RE: Legal requirements RE: statistics

At 1:14 AM +0000 1/15/02, Martin Sloan wrote:
>The difference is that if there are disability discrimination laws in
>Brazil, or any other country, then they are likely to be fairly analogous
>with those in Australia.

That's a very bizarre statement to me.  Maybe it's because I'm an
American, and our legal system is somewhat screwed up, but I don't
really see it happening.

>Therefore the Australian case could be considered
>as persuasive authority (i.e. the court is likely to if prompted think
>"that's a good idea, let's follow those sensible Australians"). As such, it
>is surely prudent for the competent professional to consider such issues.

There are plenty of other reasons to consider web accessibility without
inventing some Australian-based legal boogieman with which to frighten
the whole world into knee-jerk compliance with WCAG 1.

>However, as far as I'm aware American human rights are slightly (although
>not much if recent news reports are to be believed. but that's a different
>issue) more advanced than those in China. A US court is unlikely to look to
>China for guidance over human rights issues. So your argument doesn't
>really make sense.

Neither does the argument that web designers in Brazil or the U.S.
need to pay attention to Australian legal decisions.

Question:  Are you advising web developers around the world to ignore
the WCAG, and instead implement the Section 508 requirements when
they build web sites?  It would seem there is as much legal force
to say "you web developers in Brussels need to obey this American
policy" as there would to say "obey this Australian decision."

Neither argument seems compelling to me, and we have far better ones
to make for web accessibility than the fear you'll get fired by an
Australian human rights commission.

--Kynn

-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                 http://kynn.com
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Received on Monday, 14 January 2002 21:09:25 UTC