Checking on Web accessibility can be a good story topic
On September 7, 2006, a federal district court judge ruled that Target Corp. could be sued if its Web site is inaccessible to blind and visually impaired people. The National Federation of the Blind brought the lawsuit against Target Corp. (Northern District of California Case No. C 06-01802 MHP), charging that Target’s Web site inaccessibility violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. (ADA), the California Unruh Civil Rights Act, and the California Disabled Persons Act. Target argued that the court should dismiss the case, saying that current laws do not require that its Web site be accessible. The Court said that the federal and state civil rights laws do apply to commercial Web sites like target.com.
The federal government has been required to provide accessible Web information since June 21, 2001, as part of the Section 508 Standards for Electronic and Information Technology, which is an amendment to the federal Rehabilitation Act. Checking out the accessibility of information from government, businesses, or non-profits can be a great story for journalists.
Many Web developers are aware of the Web accessibility divide for people with disabilities. In 1997 an international community of Web developers and computer scientists, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) joined with government, the business community and nonprofits to create the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) for people with disabilities worldwide. Because the Web has no geographic borders, WAI tries to make sure the Web is accessible to the 750 million people it estimates who have disabilities worldwide.
Michael Paciello, founder of WebABLE and author of Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities, says the inaccessibility of the Web environment was not intended. "The Web followed a very typical development process based on standard engineering processes that, all too often, do not include considerations for people with disabilities," he said in 2001. "Subsequently, most advanced technologies are not accessible to people with disabilities." Therefore, he advocates that Web developers and programmers take a holistic approach by making sure Web interfaces can be used by anyone, regardless of ability to see, hear or use hands for typing.
For example, for people with visual impairments, the graphics-oriented Web erects the largest number of barriers. Web developers need to make sure their sites are compatible with software that reads text aloud, converts it to Braille, or that their sites have audio description.
Even novice Web developers can make their sites accessible. The Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), a nonprofit organization that tries to expand opportunities for people with disabilities through innovative uses of computer technology, developed a tool called Bobby that assesses the accessibility of Web sites for people with disabilities.
To contact CAST, go to http://www.cast.org/. The Web Accessibility Initiative can be found at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/.
The National Federation of the Blind has a Technology Center that has resources on nonvisual Web accessibility, www.nfb.org.
Beth Haller, Towson University, Towson, Md.