Yes, mass production of web accessibility suits is under way: “A partner of [Pittsburgh-based] Carlson Lynch Sweet Kilpela & Carpenter, which represents plaintiffs in such cases, tells the [Chicago] Tribune that it sent out about 25 demand letters to real estate companies in recent months.” [ABA Journal; Kenneth Harney; our 15+ years of coverage of the slow-motion legal disaster that is web accessibility]
6 Comments
The Library of Congress could be given the authority, money, and mandate to create an on-line portal through which disabled users could access any website with maximum quality. This would save a lot of duplicated effort and threats to Internet quality.
I really doubt that’s possible. If it was, whatever the portal is supposed to do could be done better by accessibility software. I assume there would also be a problem with HTTPS and a portal trying to modify encrypted content – the solutions that would allow that, that I can think of, would negatively impact security.
If a picture doesn’t have alt text, there’s no program in the world that can add it automatically. If a video doesn’t have captions, you can *try* to add them automatically, but software isn’t very good at that yet. Given that even humans sometimes have to ask each other to repeat ourselves, I don’t think such software will ever be 100% accurate. There’s no substitute for a human actually making the modifications to the content, in many cases.
Is there even a standard for what features a ADA complement website should provide? For things like ramps there are compliance building code that specify things like widths and gradient angles. Where are the similar specifications for a ADA complement website?
Last I heard, the government was planning to release those regulations sometime around 2018. Which makes it kind of ridiculous to start suing businesses now.
Nope, no legal standard and that’s part of the problem. This area of the law is truly a joke, costing millions in productivity and innovation.
Review section 508 which includes web accessibility language but only applies to the fed. Then look at fed web sites and compare with requirements… But quit acting like it’s rocket science… All it takes is text. Oh yeah, and the realization that java is accessible, javascript is not. W3C accessibility guide is a good start. C’mon, how hard do you think Walter works at making his site accessible? And yet, here I am and even commenting.