There's a whole lot going on around the issue of disabled access to online sites. On November 22, Florida's U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz who said that the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) does NOT mandated websites/web-only businesses to be disabled-accessible because they are not considered "places of public accommodation," as defined by the ADA.
In Judge Seitz's 12-Page Opinion, she wrote, "To expand the ADA to cover 'virtual' spaces would be to create new rights without well-defined standards." She dismissed the case saying, "The plain and unambiguous language of the statute and relevant regulations does not include Internet Web sites."
More here.
Did I just hear 300,000 bloggers say, "Wshew"?
No, really. What if?
And should we be?
Granted, most of us don't sell stuff (much) from our blogs, but still--does that mean that we (or more appropriately blogger and other blog interface providers) shouldn't be concerned with how accessible our sites are to the disabled?
Although the Judge dismissed the case, she did give an admonition and a prediction in the footnote of her brief that says more than the dismissal:
"Given the number of visually impaired persons who utilize the Internet for commerce, and the significant amount of business that Southwest obtains through its Internet website, it is unfortunate that the panies have not cooperated to develop a creative solution that benefits both parties and which avoids the costs and polarizing effects of litigation. It is especially surprising that Southwest, a company which prides itself on its consumer relations, has not voluntarily seized the opportunity to employ all available technologies to expand accessibility to its website for visually impaired customers who would be an added source of revenue. That being said, in light of the rapidly developing technology at issue, and the lack of well-defined standards for bringing a virtually infinite number of Internet websites into compliance with the ADA, a precondition for taking the ADA into "virtual" space is a meaningful input from all interested parties via the legislative process. As Congress has created the statutorily defined rights under the ADA, it is the role of Congress, and not this Court, to specifically expand the ADA's definition of "public accommodation" beyond physical, concrete places of public accommodation to include 'virtual' places of public accommodation."
I gather that she is saying: 1) Online business sites have an obligation and responsibility to make their sites accessible. 2) There is money to be made from doing so. 3) (toward the end of the above quote), Congress could expand the ADA's definition of "public accomodation" into the virtual world.
David Weinberger is hipper than most of us, having recently tweeked his site for color-blind readers.
If you want to read up on the accessibility issue, here are some links:
Meg at Manderin Design has a discussion here with a point to this Computerworld article. Thanks Meg!
Macromedia's Accessibility Training page, courtesy of Mr. Tom Matrullo, who knows his micro and macro media. ;-)
And this from Tom as well.
From CNN.com Law Center, November 7th: Should Web-only businesses be required to be disabled-accessible?
