My first response after reading this was,
        What a truck load of balderdash!

        Then I thought about it a little and I realized that a
mere truck couldn't haul that much balderdash.

        The beauty of a democracy is that anybody can say just about
anything they want so long as it does not involve threats to
anyone's life or safety.  I could describe how little purple men
are trying to get me to go up with them to the mother ship or
that Elvis sends his regards from beyond the grave and hopefully,
most of you would think I was just nuts or had had a bit too much
Christmas Cheer.  Now here we have this fellow, James L. Gattuso,
who is identified as a research fellow with the conservative
think tank called the Heritage Foundation.

        Strip away the high-fallutin title that sounds like it
required the sending in of at least two dozen box tops from
cigarette cartons or maybe bottles of Mad Dog 2020 and you've got
one man happy because one judge split enough hairs to win one
round of a very big argument.

        One of the things that made the United States unusual in
its beginnings was that our founding fathers wanted a society
that worked for everybody.  Even a quick study of history shows
that some of our founding fathers had a much narrower idea of who
everybody was, but enough intelligent folks caught on to what was
meant to be that we began fixing the big mistakes such as
the disenfranchisement of women and racial or ethnic minorities, etc.
The builders of our republic got some of the details wrong, but
the basic idea was so powerful and so wonderful that it
survives to this very day.

        The ADA needs a tune-up because what we have here is what
one probably should expect from shrewd litigants who desperately
don't like this law and who, for whatever reason, want to figure
out some way to look like they are not out and out breaking it.

        There are all the old musty arguments in this sampler of sloth.

>digital world, the potential damage would be considerable.

 Come on, for crying out loud.  Am I expected to believe that?

>     The Manhattan Institute's Walter Olson warns, for instance, that Web
>design creativity and spontaneity could be stunted, as publishers feel
>constrained to use only officially accepted tools.

        The problem is that most people only use
official/commercial tools and don't have the foggiest idea of
what is going on under the hood.

        But wait!  There's more.

>     Apparently an old-fashioned judge, Judge Seitz even used Latin, citing
>the doctrine of ejusdem generis: "Where general words follow a specific
>enumeration of persons or things, the general words should be limited to
>persons or things similar to those specifically enumerated." Or, as they say
>in pre-school, "one of these things is not like the other."

        And somebody probably is getting paid very handsomely to
attempt to convince me which things are not like which other things.

        Turning off the sarcasm mode, the law should be changed
to make it easier to prevent the sort of sophistry so beautifully
illustrated in Mr. Gattuso's mis-placed jubilation.

        Then there are all the horrible things that will happen
to society if the ADA is applied to information technology.

        To hear Mr. Gattuso, the Earth may be knocked off its
axis and plagues of locusts will strip the land causing 40 years
of starvation.

        I don't know where this got started, but there is this
moronic idea that somehow, when web sites are made accessible, it
immediately denies the vast majority of the public the use of an
appealing and easy-to-use service.  What's all this about
stunting creativity?  To a real technologist, problems like this
get the creative juices flowing and often-times
lead to a better solution for all.  Specifying that non scripting
browsers must be able to use the site or specifying that text
actually be sent as text, etc, should
get a good programmer to thinking and not stunt anything or
anybody.

        Sites that are built right work well for more people than
sites that are built as "best viewed when used with blah blah blah."

        The ADA must by virtue of what it does, stay away from
specific recommendations dealing with technology and lean more
toward a philosophy and mechanisms for solving problems as they
arise.

        Maybe it should simply point to a particular body of
technical knowledge that is arrived at by consensus and is
updated to reflect the state of the art.

        This would be much like safety and health standards in
which the law says we must do this or that and use X or Y as the
specification references.

        If I was King, my law would say,

        "You may do anything you like on your web site, but it
must also provide service to the following groups."

        The groups are named and the current standards are
enumerated.  "How you go about making it happen is your choice,
but it must happen."

        The law also needs to be reasonable with those who truly
are making an effort to do better and can prove that they are
trying.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK
OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Network Operations Group
>     Common sense may seem in short supply in today's litigation-happy
>world, but it got a boost last month from — of all places — Florida, where a
>federal judge tossed out a lawsuit claiming that Southwest Airlines' Web
>site violated the Americans With Disabilities Act. The decision is good news
>for the Internet and for consumers, blocking what likely would have become
>regulation-by-litigation of Web site design.
>     The lawsuit, brought by Access Now, an ADA advocacy group, claimed that
>Southwest violated the Act because its Web site was insufficiently
>accessible to blind persons. Specifically, the plaintiffs faulted Southwest
>for not providing text in a format that could be read by synthesized speech
>technology.
>     What about the fact that the relevant section of the act applies only
>to "places of public accommodation"? No problem, said the plaintiff's
>lawyers: Certainly "place" can't be limited to the narrow confines of the
>physical world. Cyberspace, too, is a place.
>     Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, although the ADA is famous for its
>ambiguity, its text is pretty darn specific on this point. It actually lists
>what it considers a "public accommodation." It includes inns, hotels, motels
>"or other place of lodging." Also restaurants, bars, movie theaters, concert
>halls, auditoriums, bakeries, grocery stores, laundromats, dry cleaners,
>banks and so on. The drafters practically gave specific addresses. And not a
>Web site among them.
>     But the lawyers maintained —presumably with a straight face — that
>Southwest's Web site was covered under the act as a place of "exhibition,
>display and a sales establishment." But the judge, Patricia Seitz of the
>U.S. Southern District of Florida, didn't buy it.
>     Apparently an old-fashioned judge, Judge Seitz even used Latin, citing
>the doctrine of ejusdem generis: "Where general words follow a specific
>enumeration of persons or things, the general words should be limited to
>persons or things similar to those specifically enumerated." Or, as they say
>in pre-school, "one of these things is not like the other."
>     Is this a quirk in the law? A loophole in the ADA that policymakers
>should patch? No. There are good reasons not to drag cyberspace under the
>ADA. Such regulation is likely to impose considerable burdens on Web site
>owners — exactly the wrong prescription for the ailing Internet economy, as
>well as for consumers.
>     ADA advocates say the costs of making sites accessible are minimal. But
>where that's so, companies tend to act voluntarily. After all, they make
>money by helping, not hindering, potential customers.
>     But with requirements ranging from providing transcripts for audio
>files to checking color contrasts, the burden can be substantial, and the
>costs can add up quickly. That could be why the list of sites not meeting
>accessibility standards includes not just many airline sites, but even some
>government sites, such as that of the Commission on Civil Rights.
>     Still, ADA advocates argue that if physical establishments can learn to
>live with the additional costs, cyberspace operations can too. That's too
>complacent a view. Apart from lawsuit-happy trial lawyers, few see the
>current ADA as a model of perfection. If applied to the economically fragile
>digital world, the potential damage would be considerable.
>     The Manhattan Institute's Walter Olson warns, for instance, that Web
>design creativity and spontaneity could be stunted, as publishers feel
>constrained to use only officially accepted tools. Amateur Web sites would
>be winnowed as legal and technical rules limit the art to professionals. (So
>much for "blogs.")
>     What about the First Amendment implications? The Internet is foremost a
>tool of communication — but ADA mandates could lead to regulation of content
>unimaginable for newspapers or magazines. Current guidelines, for instance,
>say that sites should "use the simplest and most straightforward language
>that is possible," raising the prospect of judges sitting in the editor's
>chair.
>     None of this is to say that making the Internet accessible to the
>disabled isn't a worthy goal. It is, and efforts to do so where practical
>are to be applauded. But such efforts must be voluntary; we shouldn't be
>subjecting the Internet to regulators and trial attorneys. Judge Seitz was
>correct: The ADA does not — and should not — apply to cyberspace.
>
>      James L. Gattuso is a research fellow in regulatory policy at the
>Heritage Foundation. http://www.heritage.org
>
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