OK, I realize this is a mild flame, but seriously, how could anyone who gave thought to usability NOT have considered ADA?

And that court case? Already happened, and the answer is no (and I'm actually not sure if I think that's a good thing). I hope someone on that list reads the news (this was a national story).

Access Now, Inc., et al. v. Southwest Airlines, Co., from October 2002. The gist is that the court did not feel that a website is a "place of public accommodation."

-Posted by Eric on July 11, 2003 12:10 PM

You know, there's a point at which things go from needed, to nice, to excessive, to just stupid, and the ADA positively bathes in the latter two.

My apartment complex has handicapped parking. The wheelchaired people can enter the building on their wheelchairs. They can then sit there, in the foyer, deciding whether to make their chairs levitate up the stairs, or fall down the stairs. The building itself isn't handicapped accessible, and doesn't need to be; but we're required to have handicapped parking, so we do. And then of course there's the braille drive-up ATMs. Or for that matter, most braille ATMs that *aren't* drive up but don't give any audio or tactile feedback.

The same applies to websites. Yes, some websites should be made handicapped accessible. But most shouldn't have to be, even among ecommerce. Whatever money is being spent here should be spent on better, more intelligent tools FOR the handicapped to VIEW (or hear or feel or whatever) websites. Concentrate the focus on making a really GOOD audio browser and a really good braille translator, that understands how to look at a website like a real person does, and can read the text embedded in images. Hell, some spambots and the like can read graphical email addresses if they're in a readable font, that's why free hosting and email sites use odd broken text with lines and things to interrupt them when they make you type in text from an image to prove you're not a robot. If they need extra funding, hell, charge ecommerce providers a one time $100-$500 fee to exempt them from having to make their sites comply with the strict standards laid out, and put that money towards developing those handicapped browsers and so on. Have a really good audio and braille browser for the blind and the deaf-and-blind, that can handle regular websites, rather than requiring thousands upon thousands of websites to totally rewrite their sites to comply with the ADA, just in case the one handicapped person a year who visits their site feels discriminated against because they cannot buy porn or socks or books or whatever.

-Posted by JC on July 11, 2003 12:18 PM

Yeah, someone posted something else to the list about an AOL lawsuit...

In the case of the Federation of the Blind vs AOL they settled out of court and sealed the terms of the settlement. Although AOL said that it was gonna play nice. The NFB reserved the right to refile.

If I'm some average joe with a website (eg, about my chia pet collection), what are the chances I'm thinking about the ADA. My guess is that I'm not. But I'm not an average joe when it comes to web sites, so it's hard to guess what he's thinking about. I know I haven't ever thought about ADA compliance on this site though. :^/

-Posted by Dan on July 11, 2003 12:18 PM

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As far as the parking lot situation, it is a bit silly, there really isn't any debating that, but its the result of a logical compromise. At some point your apartment building repaved or repainted its parking lot and thus lost any grandfather protection it had. Same with the lobby. If they were to put a certain amount of work (varies by locality and I think there is a federal dollar number as well) into it, it would have to be brought up to code.

The real downside to accessibility is that although your aim is to not exlude anyone, that's simply an impossible goal. It becomes a subjective matter, and this is where the government comes in (for better or worse). No matter how wide your doorway is, someone is not going to fit through it. So they decided they would draw the line at standard wheelchair width and now thats the guideline. For the web, and computer programs in general, no such distinctions have been made yet. Are you obligated to support blind users? Just color-blind? Deaf? Deaf and Blind? I have no doubt you could find people that represent both sides to each of those questions and the hundreds of other disabilities out there.

This is an issue where I've put my time and money where my mouth is. My site (click name below) has two versions. I won't regale you with the technological trickery going on, though I am rather proud of it. Click on the "Lite" site link. The entire website, all functionality, is there, and I challenge you to find a browser it doesn't work on, PDA's, phones, Netscape 0.96, Lynx, whatever. It doesn't all validate, but that's a topic that's been discussed here before. It's not very nice looking, but what does that matter to someone with 20/200 vision? And all without impacting the 95% of people that have no disabilities and use modern browsers. We use the image verification on the signup page, but if you click it you get an mp3 that reads you the code.

I think it all boils down to an issue of respect. If your site is not accessible, you are telling the user you don't care about them. Or maybe you do, but you care more about your budget, or your ego in the form of your pixel-perfect design. More likely, its not your fault, its your stupid boss or whatever (believe me I've been there), but in the end it doesn't matter to the user. Just about 90 minutes ago I was discussing some design feasabilities with a designer and she asked "but really, how many blind people use the web?" as if these people were freaks and not one of us in twenty or thirty years (or tomorrow).

-Posted by Eric on July 11, 2003 01:01 PM

I forgot to include this, but as far as the Chia pet website, it wouldn't be covered under ADA just like your house is not covered. Its public places only (including publicly available commercial spaces).

-Posted by Eric on July 11, 2003 01:14 PM

You're missing my point, Eric. Where is the money, the time, and the effort better spent? In thousands of websites, or in developing a more intelligent system for allowing all the various types of disabled people to view EVERY website? The answer to that should be obvious. The latter is less expensive and more effective.

At my primary place of employment, we test our site in Lynx and in a voice reader. It's not great, but it's usable.

It has nothing to do with lack of respect, it has to do with common sense and reality.

-Posted by JC on July 11, 2003 02:10 PM

A point I was trying to make, and admittedly did not make well, if at all, was that making a site work for the blind can be the same as making it work for phones, or really slow connections, or old browsers. I think your solution would be analogous to not mandating ramps or stair heights and making the wheelchair manufacturer's have to account for any possible situation. I also think that software that works as well as you would want will not exist in our lifetime, because it would basically be required to have comprehenion equal to a person. We don't even have perfect software that can translate a sentence between two languages, never mind interpreting and re-presenting a visually complex set of information.

I think the time, effort and money spent, which is all minimal if done right, is worth it to say "we support 100% of all web browsers" instead of "we support 97%, we think". In fact, I think that maintaining that 97% is more expensive. We don't have to test our lite site on different browsers, or screen readers, because we know it works. 95% of people don't use it, because they use the very small number of browsers that the site detects and gives them the fancy version. As big a fan as we were of the broser upgrade initiative, we didn't take part because we didn't have to.The lite site is the default, but is used by the minority. I guess its just the difference between active supporting most users or passively supporting all users.

-Posted by Eric on July 11, 2003 02:43 PM

I love Friday afternoon discussions by the way.

-Posted by Eric on July 11, 2003 02:44 PM

That's fine for new sites being built, but doing a complete redesign (or even a secnodary copy) of a mostly static website in excess of 500 pages isn't exactly cost-effective.

When we redesign it to make it more dynamic, sure, we're planning on using CSS divs for most things instead of tables, so things degrade more gracefully for voice and text browsers, but that might not happen for years, because we have more important things to do that either make or save money for the company.

-Posted by JC on July 11, 2003 03:32 PM