508 Accessibility Deadline

As we've interpreted it, June 21st, 2001 is the deadline to be in compliance
with the new 508 standards.  This being Feb 15th means that 56 days have
already gone by.  Or, 31% to save everyone from doing that calculation.

It is disconcerting to see so many posts (mine included) that are still
attempting to define some of the standards.  It appears that there are many
things that are still not clear as far as implementation goes.  Confusion on
the proper way to approach this or that.

The Final Rule of the 508 was not nearly detailed enough to simply
implement.  Seems to me that they took a conceptual approach to
accessibility and left the details to the development community to figure
out.  The development folks are forced to learn quite a bit about assistive
technologies before even starting on 508 compliance.

Some might argue that there were proposed rules prior to the final.  True,
but, proposed rules are not final rules and to develop to them could have
meant having to redo some percentage of our effort based on differences
between the two.

Perhaps six months to bring the all of the federal government web sites into
compliance is a bit optimistic.  Six months to learn what we need to learn,
the "can do's" and "cannot do's" would have worked with another six months
alloted for the actual implementation.

Jim Fitzgerald

-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Kew [mailto:nick@webthing.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 4:09 PM
To: Leonard R. Kasday
Cc: w3c-wai-er-ig@w3.org; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: Aaargh .. Whatever happened to Bobby?



[ posted back to original lists ]

Len has been kind enough to reprimand me privately for the tone
of my posting.  I hereby apologise unconditionally for the
confrontational tone, and will avoid it in future in these lists.

I do, however, stand by the substance of my posting, which seems
to me an important issue.  I should add that I raised it here
precisely because it seemed to me less damaging to do so in a
forum that is relatively small and broadly sympathetic than in
the Newsgroups, where it might serve to support those individuals
who are openly opposed to accessibility.

-- 
Nick Kew

Received on Thursday, 15 February 2001 08:29:20 UTC