At last!
--
Love.
ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
http://dicomp.pair.com
Forwarded message 1
There's not much new in this version of the story on this topic.
>Posted at 3:13 a.m. PST Thursday, November 12, 1998
>
>Blind man files complaint for cyberspace access
>
>kcexa
>
>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A blind man says his inability to access Web sites
>violates the Americans With Disabilities Act.
>
>Randy Tamez, who was blinded 12 years ago by treatment for a brain tumor,
>has filed a formal complaint against the Metropolitan Transportation
>Commission. The commission oversees nine Bay Area counties' mass transit
>systems.
>
>Tamez, 36, who sees only shapes, shadows and light, says his inability to
>access the site's documents, including bus and train schedules, violates
>the Americans With Disabilities Act, passed by Congress in 1990. It's one
>of the first formal complaints filed against a Web site, according to
>Cynthia Waddell, the city of San Jose's ADA coordinator.
>
>As more and more sensory impaired users go on-line, the more barriers they
>find in front of them, the biggest of which is the World Wide Web.
>
>And as Web sites fill with pictures, video clips and sound, text becomes a
>secondary concern to on-line designers. But text drives the technology,
>especially screen readers, that allows a sight- or hearing-disabled person
>to use the Web.
>
>"The on-line world was friendly when it was a text-based medium," said
>Waddell, San Jose ADA coordinator, who is deaf. "But as it has rapidly
>grown to a robust multimedia environment, it has erected new barriers that
>were never there before."
>
>Tamez's recently filed a complaint against the MTC as part of a growing
>mound of paperwork that is steering ADA regulations toward the Web.
>
>Two other formal complaints, filed against San Francisco and Washington
>this year, allege those cities failed to make public touch-screen computer
>kiosks compliant with hearing- and vision-impaired users. Both cities have
>promised to enact guidelines and training to bring the kiosks in compliance
>with the ADA.