WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: No decision from the Appeals court

for

From: michael.brockington
Date: Sep 29, 2004 3:15AM


-----Original Message-----
From: design11 [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
>
>We are probably better off in the long run if we argue that the ADA
>doesn't apply to web sites and focus our efforts on educating web
>designers and stakeholders in web sites on the importance of good
>accessibility and usability practices.
>

I entirely agree - if you read the contents of the WAI documentation then you
are reading _recommendations_ made by probably the best qualified group of
web professionals on the planet. However the shortest glimpse of this list
will show you that there are massive grey areas in there, even now. In
particular, note the number of times that the phrase 'Until Browsers ...' or
similar appears. This is not acceptable language for a legal document, since
percentages and majorities are not defined in any way, so would at the very
least need to be supplemented by future legislation.

So, to summarise: the best written guidelines that we have at the moment
would need to be extensively re-written to become legislation. This would
inevitably be done by Politicians, who are rarely even adequately qualified
to do their jobs, so I can see no chance of the outcome even being useable,
let alone useful. For one thing some corporate would spot something that
could be changed to their advantage, and that would be that. Examples of the
latter abound, from Software Patents to fair use of content.

Finally, if the US passes such an Act, the EU would eventually do the same,
only the two acts would inevitably be incompatible - then what do we do? Do
the right thing by doing what the WAI tells us, or do what the lawyers tell
us>

Mike


********************************************************************

This email may contain information which is privileged or confidential. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, please notify the sender immediately and delete it without reading, copying, storing, forwarding or disclosing its contents to any other person
Thank you

Check us out at http://www.btsyntegra.com

********************************************************************