[thelist] US Judge rules that ADA applies to websites

[alan herrell - the head lemur]

> While I agree largely with the spirit of your email, you have taken a
> large industry and ignored all motivators except increasing sales.
> This might not even be the largest motivator, in reality. Web
> applications offer automation, which have to do with *reducing costs*
> not necessarily increasing revenue.

Which I covered here:

> or getting them to save money by 
> producing and generation White papers, data sheets, FAQ's, and any other 
> materials to turn lookers into buyers, or to inform visitors that your 
> products and services are either a good fit, shorting the sales cycle, 
> or providing information sufficient to have visitors to look elsewhere 
> to find products and services that are a better fit, thereby saving the 
> company money by not chasing down leads that suck time, energy and money 

also anytime you reduce costs, you increase profitability on the revenue 
you do generate.

Regardless of what technology comes down the pipe, a *website* does one 
of two things, makes money or saves money.

However, Increasing productivity of employees by disregarding 
accessibility is splitting hairs as you can say it is an intranet 
application and thus fails the *website* test.

It also fails the discussion test, as I doubt the applications you 
mention although accessed through a browser, are *public*.

Can you also be absolutely sure that your client  has not hired somebody 
with a challenge, under the anti-discrimination and ADA statutes? 
Putting you square in the cross hairs.

as for the statement
> The productivity gain is much less, and my bill rate is the same. It's
>> my issue, because I have to justify the extra hours to the client.

As the professional here, I would think that they would be presented to 
the client as part of the process, and the issues relating to what you 
are providing are fully covered.

Yes, the lawsuit deal is real: Just off the top of my head:
Joint and Several Liability, Bad Faith, Due Diligence Failures, my 
personal favorite *Vicarious Liability*, etc.

Most of those are negated by Work for Hire agreements.
However the sharks circle when you 'license' application bits while 
retaining ownership/copyright, or the deep water is when you have an 
equity stake in a company.

The good news is that this is currently a subject for discussion, and 
not yet something we need to hire more lawyers for.
It is far better to discuss this on a list rather than in a room that 
starts with the announcement "All Rise".....

Also, there is a growing segment of the development community that is 
starting application creation with accessibility as one of the primary 
results, rather than an afterthought.


-- 
alan herrell - the head lemur
raving lunacy
http://theheadlemur.typepad.com