The Wall Street Journal
June 20, 2001
Tech Center
Federal Agencies Risk Violation
Of Web-Access Law for Disabled
By TED BRIDIS and GLENN R. SIMPSON
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- Even as the federal government is overhauling all its Web
sites to meet the requirements of a new law that takes effect Thursday,
officials
acknowledge that few federal agencies fully comply with the new
requirements.
The law was aimed at ensuring people with disabilities can access such
sites without difficulty.
The Justice Department says tens of thousands of federal Web pages --
even after Thursday -- might be in violation of the law, which was lauded
by supporters
as one of the most significant civil-rights milestones since the
Americans with Disabilities Act.
The law spells out, for example, how government Web sites must work with
software tools used by blind or deaf people and how computer keyboards
must accommodate
people with limited arm movement. An agency that fails to comply can be
sued by its disabled employees or by disabled consumers unable to use its
services.
"They're not going to be compliant," predicted Michael Weider, chief
executive at Watchfire Corp., which sells software to check whether a Web
site meets
the requirements. "They're going to start to get sued."
In a related development, a report being released later this week by an
independent federal agency on disability issues faults the Bush
administration for
failing to accommodate disabled users of technology.
Addressing a Digital Divide
Additional reforms suggested by National Council on Disability:
Require all federal documents to be available in machine-readable formats
Require states to comply with federal Internet access laws for disabled
Ensure federal grant conditions include Internet accessibility for
disabled
Justice Department should issue regulations for enforcing Internet access
laws
FCC should issue rules on disabled access to wireless media
EEOC should make clear that lack of Web access has "high evidentiary
value" in discrimination suits by disabled federal employees
Source: National Council on Disability
The National Council on Disability concluded that the government has "no
general policy favoring or supporting accessibility" through the Internet
and other
information technologies. It will ask Mr. Bush to appoint a national
commission and hold a White House summit to address the government's
efforts to become
more accessible.
The U.S. government, which is the world's single largest consumer of
information technology, is reconsidering all future purchases of
computers and software
to ensure that people with disabilities can use them without difficulty
under the new requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of
1998.
The new mandates of Section 508 are expected to cost $1 billion more each
year than the $38 billion the government spends annually on technology.
The law doesn't require corporations to manufacture computers or software
that meet the new requirements, but it prevents the government -- except
in limited
circumstances -- from buying products that don't. Officials at leading
technology companies, including
Microsoft
Corp. and
Compaq Computer
Corp., maintained Tuesday that they don't believe the law will prevent
federal purchases of their products.
Users of Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system, for example, can
magnify parts of the computer screen or set it to flash in lieu of the
computer sounding
audible tones. Compaq laptops generally can be operated with one hand,
and many of the plugs on its desktop computers are located on a front
panel.
But, "a lot of companies still are not prepared," says Harris Miller,
head of the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group.
"A lot of
companies have either ignored it or been in some kind of denial. They're
going to have to make some major changes to their products in a hurry."
Write to Ted Bridis at
[log in to unmask]
and Glenn R. Simpson at
[log in to unmask]
VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask] In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html
|