Interesting, They don't think that blind people can use a mouse?
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From: "Peter Altschul" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 12:56 PM
Subject: [VICUG-L] FW: [Webwatch] Blind Americans demand Web access; Target fights back (fwd)
This story appeared on Network World at
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/010508-target.html
Blind Americans demand Web access; Target fights back
Court battle expected to heat up in coming months
By Jon Brodkin, Network World, 01/05/07
Retailer Target's refusal to make its Web site more accessible to the
blind
has fueled a high-profile court battle that is causing many companies to
quietly upgrade their Web sites in the hopes of avoiding negative
publicity
and legal liability.
The case will unfold over the next several months, but a federal judge
has
already dismissed Target's claim that Americans with Disabilities Act
prohibitions against discrimination do not apply to commercial Web
sites.
This ruling, and other advocacy efforts on behalf of the blind, has
caused a
number of "major e-tailers" to upgrade their sites to make them
compatible
with software the blind use to access the Internet, says Paul Rosenfeld,
senior vice president of federal accessibility solutions at the SSB BART
Group in San Francisco, a consulting firm founded by technologists with
disabilities.
These online retailers contacted SSB BART to assist in that upgrade, but
Rosenfeld says he can't identify the companies because they wish to
remain
anonymous.
"This Target case, it's been a wake-up call for e-tailers," Rosenfeld
says.
Before the case, advocacy groups for the blind would often ask companies
to
upgrade their Web sites and not receive immediate results, he says.
Retailers typically don't make those upgrades right away "unless there's
litigious action or some need for risk management," he says.
There are 1.3 million legally blind Americans, and nearly 9 million more
who
are visually impaired, according to the American Foundation for the
Blind.
Click to see: A Web site as a sighted user sees it.
Targeting Target
A class action lawsuit filed by the National Federation of the Blind
(NFB)
accused Target.com of lacking alt-text for many graphics, preventing
blind
customers from browsing products and looking for Target locations.
Moreover, Target.com requires that all transactions be performed with a
mouse, the NFB said, a barrier that prevents blind people from
purchasing
products online. While a blind person can use a keyboard, just as a
sighted
person can type without looking at the keys, a blind person cannot use a
mouse because it requires the ability to see the mouse cursor on the
screen.
Accessible Web design allows the blind to navigate sites using just Tab,
Shift-Tab, and Enter.
The Target lawsuit is unique because most companies, when told by blind
people that their Web sites are inaccessible, are willing to make the
necessary upgrades, says John Pare, spokesman for the National
Federation of
the Blind. They may not make the change instantly, but companies at
least
begin the process of fixing the problems. Legal action is a last resort
for
the NFB, he says.
"We really work to resolve it locally," he says. "The only company,
certainly in the last several years, that has said just plain 'no' is
Target."
Target's refusal surprised the NFB, because the retailer is losing out
on
money blind people are willing to spend, and the lawsuit may damage the
company's public image. "We're just completely shocked," Pare says.
When contacted by Network World, Target reiterated a statement the
company
originally issued in October, which reads as follows: "Target.com is
committed to providing an online experience that is accessible to all of
our
guests. Despite the lawsuit brought forward by the National Federation
of
the Blind (NFB), we have always and will continue to implement new
technologies to our Web site. We are in the process of making online
enhancements that will benefit all of our guests, including those with
disabilities. These enhancements will occur regardless of the outcome of
this lawsuit."
In court, Target argued that its Web site is not a "place of public
accommodation" the way a brick-and-mortar store is, and that the site is
therefore not governed by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). A
U.S.
District Court judge in California rejected the argument, saying that
restricting the ADA's discrimination provisions to physical locations
"would
contradict the plain language of the statute."
More than three years ago, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
argued
that the ADA requires commercial Web sites to be accessible, while
investigating Priceline.com and Ramada.com. The companies agreed to pay
fines totaling $77,500 and implement a variety of upgrades to help the
blind
navigate their Web sites.
Despite that agreement, the Target court ruling was the first to
directly
state that the ADA applies to private Web sites, advocates for the blind
say. The court has not yet addressed the practical question of how to
define
accessibility, Pare says. A court date is scheduled for April to
determine
whether the suit against Target can go forward as a class action.
"This is not going to happen quickly," Pare says.
Tracy Andrews, a 43-year-old resident of Cheshire, Conn., who has been
legally blind since she was a child, says she often encounters
difficulty
when searching the Web but is surprised Target has opted to fight the
lawsuit.
"I think in the long run, if Web sites can make themselves more
accessible
it's going to be to their advantage," Andrews says. "To fight it is only
being a stick in the mud. The tide is moving, you might as well go along
with it."
State and federal government Web sites are already required to be
accessible
to the blind due to the ADA and other laws, says Judy Brewer, director
of
the Web Accessibility Initiative at W3C in Cambridge, the World Wide Web
Consortium, an international standards organization.
Although the legal requirements for private companies are not as clear,
many
commercial Web sites have already made the switch to accessibility.
Amazon.com and Wal-Mart have Web sites that are in good shape, Pare
says.
Organizations can apply to the NFB for a certification demonstrating
that
their site complies with accessibility guidelines. Ten have obtained the
certification, including Merck, Legal Sea Foods, HP, General Electric,
Wells
Fargo and the Social Security Administration.
Merck became certified in April 2005, before the Target lawsuit. An
external
contract to upgrade the site cost about $35,000, and Merck devoted at
least
two employees to the project, says Larry Tattoli, associate director of
Merck.com. The process "wasn't that difficult," he says.
A bigger challenge has been maintaining accessibility as the Web site
grows
and changes, Tattoli says. Whenever a new image is added, a Web site
developer has to add alt-text that can be read to a blind person.
On a positive note, Merck officials found that making the site
accessible to
the blind did not alter the visual presentation, as they had feared.
"It was this feeling that the text would have to be huge, or you
couldn't
have any images on it, it would be text-only pages. It's not true,"
Tattoli
says. "The pages I could show you before it was accessible and after it
was
accessible are exactly the same."
The cost of making a Web site accessible usually equals 5% to 10% of the
cost of Web maintenance, says Preety Kumar, CEO of Deque Systems, a
Reston,
Va., company that helps Web site designers automate the task of
complying
with accessibility standards.
"A very small percentage" of companies have made their sites accessible,
she
says.
"They're overwhelmed, that's what I'm sensing," Kumar says. "There are
companies that are responding to the Target lawsuit, and they're paying
attention because they realize the risks of noncompliance are not
insignificant."
Beyond the blind
Blind people aren't the only ones with disabilities using the Internet.
Deaf
people, for example, can access visual portions of the Web without
assistance but are often out of luck when it comes to audio files or
sound
on video files, even though there are tools Web developers can use to
add
captions.
People with severe motor disabilities can use voice recognition software
to
surf the Web, as paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve did before his death.
If
they still have some ability to use their hands, they can also be helped
by
the same accessibility guidelines designed for the blind. Someone who
can
type but cannot manipulate a mouse can surf Web sites that are fully
accessible with a keyboard.
"If you do it right and you make your Web site accessible to the blind,
you
do cover other [disabled] populations largely," Kumar says.
Among the disabled, Kumar says she thinks blind people are the most
challenged because they need a clean text-to-speech translation in
addition
to a mouse alternative.
People who are deaf and blind would be worse off, obviously, but they
can
use a Braille display, a strip located in front of the computer
keyboard. A
mechanism inside the strip controls small pins that go up and down to
form
Braille letters.
Andrews, the legally blind Connecticut resident, says she's using a
7-year-old version of ZoomText, a program that reads text out loud and
magnifies the screen. Sometimes text is read to her in a nonsensical
order,
particularly when it is arranged in columns instead of paragraph form.
Andrews says her outdated version of ZoomText may be causing problems
but
that poor text-to-speech translation is also often due to the Web sites
themselves.
"Newer Web sites are better than older Web sites," she says. Learning
how to
use the Internet when you can't see is something that takes time, even
if
the technology is up to date, she says.
"It can be a little slow going. Like anything, you get better at it.
It's a
skill you develop," Andrews says.
Web site developers may find it easier to establish accessibility if
they
are building a whole new site, rather than upgrading an old one. That's
what
officials at Legal Sea Foods found when they decided to replace their
Web
site in January 2005 because it had become old and stale, says Ken
Chaisson,
vice president of information technology at the Boston restaurant chain.
Starting from scratch is a "heck of a lot easier" than changing
everything
on an existing Web site, he says. Financially, making the site
accessible to
the blind is worth it for Legal even if just five extra groups of people
come to one of the restaurants, he says.
But only a small number of companies have upgraded their Web sites,
according to some observers. A March 2006 survey found that
three-quarters
of businesses listed in the FTSE 100 Index in London failed to meet
minimum
Web site accessibility requirements set by British laws to end
discrimination against disabled people.
Observations by Brewer of W3C square with the study's findings.
"The majority of sites on the Web are not fully accessible to people
with
disabilities," she says.
Click to see:
Can the blind, and other disabled people, use your Web site?
Here are 10 quick tests to check accessibility:
1 Make sure informational images (like your organization's logo)
have
alternative text. Place the cursor over the image. A box should appear
with
a brief, accurate description.
2 Check decorative images for alternative text. If the image has
no
function other than to look nice, it should not have any alternative
text.
3 "Listen" to audio and video content with the volume turned off.
This
is the situation faced by a deaf person. Make sure your Web site
supplies
written transcripts for all audio content.
4 Make sure forms are accessible. Each item in a form should have
a
prompt text. When you click on the prompt text, a flashing cursor should
appear in the box next to the text.
5 Check that text can be resized. In Internet Explorer go to
View>Font
size>Largest. If the text does not increase in size, your site may be
inaccessible to users with low vision.
6 Check your Web site in the Lynx browser. This is a text-only
browser. If a site makes sense in Lynx, it probably fulfills many
accessibility guidelines.
7 Use your Web site without a mouse. If you can't navigate your
site
using just tab, shift-tab, and enter, then neither can people using only
a
keyboard or voice recognition software.
8 Make sure there is a site map
9 Make sure alternative text associated with links make sense out
of
context. Blind users often jump from one link to the next with the tab
button.
10 Check your Web pages with an automated program, such as WebXACT
or
Wave.
11 Use ASCII text that screen access software can convert to speech
or
Braille.
12 Provide meaningful text labels for hypertext links. Labels like
"click here" aren't good enough.
13 Make sure tables and multi-column text does not prevent screen
access software from rendering pages in an intelligible and useful
manner.
Even sophisticated screen access software has trouble with tables that
contain many columns, such as bus and train schedules.
Source: Webcredible, London
All contents copyright 1995-2007 Network World, Inc.
http://www.networkworld.com
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