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Re: Standards for Accessible Laws?

for

From: Wolfgang Berndorfer
Date: Dec 16, 2018 11:59AM

Sounds unbelievable! Is there no citizen or lawyer working with AT demanding
accessible laws in the USA or EU?



-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] Im Auftrag
von <EMAIL REMOVED>
Gesendet: Samstag, 15. Dezember 2018 19:47
An: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Betreff: Re: [WebAIM] Standards for Accessible Laws?

Given that in the US, Congress and its sub agencies (Govt Publishing Office,
Library of Congress, Congressional Budget Office, etc.) are exempt from all
laws, I don't know of anything on the books at the federal level re:
accessibility of legislation. These agencies themselves voluntarily adopt
legislation, such as Sec. 508 and equal employment, but they are not
required by law to do so.

Example: The US Federal Register https://www.federalregister.gov/
Not only are the Register's PDFs untagged, but the website itself has
accessibility issues.

So if the agency that records and publishes our US federal legislation
doesn't make the information accessible, I wonder how likely it is that
there would be any US federal standards for accessibility of legislation.

Related: see the US federal government's style manual for other publishing
requirements at
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2016/pdf/GPO-STYLEMANUAL
-2016.pdf
Doesn't have one word about accessibility, but it does have a section on
formatting the Congressional Record.

Hint: we here in Washington just make the laws for you "little people." We
don't actually practice them! <sarcastic grin>

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Bevi Chagnon, founder/CEO | <EMAIL REMOVED>
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PubCom: Technologists for Accessible Design + Publishing
consulting • training • development • design • sec. 508 services
Upcoming classes at www.PubCom.com/classes
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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of
Wolfgang Berndorfer
Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2018 11:37 AM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List' < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Standards for Accessible Laws?

Hi Steve,
Thanks for Your link. Found some interesting things about US programs in
general.
But could You please precise, where I can find standards for accessible law
presentation within those projects? Had no success at all.

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] Im Auftrag
von Noble,Stephen L.
Gesendet: Freitag, 14. Dezember 2018 23:23
An: WebAIM Discussion List
Betreff: Re: [WebAIM] Standards for Accessible Laws?

I would think the first thing would be to piggy back on the current efforts
to implement United States Legislative Markup (USLM) XML:
https://www.fdlp.gov/news-and-events/3560-united-states-legislative-markup-x
ml

Of course, I know the Brits have their own version...Crown Legislation
Markup Language, but I don't know if other countries have their own. There
are surely commonalities that can be mapped.


--Steve Noble

<EMAIL REMOVED>




From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > on behalf of
Wolfgang Berndorfer < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2018 2:12 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: [WebAIM] Standards for Accessible Laws?

Does anybody know about specific standards of how to present LAWS
accessible?



Perhaps I was just unlucky, but I never found a law which was presented
according to WCAG standards, not even in Anti-Discrimination-Laws. No
heading is semantically a heading and no list a list.



So I searched for standards to advice governments and their technical and
legal departments how to make laws accessible. No matching results.



All the blind lawyers I asked, navigate from paragraph to paragraph via
CTRL+F. None ever complained. Seems they don't know how to use their AT
efficiently or they are too used to suffering.



So if there are no standards I suggest:



1. Provide an accessible HTML version of the law. PDF and other formats need
more effort and don't mean more comfort.

2. The title of the law in the document gets <h1>.

3. If the law contains sections, the heading of the section gets <h2>.

4. If the law contains sections, the heading of each paragraph gets <h3>,
otherwise <h2> .

5. The number of the paragraph and it's title are contained within ONE
heading element.

6. Titles for meta information's about the law like short- and long title,
abstracts in foreign languages, . get <h6>. Means: Only the pure law gets
the meaningful heading hierarchy.

7. Lists of articles within a paragraph are contained in a <ol> with the
fitting CSS list-style-type. (Or is this wrong, since CSS should not convey
content, like the number of the article?)

8. References to passages of the law or other laws are linked in an <a
href.>.

9. Tables, diagrams, . get the necessary accessibility features.



TX for infos & thoughts!



Wolfgang

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