A few comments on the article:
1. Window Eyes is not a Microsoft product.

2. This idea has been floating for quite some time, implementation
will cause an uproar in the web world because most web designers have
no idea about web accessibility (as many of us know when we review
various sites with CAPTCHAS and unlabelled graphics).

3. Some uniformity of accessibility needs among operating systems may
become necessary because what is accessible with Apple products may
not be with Microsoft products or Google products. Some definition of
web accessibility must include terms and guidelines for all of the
various interface products people with disabilities use.

4. Interesting that Adobe products are mentioned here given the
rampant use of Flash on the web; Flash itself may be the biggest
offender regarding accessibility.

5. It should not matter whether any organization gets Federal or state
government subsidy; anyone doing business on the web including those
companies using the web for their employees should be subject to
enforcement of accessibility.

6. Most recently, I have encountered a number of telecommuting jobs
using web interfaces that are not accessible. I guess they do not
realize that one large captive audience for their job openings are
people who are blind or visually impaired. Maybe DOJ enforcement might
also open jobs for us.

Steve Hoad

On 4/8/13, ted chittenden <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi to all.
>
> I think the below link and article (I am providing both) are very much
> within the scope of this list.
> --
> Ted Chittenden
>
> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
>
> http://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/doj-may-apply-ada-accessibility-guidelines-to-websites/
>
> U.S. Department of Justice updates to the Americans With Disabilities Act
> could broaden guidelines on Website accessibility for the disabled.
>  As vendors such as Adobe look to make Websites and documents like PDFs
> accessible for people with disabilities, the tech industry and disabled
> users await more clarity on accessibility laws.
>  The Justice Department may update the 1990 American With Disabilities Act
> (ADA) to outline how state and local government Websites can make "services,
> programs or activities" accessible to people with disabilities, according to
> DOJ guidance at Reginfo.gov. A notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) is
> scheduled for July 2013.
>  In December 2013, the DOJ may also address accessibility of public
> Websites. These laws could broaden the degree to which the ADA applies to
> online shopping Websites, according to Andrew Kirkpatrick, Adobe's group
> product manager for accessibility and newly named co-chair of the Web
> Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG), an organization that
> aims for international standards on accessibility for the disabled.
>  "The Department of Justice has indicated they will be releasing rules that
> will apply the Americans With Disabilities Act to the public commercial
> Web," Kirkpatrick told eWEEK.
>
>
> The DOJ plans to "propose the scope of the obligation to provide
> accessibility when persons with disabilities attempt to access Websites of
> public accommodations, as well as propose the technical standards necessary
> to comply with the ADA," the DOJ agenda at Reginfo.gov stated.
>
>
> Requiring online shopping sites to be accessible could bring benefits to the
> economy, according to the DOJ guidance.
>  "The Department believes that revising its title III rule to clarify the
> obligations of public accommodations to provide accessible Websites will
> significantly increase the opportunities of individuals with disabilities to
> access the variety of goods and services public accommodations offer on the
> Web, while increasing the number of customers that access the Websites to
> procure the goods and service offered by these public accommodations," the
> DOJ's Reginfo.gov document stated.
>  A ruling by the DOJ may require Websites to incorporate spoken descriptions
> of photos and text boxes that aid the blind and captions for the hearing
> impaired, Jared Smith, associate director of nonprofit WebAIM, told The Wall
> Street Journal. WebAIM provides training for people with disabilities.
>  In addition, standards governing federal government Website accessibility
> are listed under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. The law applies to
> Web pages, applications and file attachments, according to the government's
> Section 508 page.
>  "For people that are blind, click here doesn't work," Terry Weaver, a
> consultant on IT accessibility, told eWEEK. When she was director of IT
> accessibility for the U.S. General Services Administration, Weaver had a
> leading role in implementing Section 508, which took effect in 2001.
>  Access Board, an agency created by the ADA, has been revising the Section
> 508 standards.
>  "There's a lot of work to do to make sure we're providing clear guidance to
> developers out there so they can address accessibility in the most
> straightforward, simple way while being effective because it's critical for
> people to be able to get access to this information," Kirkpatrick said.
>  "The industry—Web developers, the government, etc., are thinking beyond the
> current 508," said Kirkpatrick. "It's a good set of rules. There's very
> little within the current set of 508 rules that will be thrown out. WCAG
> will add a few things to that."
>  WCAG is part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which develops
> protocols for the Web.
>  The WCAG 2.0 guidelines were developed in 2008.
>  Accessibility tools such as screen readers allow the visually impaired to
> read text. Popular screen-reading applications include Freedom Scientific's
> Jaws and Microsoft's Window-Eyes.  Alt Text tags built in to HTML code for
> graphics also enable screen readers to describe graphics.
>  "As long as the author has provided alternative text, the end user can have
> that information read by the assistive technology," Kirkpatrick said.
>  Adobe has integrated accessibility features into its Reader software to
> enable the visually impaired to access content, and documents in Adobe
> Acrobat can be reflowed as one page to aid people with disabilities to read
> content in logical order, Kirkpatrick noted.
>  "When people don't know how to make PDFs accessible, they're basically a
> black hole for people with disabilities," said Terry Weaver, former U.S.
> General Services Administration director of IT accessibility and currently a
> consultant to companies in this area.
>  Drop-down boxes in documents such as tax or health insurance forms are
> particularly problematic for people with disabilities, Weaver said.
>  In addition, to drop-down boxes, developers of Web documents or PDFs need
> to avoid color-coded instructions, Weaver advised.
>  "Asking people to fill in the red items won't mean anything to them,"
> Weaver said. "You have to have alternative means of identifying the
> fields."
>
>
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-- 
posting from Emma's Family Farm,
 Windsor Maine;
 Steve Hoad
Find us at http://www.emmasfamilyfarm.com


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