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[FYI] (Fwd) FC: Justice Department crackdown on web site content
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- Subject: [FYI] (Fwd) FC: Justice Department crackdown on web site content
- From: Horns@t-online.de (Axel H. Horns)
- Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 11:02:25 +0100
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------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 14:43:59 -0400
To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: FC: Justice Department crackdown on web site content
Reply-to: declan@well.com
[This is one of the most important stories to come along in a while.
Adam's article is very much worth reading. How will news organizations
-- or any site -- handle government-manded restrictions on multiple
languages on one web page and restrictions on animated graphics? Of
course any reasonable person wants to be as considerate as possible of
folks with disabilities, but this would seem to go much too far.
--Declan]
*********
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 12:08:30 -0400
To: declan@well.com
From: Adam Powell <apowell@freedomforum.org>
Subject: DOJ crackdown on Web site content
--
http://www.freedomforum.org/technology/1999/4/30handicapaccess.asp
New U.S. law requires Web sites to
become 'handicapped accessible'
By Adam Clayton Powell III
World Center
4.30.99
What do you think? Have your say in The Forum.
Webmasters, Uncle Sam
wants you to change your
Web site to make it more
accessible to those who
are blind, deaf and
otherwise disabled. And
for some, it's not a
suggestion: it's the law.
The new rules are
mandated by a
little-known provision,
Section 508 of the
Workforce Investment Act
enacted by Congress last
year.
The new rules will apply
within a few months to all Web sites operated by
government agencies and by
anyone who does any business with the federal
government ^x
and possibly
soon afterward to every Web site posted in the U.S.,
the
government
announced.
Members of the federal Web site commission told
ZDNet
yesterday that for
non-government-related sites in the U.S., the
guidelines
would be voluntary, but
those who do not adopt them could soon face new
federal
rules for all online
publishing.
Under the new law, Web sites will be required to
restructure their content,
design and underlying technologies to allow
"individuals
with disabilities who are
members of the public seeking information or
services from
a Federal
department or agency to have access to and use of
information and data that is
comparable to the access to and use of the
information and
data by such
members of the public who are not individuals with
disabilities."
Exactly what that means will be spelled out by the
government next month,
when the commission established by the U.S.
Architectural
and Transportation
Barriers Compliance Board publishes the new rules
for
online publishing.
Provisions are expected to include a ban on any
audio
without simultaneous
text and restrictions on animated graphics.
One preview of what the barrier board may publish
next
month is contained in
its own notices, which state that, in addition to
conventional html and pdf
versions available online, all online information
must
also be available from the
agency via audio text and TTY, as well as "cassette
tape,
Braille, large print, or
computer disk."
The federal guidelines follow publication in the
Federal
Register last summer of
the barrier board's intention to develop the new
rules.
And in September, the
board announced that a new federal committee had
been
appointed to help draft
the new requirements and that the committee would
begin
meeting the following
month.
Most of the committee members were representatives
of
people with
disabilities, including such groups as the American
Council of the Blind, the
American Foundation for the Blind, Easter Seals, the
National Association of
the Deaf, the National Federation of the Blind and
United
Cerebral Palsy
Association. Also included were three members from
the
computer industry,
representing IBM, Microsoft and NCR.
The announcement also disclosed that the barrier
board
would draft the
guidelines with a "less formal, but certainly no
less
important, ad hoc
committee," whose members were not disclosed.
Members of the committee asserted that the federal
government has power to
regulate the form and content of online information
^x as
opposed to print,
where the government does not have such power ^x
because
the federal
government paid for the development of the Internet.
"The Internet is subject to market forces, but it
didn't
start through market
forces, it was started by the federal government,"
said
Jenifer Simpson, a
committee member and manager of technology
initiatives at
the President's
Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities,
in an
interview with Ziff
Davis. Simpson added that the rights of the disabled
must
prevail over other
considerations.
"This is really a civil rights issue," she said.
And if online publishers decline to adopt the
committee's
new guidelines
voluntarily, the guidelines could become mandatory
under
federal law for all
Web sites, according to Simpson and to Judy Brewer,
another committee
member who is also director of the Web Access
Initiative.
The new law applies to a broad range of Web,
Internet and
electronic storage,
transmission and retrieval hardware and software
technologies, specifically "any
equipment or interconnected system or subsystem of
equipment, that is used
in the automatic acquisition, storage, manipulation,
management, movement,
control, display, switching, interchange,
transmission, or
reception of data or
information."
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, in her memorandum
on the
new law,
included in the definition of covered technologies
"computers (such as
hardware, software, and accessible data such as web
pages), facsimile
machines, copiers, telephones, and other equipment
used
for transmitting,
receiving, using, or storing information."
The attorney general also announced the creation of
a
federal Web site,
www.508.org, accessible only from government
computers, to
help
Webmasters ascertain whether they are in compliance
with
the new law. From
outside of a .gov or .mil domain, users were today
greeted
by a 403 error code,
reading "Forbidden. You don't have permission to
access /
on this server."
Last month, the WAI published its own set of
proposed
guidelines that could be
adopted into federal law.
The first guideline requires Web sites to supply
text
alternatives for all images
and graphics.
"Thus, a text equivalent for an image of an upward
arrow
that links to a table of
contents could be 'Go to table of contents'," the
provision reads.
A second provision bars the use of color to convey
information, because
"people who cannot differentiate between certain
colors
and users with devices
that have non-color or non-visual displays will not
receive the information."
Other requirements prescribe punctuation and
prohibit
using multiple languages
on the same page, because that can hinder
translation by
Braille readers,
discourage the "use (or misuse)" of tables and other
formatting that "makes it
difficult for users with specialized software to
understand the organization of the
page or to navigate through it."
Another provision requires Webmasters to "ensure
that
moving, blinking,
scrolling, or auto-updating objects or pages may be
paused
or stopped" and to
design all pages so they can be operated without a
mouse
or other pointing
device.
"Interaction with a document must not depend on a
particular input device such
as a mouse," reads the start of this provision.
Another Web site lets online publishers test their
sites
using some of the
suggested guidelines that soon may have the force of
federal law behind them.
The Center for Applied Special Technology has posted
free
software it calls
Bobby, illustrated with an image of a jovial waving
policeman. That cheerful logo
doubles as a seal of approval that can be downloaded
and
used by Web sites
that meet Bobby's accessibility guidelines.
Bobby flunked a number of widely used Web sites,
including
the White House,
where the software identified "13 accessibility
problems
that should be fixed in
order to make this page accessible to people with
disabilities." The software
also identified additional "accessibility questions"
regarding which the
Webmaster should "check each item carefully."
Unless those problems were fixed, warned the
software
message, the White
House Web site "will not be approved by Bobby."
Bobby may be waving with his right hand, but in his
left
hand, not visible in the
logo, may be a billy club ^x Section 508.
So, White House, be forewarned: Starting next year,
any
individual anywhere in
the U.S. will be able bring suit under Section 508
against
offending Web sites
operated by a government agency or by anyone who
does
business with the
government.
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