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From: Joseph O'Connor
Date: Aug 12, 2005 11:12AM

Laura,

That is an incorrect interpretation of the law. All software, whether
purchased or not, must be accessible. Pushing the developer to make a
product accessible should start before the purchase. Unfortunately,
there are many circumstances like yours, where someone in the
organization makes a purchase and the software is implemented before
the access issues are identified. At the college I work at I formed
an Abilities Taskforce, and the first people we invited to the
meeting were reps from the purchasing department. They immediately
added language to the system that makes it impossible for a vendor to
avoid the issue of accessibility.

Joseph O'Connor

Laura Carlson wrote:

> Our web master/systems administrator says that "It would be best if
> the Mailman developers edit the code, otherwise we will be in a
> state of code drift, making it difficult or impossible to upgrade
> later." He also says that "We didn't create the pages, we only
> provide them via a product, hence we are not in violation of any
> [accessibility] policies."