.) This would mean that any site I created, in order to be considered legally accessible, would have to incorporate a technology which I firmly believe is detrimental to usability and accessibility.

It would be very unfortunate if any legal guidelines made use of specific technological guidelines, rules, or code functions to define the law. This kind of law making can only stymie continuing technological development and prevent newer or better assistive technologies from being adopted. It’s very unlikely that a viable law would be passed which exclusively relied on this kind of specificity.

However, it’s completely feasible to imagine that a law created to legislate web services could contain some degree of specificity which could get in the way of practical development.

You might say that WCAG 2.0 was actually written like a legal document: devoid of specific technological references and muddled with its own custom language, it obfuscates the specifics in favor of retaining long-term validity. May be of great benefit in law, where constant interpretation is the rule of the game — but less valuable in day to day development activities.

And yet, WCAG 2.0 is missing a lot of crucial pieces of the accessibility pie. All this legal abstraction does not actually create a complete documentation of web accessibility, missing elements such as consideration for cognitive disabilities, for example.

Is it possible to address accessibility with 100% success? Would it be beneficial to create accessibility laws which forced developers to adhere to obsolete or irrelevant guidelines? Perhaps a potential accessibility law would have to err on the side of inaccessibility – only cover those elements which are incontrovertibly significant, such as the use of alternative text for images.

Just something I was wondering today…

Is Legally Mandated Accessibility a Benefit?
Copyright 2004 – 2010 Joseph C Dolson, Accessible Web Design