Re: accessible banking:

From: "John Foliot - WATS.ca" <foliot@wats.ca>
To: "'Kelly Pierce'" <kpierce2000@earthlink.net>; "'david poehlman'" 
<david.poehlman@handsontechnologeyes.com>; "'John Carpenter'" 
<John.Carpenter@pdms.com>; "'wai-ig list'" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 8:48 AM
Subject: RE: accessible banking:


Exactly.  The biggest issue is those institutions which think that as long
as they meet the "technical" requirements, their obligations end there.
They see it as an "obligation", as opposed to the "right thing to do". The
purpose of this type of legislation is to try and mold society to one which
is more inclusive, less discriminatory - fairer.

To me, the bottom line is this:  nobody has conclusively proven why the
institution *cannot* make their site accessible to other browsers. I know my
bank's  on-line banking site "works" in other browsers, so there is existing
proof that it *can* be done...  I suspect that if ever it went before the
courts, a strong case could be made against the bank in question.

JF

**John, I believe we are talking about American courts interpreting the ADA 
not Canadian ones.  Because a blind computer user can successfully conduct 
transactions on a website with IE, they would consider that effective 
communication and be little swayed by the arguments presented here.  one 
does not have the right to sue for the communication method of their choice, 
only for an effective means of independently sending and receiving 
communications.  for example, written material can be presented to a blind 
person in Braille, in an audio recording, such as on a cassette or CD, large 
print, or in a digital file such as in ASCII or in a Word Processing format. 
Choice of format is entirely at the discretion of the provider of the 
information not the blind person.  the person's "choice" is only relevant 
when the provided communication is not effective, such as providing a 
Braille document to a person who doesn't read Braille and wants information 
in an audio recording.

Kelly

Received on Thursday, 3 February 2005 02:50:13 UTC