Should Government Mandate Accessibility On All Sites?

[Garrett]

Well, I think common sense (more users, your site's optimizes as you make it accessible) as well as common decency should mandate accessibility on all sites.

But when those two fail I think the government should step in.

Information (and products and services) must be available to all.

Garrett

[mrbuyout]

You are right Garrett,,Many of us have not thought about it untill there is government intervention.
Since I am just a bit older with the usual sight degradation that goes with it,I had not thought of it
When I had my site designed it was with that in mind
As you point out ,common sense goes a long way.At least we now have some guide lines,Hopefully everyone will use them!!!!

[jScott_Harris]

I can't believe we're calling for government intervention. I'm for making sites accessible, and thats something you should strive for, but if you don't acheive it, I don't think Big Brother should come knocking down your door. The government is big enough, and it doesn't perform what task it already has efficently at all. Let the market dictate itself. If you design a site that's absolutely unaccessible and you lose traffic, you'll take care of it. What's next, are you gonna demand that the government buy you're software and hardware for you as well because you can't afford it and it is the only "fair and compassionate" thing to do?

The smart thing to do is to keep developing the special browsers designed for those who need help.

[lafe]

Not that anything is wrong with making a site accomodating to users wth various disabilities. I think that should be done if possible.

But for the most part, That's STUPID. Who's gonna figure the time span for when a site should be updated? What about those that have no clue about web design at all? Should the stupid be penalized for their stupidity? Or what about the web illiterate that paid someone to do their site, and now can't afford to pay the price to get it upgraded?

Besides, it would never work, cause who's government would or could regulate it. It's the world wide web, not my local government mandated web.

[Webworks7]

I don't think that all sites should be required to be accessible, only those that are funded by tax dollars. By that I mean not just government entities, but any organization that receives public funding in the form of grants, bail-outs, bonding, etc. and companies that do business with the government. As for the private companies, for now we should let the free market and search engines penalize those who don't make accessible sites.

There needs to be a litmus-test for compliance before any more mandates are made. As they exist today, the guidelines are too vague, with much of the compliance determination left up to the designer. Until there is a taxpayer-funded Web site that can evaluate a page without question, the government should not mandate compliance for purely private companies.

[carju1]

Dear Garretts' Boss

Please can you excuse Garrett from work today as his post saying that the government SHOULD legislate about accessibility shows that the pressure of all this work you make him do has fianally cracked him up.

Yours, his loyal readers :)

Garrett you can stop logging on to every pc you can find and voting FOR government intervention it is still 90-10 against

Now for goverment web sites that are paid for by the elected government I don't care if they want them all to have pink text on a green background with a link to a site showing 20 ways to recycle road kill. The government pays for them it can do what it wants. But for the rest of us the government (all governments) can stay the heck out. Let business deceid what it wants to do based on its business sense(i.e money) and morals and and for the majority of private websites let them do what ever they want.

DO you seriously believe that Joe in Arkansas who puts up a page of pictures showing his daughter growing up, whose intended audience is just his mother who moved to Australia gives a fig if a blind person or a deaf person or an illiterate can read his site. NO his intended audiance is his mother. Now if she had a disabillity he would build the site to take that into account but why should the government have the right to tell him "You must put ALT tags in or go to jail"

Where does it stop. OK so the blind, deaf and illiterate can read our sites, but where does it go next. No one in China can read English (OK not true) so all web sites must be in Chinese, or Welsh is an official language in the UK so all websites must be in English and Welsh, or x% of American only speak fluent Spanish so..... (Yeah like Joe in Arkansas is going to translate little Megans school report into Spanish).

The next problem is how to legislate. US passes a law saying what All US sites must be xyz compliant. Is that: all servers physically located on US soil if so Costa Rica gets a whole new off-shore buisness; OR all .com addresses if so little Megans' Grandma in Australia who puts her pictures of Bondi Beach up on geocities.com for Megan to see will stick two fingers up and say yeah try and prosicute me; OR all web sites that enter a US ISP oh boy 2 million new cyber police; OR all US registered firms Welcome to Amazon.com registered in Brazil. Nope other than for government owned sites the whole thing is unworkable as a law. Now as a buisness and moral decission thats a different story but legislating Joe in Arkansas forget it.

Regards
Julian

[mrbuyout]

You know just maybe one of our governments just MIGHT come up with the idea of concise guidelines AND some way to compare our sites to that. God help us if any of them had that much commom sense but there is hope!!!
This mght be the way to to let us judge just what changes would fit our particular needs best.Every site is different and thus there is no one set of rules that would fit all sites
Could one or more of us come up with one?

[rympit]

accesibillity?
what for?can you hear colors, or see sounds?

[ScottNorton]

While the US Government accessibility requirements of Section 508 of the Rehab. Act apply only to the fedeeral government's own sites, there is also some play for all employers affected by the Americans with Disabilities Act, if an employee needs to use a web site as part of his or her job.

"Reasonable accomidation" is the key phrase for the ADA. Still, its probably easier to put <label> tags on your intranet purchasing form than to put ramps on your building.

[Garrett]

Carju1 -- I'm mostly addressing you in this post, but anyone else is welcome to join in.

I'll grant you that personal sites need not be made accessible. We'll compare those sorts of sites to homes. No one need add a wheel chair ramp to their home if there's no one who uses a wheelchair in their circle of family or friends.

But if you make your business site without consideration for the disabled, it's the same thing as putting a sign in your shop window that says "No Blind Allowed," or "No Wheelchairs Allowed." And I think the Government should step in to stop this discrimination.

Your point about legislation is well taken -- it is, after all, the WORLD wide web, not the USA (or your country) wide web. I guess we'd have to look at where the business was primarily located, percentage in the US, that sort of thing.

And how hard is it really to make your site accessible? I'll leave you with a great quote from ScottNorton:

it's probably easier to put <label> tags on your intranet purchasing form than to put ramps on your building.

(Though I think you should put ramps on your building too)

Garrett

ps And that was not me voting so much carju ;) Well, maybe a few extra votes for yes...

[lafe]

Garrett,

UnAccessible = Discrimination, that's one way of looking at it. But guess what? Your argument is still, STUPID!

The government can't even regulate Porn sites let alone what sites are accessible to the disabled. What are they gonna do, mandate that the pics be zoomable for the blind pervs who can't see? I don't think so.

Accessibility is up to the individual and company making the site. If they don't cater to the disabled then that's their loss.

Website discrimination is gonna happen, but that's no reason to make the government step in. If that's the case why stop at the disabled? Might as well go after the rednecks that make racist propaganda sites, or the websites that have security codes blocking out non-password having visitors, or the sites that have extremely too much java script not allowing me to know what's happening on their site, or the chinese site with all the backwards gibberish (no offense) or all the horrendously put together sites that discriminate against those who have taste.

Whatever the reason, it's STUPID and DUMB!

[carju1]

Garrett,

I don't completely disagree with your statement:

But if you make your business site without consideration for the disabled, it's the same thing as putting a sign in your shop window that says "No Blind Allowed," or "No Wheelchairs Allowed."

But I feel that Lafe's way of resolving it:

Accessibility is up to the individual and company making the site. If they don't cater to the disabled then that's their loss.

Although I think his sentance should have "and the disabled's loss" added to the end.

What I really disagree with is the government enforcing it. In fact when I think about it what I really feel is that the accessibility question is the tip of a grwoing iceberg that could sink the WWW. I hate any government legislation about the WWW, I know the completely WildWest days of the mid 90's are gone forever but I would rather have discrimination, porn and racial/religeous sites allowed on the web than have the government interfere and stop the total flow of information that is the WWW.

More information has been shared on the WWW in the last 10 years than in the entire history of mankind prior to then. Whilst I can't do a lot about the more repressive governments blocking the WWW I just don't want the Western governments doing anything that could stop that information flow, and by definition all laws are restrictive.

Regards
Julian

[jScott_Harris]

I think this discussion has coined a new term in which some liberal activist wacko group might pounce on to further an agenda... the term is "Website discrimination". Chalk another one up to the "victims" list. Everyone wants to be a victim these days. Next thing you know, you're going to have a bunch of perfectly healthy white males making 150k a year saying they're discriminated against because they're not eligible for welfare.

Julian makes a good point. Government involvement is restriction. I understand it's an easy task, but it still cost money to implement such measures. It also slows down the development of some technologies, due to the fact that the technology may be ready for everything except accessibility, so further development would be required.

[Garrett]

Long live the liberal activist wackos!

Down with website discrimination!

Garrett

[carju1]

Garrett that won't work....

Most people who are against discrimination and for equal rights would often be labled liberal activist wackos

YET

Most people who are against government regulation controlling freedom of action are often labled liberal activist wackos

Therefore both sides of this debate are liberal activist wackos got any redneck right wing hardliners out there who have an opinion on this :)

Julian

[Jackie]

I believe that government sites that are paid for with tax dollars (including tax dollars contributed by the blind and other variously disabled) should be accessible to as many people as possible. Blind people still have to do their taxes and so forth, and for this reason they should have easy access to all the helpful literature the government offers.

But I also believe that commercial sites should not be required to be accessible by the government. Just enforcing such a thing would be ludicrous. Can you imagine taking someone to court over having an inaccessible baseball card site?

The wonderful thing about the Web is that it's so full of options. If I hit a site that I don't like, or doesn't like my browser, I go somewhere else. I believe it's important to offer the information to everyone regarding how to make their sites accessible. It is an issue that everyone should be aware of. If it's worth the effort, enterepreneurs with the desire to create accessible sites will do so. I really don't think it's worth driving people out of business because their sites are not accessible, however. And that's what it will come down to if accessibility is required, and lawsuits are filed against small entrepreneurs who are barely getting by anyway. Or everyone in countries with accessibility laws will end up hosting their sites in countries without such laws!

Accessibility, in my opinion, should represent yet another option available to people on the Internet, and not a requirement. Unless, of course, it is a site that is paid for with tax dollars.

[ScottNorton]

I can empathise with the government-regulation-fearing folks, but want to keep the focus on a middle ground, where websites cross paths with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

At one extreme, the US Government requires that its own web sites be accessible. That's Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, and everyone here seems to think that's a good thing, as far as I can tell. Then at the other extreme, there are personal sites, which the government has no say over.

But if a web site is needed as part of someone's job, or is needed to access a public accomodation, then the Americans with Disabilities Act may have something to say about it. (The ADA doesn't apply to very small businesses, and it only requires "reasonable accomodation.")

If the only way you can apply for a job with a company is through their web site, then that site needs to be accessible. Similarly, if the only way you can do your job is with a browser, then those pages need to be accessible. If the only way you can check into a hotel is to use a kiosk, that kiosk needs to be accessible. Its no different from not having ramps and not having braille dots in the elevator.

But many times, the browser isn't the only way to do the work. You can mail in your job application, and give the hotel clerk your cash directly. These non-browser alternatives are provide the accessibility required by law.

And who's law applies? If I can't get a job with your company because of accessibility problems, I sue you in the state where your business is. Regardless of whether the inaccessible server is in Tuvalu, Kazakstan, or Washington DC. Although I admit it would be interesting to know how labor law in general applies to someone who telecommutes from Kazakstan .

Originally Posted by carju1

It's the same thing as putting a sign in your shop window that says "No Blind Allowed,"

They usually ignore those signs. ;-)

[vfaulkner]

As a programmer/designer who has a physical disadvantage, I have enjoyed reading this thread!
I think that governments need to regulate themselves(if possible or is that an oxymoron?) or bigger fish like SPAMmers or XXX sites,before going after us small businesses.

------
but on the other side, I also know what it is like to not have access to a resource/want, physical or tech, because of the provider setup.
As I am doing a total site redesign anyway, most issues are being rethought and incorporated.
http://www.websitetips.com/accessibility/ is some great tips/articles for revising a site...

-------
To answer the original question of this thread, I do not think government(s) should regulate, but decency and the Golden Rule: Do unto others... should become more standard.
Also, whose government should have reign?

[vfaulkner]

It would like being told that books could not be sold unless they were in the n number of languages, braille, bold black 20 pt font, & had self turning pages all at the same time.

[SyrenSong]

I think the key phrase here isn't "Should Government Mandate Accessibility", but whether it should "Mandate Accessibility on All Sites".

While I'm all in favor of making as many websites accessible as possible, I can't agree that any government should mandate that all sites should be made accessible.

My personal site might have been put up only for my friends and family. I may not want the search engines to even add my site to their listings, but I may not have the ability (restricted by my ISP) or the knowledge (true newbies putting up their very first websites) needed to stop them. Sites like that shouldn't be mandated accessible.

I'm designing a website for a high-tech company whose only product is a specialty requiring the ability to view and hear in order to use the product. (No, I can't think of a really good example at the moment.) Should such a company be required to have a fully accessible website? No.

Companies that sell audio CDs, may not worry about accessibility for the deaf, because while the deaf may buy cd's for hearing friends, they aren't going to be good customers in the long-haul.The same might be said for an art gallery website regarding the blind.

Any way you look at it, a requirement of complete accessibility for all websites would be foolish and inappropriate for any government to mandate.

And shall we go into the cost involved in any government trying to enforce such an across-the-board mandate? Let's face it. It would be a completely impossible task.

Nope. Governments need to be very careful how they handle any law along these lines. Otherwise, they're setting themselves up trying to enforce laws they just haven't got the budget or manpower to enforce.

Just my 2-cents!
Syren

[TheWebDoctor(tm)]

I'm designing a website for a high-tech company whose only product is a specialty requiring the ability to view and hear in order to use the product. (No, I can't think of a really good example at the moment.) Should such a company be required to have a fully accessible website? No.

Simply because a product user has to have certain faculties to utilize the equipment doesn't mean that the site should not provide access to a potential buyer. You never know who is doing the purchasing.

Example: Photography equipment. Yes, the photographer has to see, but let's examine a scenario.

Let's say that the photographer's wife wants to buy her husband (the photographer) a new camera. She's blind. Should you restrict her ability to purchase her husband a camera? The honest answer is NO.

Example 2: Bicycles. A person who is blind and parapalygic definitely can't ride a bicycle alone.

A blind parapalygic person comes to a web site selling bicycles. That person wants a bicycle that s/he can ride with a partner. They know what they want, but because the designer didn't design the site with accessibility in mind the potential customer leaves. Should the site be accessible? Yes.

Example 3: A student at a medical college. The student is blind.

The college requires