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Re: No decision from the Appeals court

for

From: Hall, Kevin (K.M.)
Date: Sep 28, 2004 1:58PM

Section 508 has a very limited scope and I'd say it should stay that way. If you don't do business with the government you are not included. I do think that it is great that the U.S. government requires all governmental sites to be accessible, though interestingly they are not required to be usable. Note the recent posting on webaim.org about the IRS site. Accessible, but not necessarily usable.

Requiring the government to make its websites accessible is a reasonable stance (though it could be internal policy as easily as law). Disabled taxpayers support those sites, in a sense they 'own' about 1/290,000,000th of the site ('that byte on the bottom left is yours'). And particularly for sites such as IRS.gov they should absolutely be able to access and use the sites they paid for.

Privately owned sites belonging to individuals and businesses should not be required, though they should be encouraged, to meet the requirements of Section 508 or the WCAG. Those that do business with the government are the exception, and the above argument about taxpayer funds applies once again. If you take tax money it is fair to have strings attached.

I didn't mean to go off on a long diatribe here, I just don't like the results when the government places legislative restrictions on how we build or use web sites or software. I prefer voluntary compliance with internationally tested standards and lots of educational efforts on our part. It can be a slow and frustrating process, but I think that the end result is better when people are convinced to do the right thing rather than forced to.

Regards,
-Kevin Hall