RE: Accessibility is a Right

The Americans with Disabilities Act and its regulatory apparatus makes
accessibility a right for persons with disabilities under certain
circumstances.  In this case, the "amount" of accessibility that a given
site has to provide partly depends on whether the site is government or
privately sponsored.  Also, a set of definitions for web accessibility and
other things similar was recently issued as part of the development of the
ADA.

In general, government sites have to meet a higher standard of access than
private sites; I am no expert, but the overall standard for private sites
would be accessibility that is readily achievable.
Given the nature of markup languages, it makes some sense that the standard
of "readily achieveable" will be pretty high for web sites.  However, none
of this has been tested yet.

Time will tell-but my guess is that the expectations from a legal
perspective will be fairly high for sites.

Kynn Bartlett writes:

> Where do rights come from, and who
> makes the decision, "this is a right"?
>
> Again, no flames please, and bear in mind that we're on the same
> side -- I just want to hear the logic behind this statement.
>
> --
> Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
http://www.idyllmtn.com/~kynn/
Chief Technologist & Co-Owner, Idyll Mountain Internet; Fullerton,
California
For your user-defined stylesheet: .GeoBranding { display: none !
important; }
Enroll now, for my HTML 4.0 Accessibility Class:
http://www.hwg.org/classes/

Received on Wednesday, 19 August 1998 08:50:37 UTC