01.11.07
Jamie
Target Web Accessibility
Recently, the San Francisco Federal court held that websites are required by California law to be accessible. The reason for this is that Target failed to make it’s website accessible to the blind. The Target site failed to provide alt tags for images, keyboard options for navigation and navigation headers. There seems to be differing opinions on whether building accessible sites should be a legal requirement.
Although it would take time to learn accessibility techniques, some of the benefits include an increase in productivity, the development of standard compliant code and a decrease in the number of bugs, not to mention less risk of legal action!! Interestingly, Target is based in MN, which is a 2,151 mile drive from California. With this in mind, I will be watching closely to see how California law encourages businesses across the country to build accessible websites.
01.11.07
Matt
It’s an interesting discussion. The UK’s Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 comes into play on these shores. This act enforces that businesses are accessible to all. In the real world it applies to such things as providing ramps to access buildings and supplying information in braille.
However the act also stretches it’s reach to the Web, although it’s widely considered to be a toothless act in this domain. Site owners have to “take reasonable steps” to make their pages accessible.
No matter the legal repercussions (or lack of) of having an inaccessible site, there’s surely an ethical drive as well as a commercial one for making your web site accessible.
01.11.07
David
Here’s an extract from New Media Age, September 2004…
“Web site accessibility is not only of benefit to users; it’s now a legal requirement. The regulations state that from the 1st October 2004, where a physical feature makes it impossible or unreasonable difficult for disabled persons to access your goods or services, your organisation is required to take reasonable steps to remove the feature, alter it so that it doesn’t have that effect, provide a reasonable means to avoiding the feature, or provide a reasonable alternative to make the service available. This applies to every organisation offering a service to the public regardless of whether it’s free.
The implementation of this 1995 law was staggered over nine years to give those affected enough time to prepare. The Disability Rights Commission is giving every indication that it sees this as long enough and will support anyone who prosecutes owners of offending sites.”
02.11.07
Ben
Very interesting Jamie.
But some of the comments on that article make for pretty dire reading, don’t they? Still, it’s good to read a few positive comments towards the end (no. 115 onwards).
Why do people always think accessability is about minorities of ‘people’? Sure, that is what the Target case is about but ‘accessibility’ in general, as is being discussed, is about the full spectre methods in which your information is being accessed (the clue is in the name!) — sure, screen readers for that low percentage of blind visitors to your site but also catering to different users’ browser settings, search engine crawls, viewing on a mobile device, printing the page out, tagging, RSS feeds etc.
This is exciting, not a ‘roadblock’ (no. 94)!
Ultimately if developers are too lazy and stubborn to consider this when designing and building a site, I don’t care, it means there’s more work out there for me ;)