WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: No decision from the Appeals court

for

From: Sandy Clark
Date: Sep 28, 2004 1:37PM


I have just two words to say to your concerns about Congress legislating web
accessibility

Section 508


Sandy Clark
http://www.shayna.com
CF Pretty Accessible at http://www.shayna.com/blog
Now offering 4 days Hands on CSS training October 11-14th. Rockville, MD.
For more information go to:
http://www.teratech.com/training/oc_classes.cfm#css
-----Original Message-----
From: khall51 [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 3:05 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] No decision from the Appeals court


Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully, but my broader point
is that I place little trust in the abilities of the U.S. Congress to
understand or correctly legislate technology issues such as web
accessibility. If they do decide to try to spell out in any concrete way
what web accessibility should and should not entail it will likely stifle
further innovation in hardware and software that could be of use to those
with disabilities but may conflict with poorly written legal language.
Additionally, I think that most of the issues relate more to educating
designers on how to code to web standards and keep accessibility and
usability in mind. There is a growing body of anecdotal and quantitative
evidence that designing with web standards reduces costs in initial
development and maintenance of web sites. We can keep working to create
better moral and business cases for our side to make people want to embrace
accessibility, to want to do more than the minimum required by law.

Based on Congress' recent laws like the DMCA and the Induce Act do you
really think that our Senators and Representatives would do a good job of
guiding web development? Or would they create a poorly written, ill advised
piece of legislation that is useful only for scaring people and creating
junk lawsuits. I tend to think that the government has little to no place in
software and web development.