WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: FTP site opinion

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Feb 28, 2014 10:12AM

Trafford, Logan wrote:

> we are faced with resistance from certain departments
> whose material, while posted to a public site, is not
> necessarily meant for true public consumption.

I'm not sure I understand this. Who else would it be meant for? If for
internal employees, US law is much more clear about employment
discrimination than it is about discrimination due to inaccessible
content intended for the public.

> So my question is this. Are there times when an FTP
> site is an acceptable practice for target audiences
> (thereby bypassing the "law" per se).

I can't speak to whether AODA would apply to FTP sites. WCAG (which is
the basis for AODA) does not limit itself to HTTP protocols. It
applies to all web content (though one could make a stretching
argument, I suppose, that a PDF file on an FTP server isn't 'web'
content).

Unfortunately, the reality of AODA (and probably future US law) is
that many companies are simply removing content from the web to avoid
liability rather than making it accessible. A large insurance company
recently sent the following to all Ontarian customers...

"Due to technical limitations, starting December 8th 2013, most or
possibly all documents you view online will no longer be available.
Unfortunately, this is a necessary step as we improve the overall
accessibility of our site."
(http://blog.xenos.com/2014/02/update-on-aoda-for-document-accessibility/)

Of course the real intention is that by not providing the documents to
Ontarians, AODA would not apply to them. In this situation, everybody
loses.

Jared