Coding for intranets (was RE: [thelist] Color Chooser Review -- c orrection)

Martin Burns martin at easyweb.co.uk
Wed May 29 12:22:07 CDT 2002


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On Wednesday, May 29, 2002, at 05:39  pm, Tom Dell'Aringa wrote:

> This thread could be renamed - "Coding for the disabled in intranets".
> Some of you have brought
> up, again, valid points about the disabled and accessibility. Some of
> you, particularly Martin,
> like to use scare tactics and threaten lawsuits from unknown entities
> in some point in the future.

No scare tactics, just quoting the DoJ.

If you don't care about the legal framework you work in, good luck to
you.

> This is supposed to make the person and/or company who the tactic is
> directed at rethink their
> position. Frankly, it doesn't work. If you called our board of
> directors and tried it they would
> laugh you out the door.

As one who knows that environment, I think I have a fair idea. It
usually takes me about 20 minutes to convince the corporate lawyer,
normally by simply pointing out the statutes and precedents. The lawyer
then usually takes about 5 minutes to get agreement from the senior
management.

You tell them that their junior staff have been knowingly breaching the
legislative environment, haven't consulted the legal people and haven't
reported the fact upwards and received explicit sanction to do so, and
you'll get a more interesting response.

> You could head over to your browser right now, find 50 big businesses
> online operating some kind
> of e-commerce model that does not offer the disabled (blind or deaf or
> anything else) access. Then
> you can get your high powered lawyer and sue them all.

I can find enough businesses of that size who have been quietly
redesigning to avoid those issues, some under threat of lawsuit, some
when they're redesigning anyway, and the corporate lawyer hits them with
accessibility along all the other legal issues.

> That won't change the fact that companies (like where I work) will
> continue to build applications
> just like we are now for a long time. Profit is the motive (right or
> wrong, facts jack.)

Few things hit profit the way lawsuits do. And if I'm not wrong, you
spent how long today figuring out a way to disable a native browser
capability because you didn't like the marching ants. Not sure that's
creating much in the way of shareholder value either.

> And regardless of said laws, which you can quote over and over again,
> they simply aren't always
> follwed.

See above. Just because the companies you work with are either ignorant
or negligent doesn't mean that everyone else is.

> Again, I don't say wrong or right, I'm just stating my experience over
> the past 9 years
> in this industry. Particularly at a $100 million dollar company, and at
> a pure-play Internet
> professional services firm - not working from my basement.

So is it that you don't understand your legal environment, or that you
just don't care to comply with it?

I've just spent a year working with a client who makes UKP1000m economic
profit on UKP10000m sales a year, face to face with the directors of the
sub-businesses, every single one of which has taken legal advice on
accessibility on my recommendation and said "Oh shit, we *need* to do
this". FWIW, all those sub-businesses now make accessibility compliance
an absolute requirement when they're choosing agencies and in their QA
cycle.

Cheers
Martin
_______________________________________________
email: martin at easyweb.co.uk             PGP ID:	0xA835CCCB
	martin at members.evolt.org      snailmail:	30 Shandon Place
   tel:	+44 (0)774 063 9985				Edinburgh,
   url:	http://www.easyweb.co.uk			Scotland
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