LSW-WebDesign

The following is something I wrote to get my thoughts together for a briefing on accessibility of Alaskan state web sites, I thought it worth noting here to help others perhaps better understand accessibility law.

1. Massive lack of accessibility resulting in the user not being able to use the web site at all to reach information or services.
2. Complaints made and requests to correct the issues have been ignored.

Lawsuits against the state would be made under Sec. 508 of the ADA. The only current lawsuit in progress is against the state of Texas from Feb. 2007 in which 3 state employees with visual impairments were not able to do their job which required working with Oracle Databases. Complaints were filed and software requested and nothing was done so they sued the state of Texas and Oracle for lack of accessible software under Sec. 508. This is not directly web related but shows how the system works. The state of Alaska would not be sued immediately for lack of a alt attribute. A user must complain first and then if we did not improve the site (which we would) a lawsuit could be filed.

The court would decide of the case was warranted. The legal rule of thumb seems to be whether “reasonable attempts” have been made to make the web site accessible. Failing one minor issue on some (not all) pages would likely not justify a court case. I am, however, no legal authority.

All other news worthy lawsuits have been brought against commercial sites, and as Sec. 508 does not cover commercial sites, these lawsuits in the US, and Australia under the British Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), have not been based on the web sites themselves, but on the fact that a service/product was not made available to those with disabilities in the same manner as those without. So those with disabilities were being discriminated against. Hence it is not the accessibility of the web site that was brought before the court but the discrimination against the disabled as they are not able to access the service/product over the net in the same manner as those without disabilities. The web site is not required by law to be accessible, but the service/product offered by the web site is required by law to be accessible to those with disabilities.

One final note on the past lawsuits, in all but the first web accessibility lawsuit brought against Soutwest Airlines, the web site owners have lost the case. However in the instances of Ramada and Priceline, although they lost the case, almost no changes were required of the web sites as the court agreed that doing so would be to expensive and therefore an undue burden on the companies, also the suit only covers accessibility for the visually impaired and not all disabilities. They are wrong for not ensuring their services are available to those with disabilities however are not required to do much to correct the problem.

They are back, the WCAG Samurai have come slinking out of their cellar into the light of day. The open question is: Will they change the world?

The WCAG Samurai are a secret list of top Web Developers chosen by Joe Clark who dismayed by the weak points of WCAG 1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and not impressed with WCAG 2 drafts and blatantly unhappy with the bureaucracy and power mongering going down inside of the W3C working groups by international corporations… simply decided to do their own thing.

So they backed up some junk food and beer, invited a few fellows they respected, walked into the cellar and shut the door on the rest of us for a year.

Well they are back with sword in hand. This sword is what they have dubbed the “Errata.”

The WCAG Samurai Errata is a list of guidelines that are to be followed (if you choose to accept the mission) along side WCAG 1. Learn and follow WCAG 1 and then pic up the Errata and slice the needed corrections. The errata follows along WCAG lines but corrects some that never worked or are to old. In other places it deletes guidelines or check points or modifies them. Oh, and it executed Priority three completely.

Now I am having a bit of fun with this. I also have my concerns about us being locked out… but then again democracy has it’s limits and the larger the group the harder it is to get anything done.

I have read the introduction to the Errata and it is drastic and severe, but hey look at some of the garbage coming out of W3C these days. It will take some getting use to and I have my doubts on a few points. But I think I will build LSW following the Errata if I can.

As I see it, it is like a big election. If you vote for some new upstart party, are they going to win? No, hardly. But the loss of your vote along with thousands to millions of others does send a note to the big parties that they are not doing what we the people want.

So the Errata will not overthrow the W3C or likely change it. But it can send the message that:
A) WCAG 1 is not bad, just update and modify it.
B) WCAG 2, we are not impressed
C) The web and accessibility is just not a play thing for big business.

Remember the old saying “What if there was a war and nobody came?”, well what if their was a WCAG 2 and nobody used it, or what if the W3C put out a new anything and nobody cared?

We are not required by law to listen to or accept W3C or WCAG and WCAG is just guidelines.

So I will not bow to the Samurai elite, but you have a nod of consent and I will be rooting for the Errata to make waves if not change. In the end accessibility is about the people and doing what is right, whether it meets WCAG or does not… or goes beyond it.

• WCAG Samurai
• Introduction to WCAG Samurai Errata
• WCAG Samurai Errata for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0

Peer Reviews

• http://reviewsamurai.wordpress.com/
• http://samuraireview.wordpress.com/

Update: The comments by Cerbera below did remind me that this was a first reaction to the errata, some things have changed and I did remove the comment that Ben was part of the Samurai. As for not being impressed with WCAG 2, as Joe himself has said, this was written between the original draft of WCAG 2 and the newest WCAG 2 draft. In deed the newest draft is much improved.

My friend “BillyBoy” supplied this interesting series of articles:

Designing for Dyslexics from Accessites.org

1. Part 1
2. Part 2
3. Part 3