This has the potential to destroy online commerce in the US, and severely damage one area where mom n' pop stores can still thrive in America.<p>Amazon and other giant retailers could still survive, even if they where made to comply with all of these requests (although it would slow innovation considerably). Small online stores couldn't afford it and would simply shut down. This is bad for everyone.<p>This reminds me of what happened in Julian, CA - a small mountain town. An overzealous lawyer decided to start suing everyone with steps into their tiny bookstores and coffee shops as a means to extort money out of them. Several just shut down.<p><a href="http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/news_1n29pinnock.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060729/news_1n29pinnoc...</a>
The intent of this is to help people access web content and applications, but it hasn't worked very well in the past, and it won't work very well now, because "accessibility" is very hard to define in concrete terms that a programmer can work with. Most organizations cheat and limit the definition to "can be read by a screen reader" and perhaps "can be navigated with a keyboard." Few if any address other accessibility problems, because it's just too damn hard to test for them all. (Reading comprehension, for example.)<p>A much better approach IMHO is to encourage companies to create or open their APIs, and to encourage those who need better accessibility or their advocates to create alternate interfaces to their services. Think of it like a "marketplace of user interfaces".<p>Perhaps instead of passing a law to force existing UI's to change, the government should work with private industry to encourage open APIs.
This rubs me wrong. It would be impossible for small businesses operating websites to comply with these directives unless they're made really simple to implement, which I doubt is realistic.<p>My father was blind for 30 years until he died but never tried to impose on society in any way in that period - I can't imagine him ever agreeing in the slightest with the proponents of these ideas.
This applies to online shopping, but many ADA policies will end up affecting startups. Just an example, think of a new AirBNB competitor: they facilitate reservations like a travel agency or hotel lobby, businesses that are subject to ADA regulations.<p>Of course, ADA takes a little additional time and care (not much, but hey, if you're agile and running lean, your MVP can't let regulations get in the way, right?) The government wants to regulate my site, but they just don't get it. ADA is the result of a dying industry that don't apply to me because I'm disrupting. DISRUPTING!
"That could mean websites will be required to include spoken descriptions of photos and text boxes for the blind, as well as captions and transcriptions of multimedia features for the deaf"<p>"Mr. Smith also advises companies to ensure that people with motor disabilities can navigate websites without the use of a mouse"<p>As if I needed more reasons to not host my sites in the US.
In an interesting side note, the whole situation is getting worse in mobile-land. On iOS the accessibility framework (which allows devs to label UI elements for screenreaders, among other features) has been almost entirely co-opted for use in automated testing.<p>Lacking a real way to trigger UI elements programmatically testing frameworks have almost universally fallen back on hijacking the accessibility features of the OS to do its work.<p>This makes me very concerned for <i>actual</i> app accessibility, since not only are we failing to implement accessible features (Apple's defaults are quite good, though imperfect) but we're actively breaking it instead.
From the article:<p>"The U.S. Department of Justice is expected to issue new regulations on website accessibility later this year that could take a broad view of the ADA's jurisdiction over websites. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.<p>"That could mean websites will be required to include spoken descriptions of photos and text boxes for the blind, as well as captions and transcriptions of multimedia features for the deaf, said Jared Smith, associate director of WebAIM, a nonprofit group that trains and evaluates companies on Web accessibility.<p>"Mr. Smith also advises companies to ensure that people with motor disabilities can navigate websites without the use of a mouse, and to use plain language and a strong design to aid people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities."
If websites want their business they will use the alt and title tag appropriately, I could be in the minority thinking we all ready have too many laws.
Cherry-picking the article:<p>> .... and to use plain language and a strong design to aid people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities....<p>How is this measured? This is the most disconcerting part of the article to me.<p>Taking it to an extreme, is Amazon liable when someone with cognitive impairments accidentally buys $10,000 of stuff with one-click shopping for failure to understand the concept?<p>Is ebay liable for inadequately explaining the concept of a bid at the level of someone with a 70 IQ?
What about a marketplace for a solution to these problems?
If I build a website I can't tell how disabled friendly it is, the best I can do is follow practises I find on some accessibility blog and maybe test it in a screenreader.<p>It would be a value add service to have a disabled person test their use of my site for various tasks and give me honest feedback.
While I support the general cause of increased accessibility, I have a philosophical problem with "perfect or none at all" legislation. When the laws are passed, they are passed expecting lots of perfect making everyone shiny-happy, but they often get a lot of "none at all" with a side of frustrated resentment instead.