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Re: Reclaiming ADA court costs from developers

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From: Brandon Keith Biggs
Date: Jul 30, 2018 1:11PM

As a customer I am asking for WCAG compliance rating when I look to buy new
systems and 95% of the time I hear: "What's WCAG, I've never heard of it in
30 years of sales". This is a plague and I can't buy most of the systems
out there because as a blind systems acquisition person, I can't evaluate
something I can't use. It is also not legal for us to buy a system I can't
use.
Most of the time companies just say they will add in accessibility later,
but they don't give a date and don't want to work with me to add
accessibility.
This is the wrong approach. You can't just "add" accessibility. You need to
design your product or service to the widest number of users possible, then
you may consider your product usable by a specific group of users.
It's really the company's fault for not getting UX testers for all the
possible users they wanted to serve, or evaluating the product from the
developer for different features that need to be included.
It's also the tools the developer is using. If they use most widget
frameworks from React, for example, Screen reader users won't be able to
use them. There is no way for the developer to know this without testing
them self.
Everyone just needs to start using AccDC and 95% of our problems about
screen reader access will be gone.
Thanks,


Brandon Keith Biggs <http://brandonkeithbiggs.com/>;

On Mon, Jul 30, 2018 at 11:01 AM, Wilson, Jordan via WebAIM-Forum <
<EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> This is a very slippery slope - I've seen vendors who do go out of their
> way to include accessibility (and accessibility costs) into RFPs have to
> back out of it because adding A11y costs into a project when their
> competitors do not prices them out of the RFP.
>
> I spoke about this at Accessing Higher Ground last year because its
> becoming a big problem - I recommend that agencies include accessibility as
> a line item in their RFP responses for this reason. Don't include it in the
> core prices so that your client can see that its in there and can
> differentiate your response from others.
>
> Ideally everyone includes a11y, but we're not there yet.
>
> I'd love to see a panel on this at CSUN in the future - many of us work
> with 3rd party design agencies and there's fear of liability there.
>
> Jordan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
> Behalf Of Jared Smith
> Sent: Monday, July 30, 2018 9:55 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [WebAIM] Reclaiming ADA court costs from developers
>
> **** External Email - Use Caution ****
>
> This is a very interesting case that could have notable ramifications
> in the design/development community. Please keep us apprised of the
> outcomes.
>
> I can't speak to UK law, but under the Americans with Disabilities
> Act, there is Section 303 which defines that discrimination can occur
> for a "failure to design and construct facilities" that are not
> accessible. There have been court rulings against designers and
> contractors for not implementing physical accessibility, even when
> this is not specifically defined in the contract. The onus is thus on
> the architect and contractors to understand the accessibility
> requirements and implement them.
>
> As Birkir noted, we do not yet have technical specifications for web
> accessibility under ADA, but this has not stopped lawsuits and
> Department of Justice actions. In fact, the lack of technical
> standards and implementation guidelines has certainly increased the
> number of lawsuits because litigants need not define that a web site
> failed to meet a defined technical standard, but only that it is
> "discriminatory". This creates a higher burden of proof on contractors
> to make things accessible - and, because the DOJ has utterly failed to
> define what "accessible" even means here, the litigant can define this
> to be pretty much whatever they want.
>
> Jared
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