WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: No decision from the Appeals court

for

From: Hall, Kevin (K.M.)
Date: Sep 29, 2004 12:37PM

> I've never seen that spelling of Kerb before, I thought that this was some clever web design technique that I didn't know about - not an > irrelevance from the physical world.

Well, you know what they say - America and England are two countries separated by a common ocean... but I don't think it was really off topic in that understanding how the ADA has made a positive impact in some areas may lead some people to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to broadly apply it or similar legislation to web sites. The web does not operate in a vacuum, we should recognize that at some point it interfaces with the real world and understand that there can be some confusion and blurring of ideas where that intersection occurs. In this case the fact that the ADA has led to some real improvements in how buildings and public spaces are created is misleading some into thinking it would have the same positive effect on web sites. (Note that the ADA is not without its detractors for some unintended negative effects in the offline world, but that really is getting off topic)

I think you've nailed the problem with the example of your web site hosted in the U.S., it's simply too hard to pin things down online based on offline geography. I don't think any of us want to see extradition cases or international lawsuits over alt tags or captioning. Best to keep the courts and politicians out of it and leave this to free people choosing to do the right thing. Our job is to convince everyone to do the right thing and to want to build accessible web sites.

Regards,
-Kevin Hall

Also, Americans think anyone with a British accent is quite sophisticated, that's why our actors adopt fake accents to sound more cultured. We're total suckers that way.