[thelist] Does the Americans with Disabilities, ADA, act pertain to Internet Content?

[Brian W King]

>I believe the ADA says that companies above 15 employees  must follow the
>law's mandates.  I doubt your personal site qualifies.

I think you missed the point on the article.  It states that as the law
currently is written, there is not statute.  There is no law that defines
how websites are to be displayed or coded.  Until one of these cases
actually makes it through the court system, there probably won't be one
either.

I don't believe that it is a given that the ADA guidelines or Title III will
win here.  There are many cases where the guidelines have been rewritten or
simply canned because they were found to be harmful to others or simply too
stringent to be economically feasible.  One example would be in the
Commercial Fire Alarm industry.  The initial regulations were such that
visual fire alarm signals had to be of a specific high intensity strobe at a
specific flash rate.  This new regulation caused many people to have
epileptic seizures and was subsequently reduced/changed to a more reasonable
level.   The audible fire alarms were to be of a decibel rating that was so
high, (112 db at 15 feet in some cases), that it was causing permanent
hearing damage in those with previously normal hearing.   That regulation
was also backed off.

In short, even if the regulation directly addressed the coding and
compliance of web pages, (which it doesn't), it isn't necessarily going to
stand up to a court test.


-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org [mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On
Behalf Of Bill Mason
Sent: Tuesday, October 08, 2002 12:07 AM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: RE: [thelist] Does the Americans with Disabilities, ADA, act
pertain to Internet Content?

At 08:51 PM 10/07/2002, Benjamin wrote:
>I've read the article but didn't see too much mention about where this
>starts and stops in regards to site/ownership size.  It's one thing for the
>government to have to adhere to something like this but having legislation
>mandating that I make my personal site "visible" to a blind person is too
>much (and my grandmother was blind prior to her death).

I believe the ADA says that companies above 15 employees  must follow the
law's mandates.  I doubt your personal site qualifies.

>Especially in this case it seems ridiculous since there are viable
>alternative modes of gaining the same information that are equally viable,
>such as using a telephone and calling the airlines.

Many airlines offer lower Internet-only fares that you would be preventing
the disabled from having in this case.

Bill Mason
Accessible Internet
evolt at accessibleinter.net
http://www.accessibleinter.net/