This is a pretty high profile article in a national paper. On the surface it’s great! But it definitely causes some soul searching for those of us who would like to see more accessibility for everything directly up against those of us who feel government should stay out of regulating businesses and passing on a bunch of unmandated costs. In some cases we are the same people. Even though we all benefit wen the laws change, it’s another case of government expanding and telling private individuals what to do. Society is making these decisions for us every day like whether better access should trump individual rights, just like requiring seat belts in cars and people to wear helmets on motorcycles. But it’s not always black and white. You can’t expect them to build wheelchair ramps up the side of the Egyptian pyramids, or to force a private individual to spend money they don’t have to modernize a 200 year old historical landmark with wheel chair accessible bathrooms. Or why should a site about visual art or architecture have to be accessible to people who can’t see? What about types of work that just don’t lend itself to people that are blind like driving a bus or nursing? I guess all I’m saying is I sympathize with those of us who have a problem with this. Just like those of us who hate government entitlements and yet couldn’t afford to live without them. I can just see all the nuisance law suits coming. What’s fair to one group isn’t always fair to another. But everyone better realize this is on the way! A blind student who wants to study math and science in a university should have that right and shouldn’t be excluded just because all the textbooks are on paper. The free market would never build in these types of protections because we are too much of a minority. We feel we should have a right to the same access as everyone else without having to pay for it, but someone always has to pay. That’s why we resorted to the courts. Government sets the agenda. At least it will make new businesses think about access for people with different abilities right up front with everything else they have to consider. Over all I would say it’s better for everyone when the TV cable boxes can talk and speak the names of all the channels, or read text and emergency information aloud to you at the press of a button, and it costs so little to add this capability these days. It also can be an excuse for some people to be lazy and not bother to learn to read. It’s a trade off. And it’s better if there are some common standards for web sites so that everyone can have access to public services. But this doesn’t change the fact that lots of people will never be comfortable doing business online or using the web, blind or sighted, and they are already discriminated against. If you have to pay for your airfare by phone you will pay $15 more for the privilege of talking to someone. I think that is wrong! USA Today July 5, 2013
Anticipated court decisions and federal rules could affect websites'
accessibility.
Frank Witsil, Detroit Free Press
DETROIT -- Beatrice Luckett, who is blind, goes online using software that
reads the text aloud to pay bills, send e-mails and browse sites for medical
remedies. But the 69-year-old woman said many sites are useless to her because
they don't work with the software.
"If there is no way of accessing the Internet, then we can't be involved," she
said.
Court decisions and new federal regulations expected this year could clear the
way for better access by disabled users to the Internet under the federal
Americans with Disabilities Act.
The ADA civil rights law, which prohibits discrimination based on disability,
was enacted in 1990 before the Internet boom. The law, among its many points,
requires accommodations be made in public areas for disabled people. In many
cases, lawyers say websites should be considered virtual public spaces and
operators forced to comply.
"Websites are the new frontier," said Brian G. Muse, a law partner with
LeClairRyan in Williamsburg, Va., who specializes in defending ADA lawsuits.
Some companies, such as NetFlix and Target, have already been sued and changed
their technology to give greater access. For example, NetFlix, an on-demand
video provider with tens of thousands of titles, has agreed to add closed
captioning so deaf people can read dialogue.
Beatrice Luckett, 69, is blind and can't see her computer monitor, but she is
able to continue working due to the voice played from the software with each
action she makes.(Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)
"Most people don't think about it, and most people are not aware of it," said
Kathy Ossian, a Ferndale attorney who specializes in technology matters and
recently offered a seminar in metro Detroit on the issue. "But just about
everyone has a website, and just about everybody uses the Web."
Ossian and others - including groups that have sued major companies to force
greater cyber-accessibility - are urging businesses to get ahead of new rules
expected soon from the U.S. Department of Justice. Ossian said companies should
consider how their sites can be used, for example, by people who are blind,
deaf or who can't use their hands and need strong voice recognition
capabilities.
In recent years, with the rise of communications technology, there has been an
increasing number of lawsuits related to the Internet and ADA rules, said Marty
Orlick, a partner with Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell in San Francisco. He
estimates about 16,000 ADA lawsuits have been filed nationally since 2000. Only
a handful of those are directly related to websites, but legal questions and
cases in this area are likely to increase, he said.
Muse, the Virginia lawyer, said new guidelines expected from the Justice
Department as early as this year will likely answer questions and help resolve
the few and conflicting court decisions thus far. The new rules likely will
broaden how the law applies to commercial sites and could significantly
increase the requirements for designing and running websites.
"It's potentially a huge deal," Muse said. "I think the best advice is to start
thinking about it now. Don't wait until you find out about it from a lawsuit."
In many cases, websites already have functions that make them accessible, such
as captioned photos and basic coding so that a third-party software application
can read text aloud for blind people, said John Torres, an attorney and
production coordinator at the Web development firm Media Genesis in Troy.
But every additional feature also adds to the bottom line, Torres said. "It can
get crazy as this law progresses."
Groups representing people with disabilities say cost should not be an excuse.
Online accessibility, they say, is the right thing for companies to do.
"It's absolutely essential," said John Pare, an executive director with the
National Federation of the Blind in Baltimore. "Otherwise blind people would be
blocked from getting the same educational opportunities and employment
opportunities as non-blind people."
The federation and other groups have gone to court. The group sued Target in
California in 2006, alleging that blind people could not use the
Minneapolis-based retailer's website. Target settled two years later after the
court held that the online store was a public accommodation. As part of the
agreement, the retailer set up a $6 million fund to settle claims.
Pare, who is blind, said accessibility from site to site varies for the 1.3
million legally blind people in the U.S. who operate computers using software
applications that can read text and by using keyboard controls, instead of a
mouse, to navigate sites.
Last year, the National Association of the Deaf, along with the Western
Massachusetts Association of the Deaf and Hearing-Impaired, settled a lawsuit
against Netflix in federal district court in Massachusetts.
The case alleged Netflix violated the disabilities act by not closed-captioning
streamed video, preventing 48 million deaf and hard-of-hearing people from
using the service. To settle the case, Netflix agreed to add the text to all of
its content by 2014.
"Not only is it now the law, but it makes good business sense to make websites
fully accessible to everyone," the association's director of communications
Lizzie Sorkin said via e-mail. "Why would any business make it hard for anyone
to buy their products or services?"
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