- From: Wilson Craig <Wilsonc@Hj.com>
- Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 08:30:06 -0500
- To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
- Cc: <hjstaff@Hj.com>
I thought you might be interested in this article, which appears on the Fox News Online web site at www.foxnews.com, today. Disabled Web Surfer's Case May Prove A Bellwether for Accessibility Standards 7.17 a.m. ET (1217 GMT) November 20, 1998 By Patrick Riley The term "handicapped accessible" has become synonymous with ramps, sloped curbs, wide bathroom stalls and parking spaces close to the store. Now the phrase may be about to take on a meaning for the World Wide Web. A formal complaint filed earlier this month by Randy Tamez, who is legally blind, against San Francisco's Metropolitan Transit Commission charges that its Web site, and the bus and train schedules therein, is inaccessible to his screen-reader technology and therefore in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. "This is probably just the first of any number of challenges that will apply the ADA to the Web," said Geoff Freed, project manager for the Web Access Project of the National Center for Accessible Media at Boston PBS station WGBH. "No matter how this suit is settled, it's going to have huge implications." Passed in 1990, the ADA mandated that the disabled be provided with "effective communication" from the government or in "places of public accommodation." That the law doesn't specifically address the Internet may not matter. "The ADA was written in such a way that it was open ended so that it could accommodate future technologies," Freed said. "The ADA probably has some implications for the Web and this guy's suit will certainly test that." The best indication that the regulations may apply to the Web came in a 1996 comment from the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department which said that "covered entities under the ADA are required to provide effective communication, regardless of whether they generally communicate through print media, audio media, or computerized media such as the Internet." A fully sighted reader will see the bus schedule graphic (foreground), but screen-reading software will only register the presence of an image, not the information it contains "If it is found that the ADA does apply to the Web," Freed said, "then everybody on the Web will have to consider how they should make their sites more accessible for the simple reason that what's on the Web is public information." Such a ruling could apply to everything from voting information at a government site to retail sites like Amazon.com. Government regulation of the Internet remains a hot button topic, with many Netizens staunchly against it. Freed feels this may be an area where an exception would be allowable. "Sometimes a little regulation can go a long way," he said. It is no coincidence that the issue is gaining steam as the technologically advancing Web moves increasingly into non-text-based areas, such as pictures and audio and video clips. "As the Web becomes a much more graphically oriented interface," Freed said, "people who are deaf, blind or hard of hearing are being shut out." For now, as sound is still an underutilized part of the medium, it is the visually impaired who face greater difficulties than the deaf. For the most part, text is portrayed in one of two ways on a Web page: inside a graphic or in the page's HTML, the language a browser reads to create the page. Screen-reading programs such as Winvision, Windoweyes and JAWS read aloud the text encoded in a Web site's HTML. But when the software gets to an unidentified graphic, it will simply say "image" and move on to the next bit of text. Because text is increasingly rendered in image format instead of in HTML, this often results in key information being bypassed. A simple solution to this problem, experts say, can be implemented at the programming level, by offering users a "text-only" option that eliminates images, or through the use of "alt tags" that describe in words what is shown in the images. Such steps are commonly taken today but are by no means the norm. Changing this will take education, said Freed, who estimates that less than one percent of Web sites are as accessible as they could be. "Most people who design Web sites are ignorant in that they just don't know that they can design them more accessibly," he said. Detailed steps that address the user-unfriendliness of the Web for the disabled have been compiled by the Web Access Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). A working draft of guidelines for authoring tool manufacturers released last week joins other recommendations for Web page creators and users. "The W3C is a large and respected body on the Web," Freed said. "So if the W3C puts its weight behind access issues, then a lot of people are going to sit up and take notice." Any sites that disregard such guidelines run the risk of frustrating a good many users. A 1996 survey by the American Foundation for the Blind found that 29 percent of blind and visually impaired Americans had a computer in their homes, and 12 percent had Internet or other online access. Overall, almost 40 percent had used a computer. The federal government seems to be keeping this audience in mind. Doug Wakefield of the government's Office of Technical and Information Services, who is blind, said his office is currently working on a set of standards due out next year that will mandate that government Web sites be accessible, something which Wakefield said could have a sweeping, if indirect, effect on the private sector. "Just remember, the government is an awful big customer," he said. If industry makes products available to the government that allow for accessible Web designing, he added, "they're not going to sell it just to the government, it becomes available for anybody." For its part, the San Francisco MTC is working to better its Web presence, according to Jay Miyazaki, manager of administrative services. He said work on the site had been proceeding with input from the commission's Elderly and Disabled Advisory Committee before an initial e-mail complaint was filed by Tamez. It is more than just the disabled who have had problems with the MTC's site, Miyazaki said. "We have had some problems with our Web site because it couldn't be accessed by simpler computers," he said. "It had too many bells and whistles." Wilson Craig Marketing Manager/Webmaster Henter-Joyce, Inc. 1-800-336-5658 http://www.hj.com wilsonc@hj.com
Received on Friday, 20 November 1998 08:29:16 UTC