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Nov. 4, 2003 --
Ten national disability rights groups are filing a friend-of-the-court brief today in Miami urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to ensure that the World Wide Web is accessible to persons with disabilities.
Last October U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Seitz in Miami, Florida ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act does not apply to the on-line services of Southwest Airlines.
"To expand the ADA to cover 'virtual' spaces would be to create new rights without well-defined standards," wrote Judge Seitz in her ruling.
The groups filing the brief are asking the three-judge appellate panel to overrule the Seitz ruling. Websites can be made accessible with very little expense and without compromising creative design, say the groups in their brief. "Making the Web accessible to people with disabilities is not difficult, and includes such things as designing and generating web pages so that information is available to a wide range of people, including those who may be unable to hear audible content; who may be unable to use a mouse because of a physical impairment; or who access the Web using software that reads the content of a web page out loud to persons who cannot see the screen content."
The case, Access Now v. Southwest Airlines., will be argued in the Court of Appeals on November 6 in Miami.
The Americans with Disabilities Act does cover the Internet, says the National Council on Disability. Read NCD Report.
Fewer than half of federal and state websites meet World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards on web access. Read Taubman Center report
W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
EXPERTS IN web access:
The Georgia Institute of Technology's Center for Assistive Technology & Environmental Access formed the
Information Technology Technical Assistance & Training Center
to promote the development of accessible electronic & information technology. Reach them at 1-866-948-8282 (Voice/TTY) or by email at webmaster@ittatc.org.
Judy Brewer
Brewer's group develops web guidelines, conducts education and outreach on
Web-accessibility solutions.
Kate Vanderheiden
Pam Gregory
Learn how Georgia Tech's Center for Rehabilitation Technology's assistivetech.net site was made accessible at http://www.assistivetech.net/about/accessibility.cfm
Judith M. Dixon, Ph.D., Consumer Relations Officer for the National Library Service for the Blind
and Physically Handicapped has written "Levelling The Road Ahead," a set of "Guidelines For The Creation Of WWW Pages Accessible To Blind And Visually Handicapped Users" -- online at http://www.rit.edu/~easi/itd/itdv02n4/article6.html
A rather comprehensive set of links for accessible website authoring can be found at http://www.makoa.org/web-desi.htm
All of Camera Obscura's index of academic and scholarly resources are either easily navigatable with speech or have been extensively re-indexed so that the information they contain is easily and immediately accessible via speech-synthesis and/or text-based access. This document also contains speech-friendly submission forms for many standard reference works, as well as telephone and address directories and resources which are easily navigated using speech-synthesis and a text-based browser.
"Designing a More
Usable World for All," from the Trace Center
http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/eitaac_final_rpt/EITAAC_final_report.htm
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Fact Sheet for "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0"
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Web Content Accessibility Guideline Checkpoints
Story about new guidelines from The Associated Press.
The Digital Divide and People with Disabilities
Quick tips on making websites accessible from the Web Access Initiative
Director of the World Wide Web Consortium
Web Access Initiative
617-253-5884
Trace Research and Development Center
at the University of Wisconsin/Madison
Disabilities Issues Task Force
Federal Communications Commission
202/418-2498 or 202/418-1169 (TTY)
Email: pgregory@fcc.gov
OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST:
The following sites contain information that may be of interest. Please bear in mind that the information at these sites is not controlled by the Center for An Accessible society. Links to these sites do not imply that the Center supports either the organizations or the views presented.
One of the best overviews of the issue of web access we've found is the article "Locking Out the Disabled," from PC World magazine's September, 2000 issue. Lots of good links, too.
"Advocates of People With Disabilities Take Online Stores to Task" from the Jan. 1. New York Times
Links