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Re: thoughts from Jim Thatcher re the DoJ ANPRM

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From: Pratik Patel
Date: Jan 21, 2011 2:39PM

Hello all,

I will post the comments I have drafted on behalf of the American council of the Blind when the final version is ready later this afternoon. I will let the comments speak for themselves; but strongly believe that the approach being taken by the DOJ and various responses is for the web as we know it today. We must not forget that the regulations promulgated by the Department will be in efectfor a very long time. The world will have changed by the time these regulations go into effect. Frankly, according to the DOJ, ADA has always covered web accessibility. This implies that covered entities have been out of compliance all this time. It is about time that the DOJ clarify is stands and make web access as important as its other requirements. If organizations are going to argue that something is or is not feasible, then they should have the opportunity to apply for the undue burden argument. It should be no different than any entity considering not providing physical access.

I also believe many comments have focused so much on literally answering the questions posed by the DOJ that we have not looked carefully at how the DOJ has constructed its questions—what it has left out. It considers web access akin to physical access. That is a fundamental mistake. It should have considered communication access and not web access. The web is no longer a content consumption medium. It is a platform. None of the Department's questions point to this.

More later.

Regards,

Pratik


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Dave Katten
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2011 4:17 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] thoughts from Jim Thatcher re the DoJ ANPRM

Howdy,
Thanks to Terrill's helpful distillation, I'd have to disagree.

Let's take the first two AA criteria he list: live captions and audio
descriptions. In practice, these are often outside the scope of
development, and are part of the content creation/deployment phase. So
leaving them aside really isn't an abdication of "developers [working]
with accessibility in mind".

My concern isn't the number, but the effort involved to achieve
success. Getting captions for prerecorded content is already a
monumental task for pretty much any entity. There are questions of
vendors vs. in-house, workflow, etc. Applying that to live broadcasts
is an unreasonable burden _at this time_. If we want accessibility law
and regulations to be successful, they must be attainable within
reasonable means (typically, developer training). Live captions and
audio descriptions aren't technical achievements that can be "built
in" by a web developer, nor can they be easily or readily attained at
a reasonable cost. That's just where we are now.

That said, I certainly don't disagree that these should be recommended
practices. But the reality is that the law should constitute a minimum
- the explanation I've seen is the Level A is what you MUST do, and
level AA is what you SHOULD do, and that seems right to me. Yes, we
should do what we can to persuade the adoption of AA in practice (and
I'm sure there will be many follow ups about how useful these
techniques are), but as for what the DOJ should require, "must" seems
like the appropriate level.

Best,
Dave



On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 2:52 PM, Denis Boudreau < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> My feeling is that Mr. Thatcher (with all due respect) is ready to settle for much too less. Anyone serious enough about accessibility will agree that AA is the absolute minimum to go for if one wants to make a real difference. The problem is not the number of success criteria. The problem is the lack of interest from developers to work with accessibility in mind. If the government can't make a stand on the appropriate level of conformance to ensure an inclusive society where every citizen has a fair chance to contribute according to his or her own potential, I wonder who will...
>
> /Denis
>
>
>
> On 2011-01-21, at 3:20 PM, Terrill Thompson wrote:
>
>> Jim Thatcher recommends that the DOJ require only Level A WCAG 2.0 success criteria (plus one Level AA criterion, related to visible focus for keyboard users). His argument is that "level AA is too strong, too complicated, too much." His response lists all the Level A success criteria in order to reinforce that these are enough (there are 26 of them).
>>
>> However, we should also consider the thirteen Level AA success criteria - these are the ones that would *not* be required if the ADA only require Level AA.
>>
>> I've created a paraphrased list of them all here: http://bit.ly/h7iKGU
>>
>> If you have an opinion as to how strong the ADA requirements should be, you only have until Monday (January 24) to let the DOJ know! Here are instructions for submitting a comment:
>> http://www.ada.gov/anprm2010/anprm2010_comment.htm
>>
>> Terrill Thompson
>> Technology Accessibility Specialist, University of Washington
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Jennison Mark Asuncion
>> Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2011 8:20 PM
>> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> Subject: [WebAIM] thoughts from Jim Thatcher re the DoJ ANPRM
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Thought some folks might find Jim Thatcher's perspective on the Department of Justice's proposal to apply the ADA to the web of interest http://www.jimthatcher.com/anprm.htm
>>
>>
>> Jennison
>> --
>> Jennison Mark Asuncion
>> Co-Director, Adaptech Research Network <www.adaptech.org> LinkedIn at <www.linkedin.com/in/jennison>
>>
>>