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Re: Standards for Accessible Laws?

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From: Wolfgang Berndorfer
Date: Dec 19, 2018 2:20PM

Now that there where no more responses I need to get verbose to collect my
thoughts: A supplement and a proposals for development of accessible
legistic documents:
1. Accessibility and laws in the European Union:
Lets have a look on the Directive 2016/2102 (accessibility of the websites
and mobile applications of public sector bodies):
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32016L2102
You see on this side a table with 24 colums for the available languages of
the document and 3 rows for the corrsponding file formats HTML, PDF and the
official journal (OJ).
Well, You see it, if You have visual approach. If you don’t see or need
tabulator-access, You have to tab 24 or 48 or 72 times to get the related
file type in Your language. The table You might see, is not a table to get.
Next in fact, then You have a HTML or PDF version of the Directive
2016/2102. Surprise: No semantic heading, list or anything else in the
directive for accessibility. Really surprised?

2. How to improve legistic documents?
Is there any need for accessible laws at all? Nearly 20 years after WCAG 1.0
neither ADA in the USA nor EAA in Europe rsulted in request for a11y among
students, professionals or citizens. I'd assume YES, as soon as there was
the needed knowledge about the possibilities and advantages. There was no
request for smart phones in my youth 40 years ago. Nobody dreamed
realistically of the possibilities and advantages of smart phones then. So
knowledge about a11y claims and AT opportunities need to be increased.

Seems, there is bad practise internationally and habituaqlly conditioned.
And as far as I researched and got feedback within this discussion thread,
there are no standards to improve the a11y of laws and other legical
documents. Is this a problem? Yes, but it's also a opportunity to create
international standards before each country creates it's own habitual
standard.
But who developes the standards? They should be build up on WCAG and
usability tests with AT users. Probably there are not many lawyers out there
in this discussion forum. But surely many know blind citizens with legistic
interests and hopefully some project managers got interested.
Wolfgang-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] Im Auftrag
von Wolfgang Berndorfer
Gesendet: Sonntag, 16. Dezember 2018 19:59
An: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Betreff: Re: [WebAIM] Standards for Accessible Laws?

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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