RE: here's the boston globe article

Hi,

I too thought that Hiawatha Bray did a pretty good job in the Boston Globe
with the NFB / AOL issue, except with regard to the manner in which he
quoted me.  He used a small part of one of my quotes to set up the paragraph
that followed.

Of course ADA applies to the Internet, but not to everything about it.  At
least not yet.

I don't consider AOL representative of the Internet.  I did tell Mr. Bray
that ADA would likely apply if this had been a complaint filed by employees
of AOL who could not gain access to the application in the conduct of their
work or by employees of any organization requiring access to AOL as a job
requirement.  I suspect that the Justice Department might consider action if
AOL received federal funds.  I view AOL as an application and unfortunately
there are very many inaccessible applications.

Personally, I have little use for AOL other than to have a variety of
Internet log-on options when traveling both within and outside of the United
states.  Once connected using an AOL phone number for Internet access, the
application can be minimized so that I can access my regular POP mail
account or use Internet Explorer or another browser to access web content.
Accessibility applies then to IE and the web pages which are accessed.  I
would never recommend AOL to anyone who was blind, even for this purpose
since so many other ISP options are available.

By the way, it is probably not a bad thing to have awareness increased by
this sort of action.  Too bad the Microsoft news had to break to push
internet access into the background once again.

Chuck


**************
Chuck Hitchcock
Director, National Center on Access
to the General Curriculum and
Chief Education Technology Officer,
CAST, Inc.,
39 Cross Street, Peabody, MA 01960
Email chitchcock@cast.org
Voice 978 531-8555
TTY   978 531-3110
Fax   978 531-0192
<http://cast.org/>
<http://cast.org/bobby/>

Received on Sunday, 7 November 1999 18:17:41 UTC