The Nation's Pulse: Don't Disable the Web
Sager, Ryan H.
nl , n I n ~ [np,_,,llu un lLroll I "": a l l i l m~l-by Ryar~ H. Sager Don't Disable the Web Americans with disabilities need access, not diktats. T his August, before the Sydney OlF~npics,...
...You could hardly hang the racist charge on them...
...The issue will only become more complex as the Web continues to increasingly swirl together audio, visual, text, and interactive elements...
...They also said they "should have looked more searchingly at the conditions" under which in their own defense, they had "warned about the dangers of racial pofiling" even before Lee had been indicted...
...Already companies are scrambling to make their sites accessible from cell phones, palm-top computers, and automobile-based personal computers...
...Screen reads have been steadily improved over the years from clumsy devices that stumbled incomprehensibly through HTML code to devices that smoothly navigate well-designed sites...
...In fact, one has already risen to the challenge: Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal...
...Flexibility from both will keep traffic moving...
...For any site engaging in commerce, however, chances are that it will eventually have to comply...
...The Americans With Disabilities Act, which celebrated its tenth anniversao: last July, is already notorious for the amount of litigation it has produced in the offline world...
...The Times may be cracking up...
...Cases such as the Florida lawyer who used a 1z-year-old girl as a front to indiscriminately file lawsuits against 53 local businesses could easily be imitated (and surpassed) on the Internet...
...Also keep in mind that users might "not speak or understand fluently the language in which the document is written...
...Clearly, means must be devised allowing the disabled access to the same information and use of the same tools as anyone else on the Web...
...Will it be accomplished through voluntary standards and market forces...
...Subtitles for video, once an unwieldy thing to program into a video clip, are being automated by software available as shareware...
...it should have taken % closer look at Notra Trulock," the intelligence official who "sounded some of the loudest alarms about Chinese espionage...
...AOL's client software embeds most text inside images, making it difficult to access with a screen reader...
...T his August, before the Sydney OlF~npics, a controversy arose over whether the Games' official Website was accessible to the visually impaired...
...Simple page design software is being improved to allow novice users to test their The American Spectator _9 No v e m b e r 2 o o o 63 pages for accessibility...
...Don't use moving images or blinking text...
...In other words, had he A venerable newspaper cracks up...
...Technology will be the guiding force, but Congress and the courts still have the power to complicate matters...
...been mistreated because he was a Chinese...
...If one 12-year-old can file suits against a pool equipment store, a pawnshop, a liquor store, and fifty other local businesses in the matter of a few months, imagine what a lawyer with a blind man and a Web browser could do in a day...
...Clearly, though, this view takes into account only entities involved in the production of content, such as TV networks and movie studios...
...Although the law was not written with cyberspace in mind, it looks like ADA may be ready to make the jump online...
...In carefully measured on-the-one-hand-thison-the-other-hand-that paragraphs, the New York Times apologized for violating its own terribly high standards...
...online service like AOL can be considered a "public accommodation" as defined under ADA...
...It buried the lovely story about Gore, his dog, and his mother-in-law on page 18...
...Furthermore, scores from the Games were also going to be presented in a format that such readers are unable to handle...
...not to mention whitehouse.gov...
...The problem cannot be brushed aside, as the Internet has become as important to everyday life as the telephone or the television, making it unfathomable that the disabled be left behind...
...Two days later, the Times was at it again...
...Don't rely on color alone" when conveying information, admonishes one of the guidelines...
...The market, it seems, has plenty of built-in incentives to make accessibility attractive to most commercial sites...
...Some, such as Georgia lawyer Elizabeth K. Dormine 5 argue that the act cannot be reasonably applied to the online world...
...Or will judges assume that the wizards who create Websites can easily come up with a technical fix...
...The W3C guidelines, though stringent, are a useful tool for those wishing to make their sites as widely accessible as possible...
...Recently the Internet news service CNET determined, using the Bobby Website (which analyzes pages for their compliance with the W3C guidelines), that approximately 98 percent of currently available sites are inaccessible...
...Try to avoid navigation methods that require a mouse...
...In May 1999, the quasi-official World Wide Web Consortium (or W3C , as it is known) issued guidelines to help Web designers make their sites accessible to users with a variety of disabilities...
...An early adopter in the Microsoft case, Blumenthal's office has already established an ecommerce unit...
...Gore had said his mother-in-law had to pay $1o8 for an arthritis drug that he could buy for his dog for only $37.80...
...stock gains in black and stock losses in red would be unacceptable...
...had called for a full mea culpa...
...regarding the World Wide Web...
...t can only be hoped that the Internet does not become the next goldmine for the lawyers who have so thoroughly exploited ADA in the past...
...Keep things simple...
...Therefore the apology was at least premature, and, considering the solemnity with which both it and the editorial were presented, it was also a little nutty...
...Politically ambitious state attorneys general could wreak havoc of their own...
...But where "we felt short of our standards," the Times intoned, "the blame lies principally with those who directed the coverage," and not with any of its reporters, "who remained persistent and fair-minded in their newsgathering in the face of some fierce attacks...
...Bruce Maguire, who is blind, claimed that some of the site's most important pages, including its opening page and the sports schedules, contained images not accompanied by appropriate text descriptions, making them inaccessible through standard screen readers used to translate pages into speech or Braille...
...Lee had been properly singled out as the prime suspect...
...How do we make the Internet, which will be the central means of communication in this new century, available to all people...
...The situation ended in stalemate as the Olympic committee claimed it couldn't comply and a member of the Human Rights Commission invited Maguire to seek damages after the Olympics ended if the site was not improved...
...So, how would a private Website operator or Web-based business fare under such 62 No v e m b e r 2 o o o " The American Spectator a test of reasonableness...
...The home page of the ADA Information Center fails...
...For a small company throwing up a video of an annual conference, adding accessibility will probably cost well more than the three dollars spent at CVS on videotape...
...Even many sites geared towards the disabled fail...
...nuclear secrets, the Times had driven much of the coverage of the case against Lee...
...It can only be hoped that a modicum of common sense will be observed...
...Luckily, such Websites should be able to avoid the label of"public accommodation...
...All the places listed in the statute have a physical presence," she told the subcommittee, "suggesting that the drafters intended to require access only to physical places...
...Similarly, federal courts have held that cost-benefit analysis can be a factor in determining the reasonableness of accommodations...
...such devices could cause problems for people with photosensitive epilepsy...
...Unlike other civil rights laws, such as those protecting against discrimination on the basis of race or gender, ADA requires only "reasonable" accommodation of those with disabilities...
...While an effort is under way to create volunta D' standards for Web accessibility, it seems inevitable that litigation will soon creep into the picture...
...Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has already issued an opinion that ADA applies to the online world...
...Ever since it first reported that federal investigators believed China was developing its weapons program with the aid of stolen U.S...
...Cleaner and clearer HTML coding benefits everyone...
...Is it, as disabled rights activists have claimed, a matter of a few hours' programming for most sites...
...Many of the coding tricks that help make a Website accessible to a blind or deaf person are applicable to making a site available from the smaller and lower resolution screens of these varied devices...
...So among other things, the Times said, it should have "prepared a full-scale profile of Dr...
...Though new standards are being developed-versions of QuickTime, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Player now accommodate separate tracks for subtitles and audio descriptions-the trouble involved in making content accessible would still be prohibitive to many people...
...by Johr~ Corry Corrections From the Edge Lee was confined...
...The question may well come down to: How difficult is it really to make the Web accessible...
...Wherever the courts come down on whether the Web falls within the scope of ADA, it seems likely that in time it will be held to the same standards as the physical world--even if that requires an act of Congress...
...Charges of "hysterical" reporting and racism hung in the air, and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr...
...An example: The Times put the dubious, and two-week-old, RATS con> mereial story on page one...
...Therein lies the dilemma that will emerge in the next few years...
...At this point it is not a question of if, but how, this will be accomplished...
...But as they primly pointed out I t was the publisher's idea...
...As in the Ol?Tnpic case the issue was screen reader compatibility...
...Signs of strain are showing...
...Or will it be imposed through litigation...
...However, the federal First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston has found that ADA's public accommodation provisions were not limited to physical structures and also included services provided by telephone or mail...
...with all that...
...They know Lee is guilty of something, even if they're not sure what...
...Transcripts of audio data, for those who choose to create them, make such data searchable...
...As it gets better, speech recognition software, already in use to help the disabled navigate their PCs and the Web without key or mouse commands, is bound to make almost all tasks on the Web easier for the blind and those with motor impairment...
...Judy Brewer, director of W3C's accessibility initiative, claimed at the House subcommittee hearing last February that creating such substitutes would involve only "minimal production cost compared to production of the multimedia itself...
...How can the Web be made more accessible without destroying or unduly constraining much of what it's hying to give people access to in the first place...
...The transition from the Web we know today to one much friendlier to the disabled can be either a smooth or a painful ride...
...So far the e-commerce unit has put the squeeze on four online tax-filing services, including H&R Block and Intuit, forcing them to promise changes by next year's tax season...
...If even high-profile sites fail, it is obvious that accessibility can be tricky...
...some users might be cognitively impaired...
...Meanwhile its liberal bias has become so consistent and apparent that, as Charles Krauthammer wrote in the Washington Post, "It would take a mollusk to miss the pattern...
...Lee, which might have humanized him...
...Furthermore, no company wants to turn its back on millions of disabled Americans, most of them potential consumers...
...so do the sites of the U.S...
...To find out why, one need only look at the W3C guidelines themselves (length: 29 pages, printed from the W3C Website...
...Even the most user-friendly programs being developed to allow easy synchronization of text and video still require that a tape be transcribed, which is quite a cumbersome task...
...Every club, church, family, or person with a Website should not be held liable if their page is not universally accessible...
...Unfortunately, in the U.S., the latter scenario is all too likely...
...Nonetheless we still don't know why Lee downloaded all that information, or what he did with the tapes, and as the news editors themselves promised in the last sentence of their apology, "Our coverage of this case is not over...
...Furthermore, though it does not have the force of law, the U.S...
...Should ADA come to be applied online, the central question will then become the courts' interpretation of what amounts to a "reasonable" accommodation on the Web...
...For the time being, it's hard to tell which road we'll be driving...
...it should have paid more attention to the "political context of the Chinese weapons debate, in which Republicans were eager to score points against the White House...
...users might be motor-impaired...
...That such logic will be extended to the Web seems likely, even if Congress would ultimately have to amend ADA...
...lawsuits and harassment from government officials will force operators offthe Web...
...Perhaps the most onerous part of the guidelines, however, requires alternative presentations of video and audio clipsmeaning, in English, written transcripts of all sound clips and spoken descriptions of the action in videos...
...It was the charge it had abetted racism that hurt...
...has only post-poned the suit for a year...
...RYAN H. SAGER is a senior at George A critical question that could still be Washington University and an intern for decided by the AOL case is whether an National Review...
...Somehow this seems unlikely given how few sites meet existing accessibility standards today...
...But then the Justice Department dropped 58 of the 59 charges against him, and a judge released him from prison...
...Department of Justice, the ACLU, and the Hillary Clinton Senate campaign...
...An unctuous Bill Clinton said he "always had reservations" about the case, and White House flack Joe Lockhart carried on about "near hysterical investigative reporting...
...Though this case took place in Australia, it reflects one of the most challenging questions arising today in the U.S...
...Gore does indeed have a dog and a mother-in-law, but all the 64 November 2000 ' The American Spectator...
...Will judges, mindful of the issue's technical complexity, decide that making a site accessible is a substantial task, and thus give operators some leeway...
...In fact, they offer a further benefit that will be enticing to those in the business of ecommerce: Adherence to such guidelines will smooth the transition from PCs to more varied Interact appliances...
...We find," they said in a 1,6oo-word editorial, "that we too quickly accepted the government's theory that espionage was the main reason for Chinese nuclear advances and its view that Dr...
...Best of all, even if you are able to construct your page in a way that will be perfectly acceptable to the newest adaptive devices, still "ensure that pages are accessible even when newer technologies are not supported or turned off...
...Aside from ambitious plaintiffs' lawyers, there is also always the worry of activist government officials...
...The Supreme Court has recently held in a number of high profile cases that allowing disabled workers to perform jobs where their disabilities may put others in danger fails this "reasonableness test...
...Late last year saw the first major suit under ADA against an Internet company when the National Federation of the Blind filed suit against America Online...
...From the Editors--The Times and Wen Ho Lee," it said, and its 1,6o0 words took up almost the whole top half of page two, where it ran next to the Cartier and Tourneau ads, just above Bergdorf Goodman and Salvatore Ferragalno...
...If the news editors would denounce themselves, then the editorial writers would too...
...Actually the Times could live JOHN CORP, Y is The American Spectator's senior corres#ondent...
...Maguire brought his complaint against the Olympic Organizing Committee to Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, which ruled that the site had to be made accessible by the Gaines' opening on September 15...
...Testifying before a House Judiciary subcommittee investigating disabled access to the Web last February, Dorminey argued that only physical establishments were covered under ADA...
...As technology improves, solutions will only get simpler...
...The case was settled this July when AOL agreed to improve accessibili'a: in the next version of its client so,rare, but the settlement...
Vol. 33 • November 2000 • No. 9
