Web Accessibility - Ramps and Handrails for the Web
Has web accessibility crept into your development process for your web sites? It seems to be one of the “in things” at the moment. People tout their expertise in accessibility and table-less CSS design. Both are great and I make attempts at both. But should we just be making attempts at accessibility?
In an article found on Wired:
“The Web is just as much a public space as our downtown office buildings and suburban shopping malls. By not being aware of, or taking the time to implement, common Web accessibility measures and guidelines, we are — as website producers — essentially hiding the elevators, ramps, handrails and wide doors which welcome anyone into our virtual buildings and help them find their way or move from place to place.”
If we adopt this point of view should we not then be required to develop accessible web sites? What gives us the right to make a choice that excludes over 500 million people? A builder must reserve a certain amount of handicap parking spaces, and bathrooms must have stalls to accommodate wheelchairs - hell, even the mirros in the bathrooms are supposed to be at a certain height!
With these requirements already in place and the world rapidly evolving online, is it only a matter of time before web development becomes legislated in some countries? Target is already under the gun with a class action lawsuit. According to news.com the suit, filed in Northern California’s Alameda County Superior Court by Sexton and the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind (NFB), claims that Target.com, “contains thousands of access barriers that make it difficult, if not impossible, for blind customers to use.”
The ADA claim in the lawsuit is a narrow one. The ADA talks of the need for places of public accommodation to be accessible to the disabled. It lists hotels, cinemas, banks and zoos as examples of such places. An attempt to add websites to that list has failed before: in 2002, a Florida district court judge characterized a blind person’s argument against Southwest Airlines as “emotionally attractive” but not “legally viable”.
It’s only a matter of time before a judge applies the ADA to a web site. And when it happens it won’t be long for other states and countries to follow suit. Is that what it will take to get the 95% of inaccessible web sites to shape up their code and stop thinking in a box? The world has moved online so it’s time we, as designers and developers, make the web more welcoming and accommodating - the author included.
March 30th, 2007 at 7:10 am
There are alreayd bits of legislation.
The UK has had the DDA for a few years, some other European countries have accessibility legislation that applies tot eh web, and America has Section 508 affecting gov type web sites.