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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: October 22, 2002 Judge Rules That Inaccessible Website Violates ADA -- "A federal judge ruled that the Atlanta mass transit agency violated the ADA by constructing a website that was inaccessible for people with visual disabilities. This is one of the first cases to decide that the ADA requires online access for people with disabilities." (MadMan comments: I'm not an expert on American law, but does this mean that private corporations are also bound by this ruling?)
Reader Comments...
A different ruling seems to indicate that ADA does not apply to commercial Web sites. In this case, U.S. district Judge Seitz dismissed an ADA lawsuit against Southwest Airlines. The Judge said that the ADA applied only to physical spaces and could not be extended to apply to virtual spaces. In a 12-page opinion, the Judge indicates that there is no evidence to indicate that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are “a generally accepted authority.” The Judge further criticizes the guidelines for being more than three years old. The WCAG guidelines are issued by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which I thought was about as authorative as one could get on the Web. Posted by: Kent on October 22, 2002 03:18 AM
The WCAG could do with an update to clarify and improve certain areas, but they're generally pretty sound. HTML hasn't changed in the last 3 years, but some recommended workarounds may no longer be required I suppose. Posted by: Matt Round on October 22, 2002 04:06 AM
if you read the Cnet article and then the opinion (link in the cnet article)I read the Cnet article… and it was a bit light on the facts. So I dug a bit further and read her opinion (a good read). She points out that the MARTA case is covered under a different section of the ADA act (that covers public services as opposed to private companies). She also points out that the law covers physical public spaces, and that if she sided for the plaintiff it would “create new rights”. Don’t think that you can keep designing sites without thinking about the ADA forever! It is only a matter of time before lawmakers get around to rolling the internet into the ADA.
It is only a matter of time before lawmakers get around to rolling the internet into the ADA. That gives me another 50 years of safe harbor. Whew! Posted by: on October 22, 2002 09:08 AM
As best I could tell from the CNET areticle, the issue with the South West Airlines site was failure to include alt tags on images? A change like this is something that one can easily do as they revise pages - - and ultimately come into compliance just through attrition of old pages. Posted by: Frank on October 22, 2002 10:04 AM
This is funny: http://mail.asis.org/pipermail/sigia-l/2002-October/002848.html Posted by: Lydia on October 22, 2002 05:56 PM
Whoops, sorry, just noticed I posted that here. I meant this to go on another post! :P Posted by: Lydia on October 23, 2002 03:11 PM
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