ADA Web Compliance

Web accessibility guidelines largely revolve around making content accessible to devices that assisst the visually impaired.

Perhaps the greatest challenge in web design is "cross-platform compatibility," creating a web site that will display correctly despite differences in computers, operating systems, screen resolutions and browser versions. One important, but often overlooked, cross-platform issue is compatibility with assistive devices used by people with disabilities. The law is evolving but the trend is clear: If you run a commercial web site that is not accessible to disabled users, you might be sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Potential lawsuit or not, "accessibility," like "cross-platform compatibility," should be a fundamental goal of all web designers.

Legal Overview -- What is a "public accommodation?"

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities "in the full and equal enjoyment of public accommodations." But the question is, does a website constitute a "public accommodation?"
In one of the few precedent-setting cases so far, Access Now, Inc. v Southwest Airlines, the appellate court said no. Access Now sued Southwest Airlines, claiming its website was not accessible to the vision impaired. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2004 in favor of the airlines, saying Congress clearly defined places "of public accommodation" in the ADA -- and did not include the Internet. The decision said unless there was a "nexus" between a physically definable place and a website, ADA's title III did not apply.
That same year, however, Ramada.com and Priceline.com paid the State of New York $40,000 and $37,000, respectively, in a settlement to make their websites more accessible. And in 2008, Target paid more than $6 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought against the retail company by the National Federation for the Blind on behalf of vision-impaired people who could not access target.com.

The Government Standards -- section 508

On August 7, 1998, President Clinton signed into law the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998, which covers access to federally funded programs and services. According to the U.S. Access Board, the law strengthens section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act to cover access to electronic and information technology provided by the Federal government and its contractors. In 2000, the government issued standards based on the Section 508 amendments. These standards basically mirror the guidelines adopted by the Worldwide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG) in 1999.

The W3C Guidelines

The W3C first published its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines in May 1999. WCAG 2.0, which applies to more advanced web technologies, was published in December 2008. According to the W3C, WCAG 2.0 has 12 guidelines that are organized under four principles as follows:

Perceivable:
Provide text alternatives for non-text content.
Provide captions and alternatives for audio and video content.
Make content adaptable; and make it available to assistive technologies.
Use sufficient contrast to make things easy to see and hear.
Operable:
Make all functionality keyboard accessible.
Give users enough time to read and use content.
Do not use content that causes seizures.
Help users navigate and find content.
Understandable:
Make text readable and understandable.
Make content appear and operate in predictable ways.
Help users avoid and correct mistakes.
Robust:
Maximize compatibility with current and future technologies.

Current Best Practices

The W3C has an extensive quick reference that details strategies for bringing your website into WCAG2.0 compliance. Likewise, the federal government has published standards for its agencies and contractors to bring its websites into section 508 compliance. The National Federation for the Blind has a program to review and certify websites as "nonvisually accessible" To request an NFB review, fill out the form at http://secure.nfb.org/nfbnva/public/iafrm.aspx.

Conclusion

At the root of all these guidelines is the idea that assistive web devices read text and convert it into voice or Braille. Any facet of a web presentation that is not text-based, such as images, video, audio recordings and other multimedia, will likely be inaccessible to these devices. Therefore, web developers at the very least should provide text-based alternatives to this content, via "alt" tags in images, captions and headers in tables, and extensive captioning or text-based transcripts of audio and video content.
Navigation bars, especially those with drop-down sub-navigation, are a particular thorny because they are fundamental to a website's design and functionality, yet offer many potential trap-doors to accessibility. One common technique is to build the navigation as a text-friendly nested unordered lists, then convert it into visually appealing site navigation via CSS. An excellent how-to article on this technique by designers Patrick Griffiths and Dan Webb can be found at http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dropdowns/
The W3C concedes that even websites that meet their highest level of conformity will not be accessible to all disabled individuals, particularly those with cognitive language and learning disorders. As web technologies evolve, creating new challenges and solutions, they encourage web authors to keep up with current best practices.

References

• ADA Title III and the Internet: Technology and Civil Rights; Blanck, Peter David; Sandler, Leonard A," 24 Mental & Physical Disability L. Rep. 855 (2000)
• JURIST: University of Pittsburg School of Law
• "Liability Under the Americans with Disabilities Act for Private Web Site Operators ", Evgenia Fkiaras,Shidler Journal of Law and Technology,
• Disability Rights Advocates
• U.S. Access Board

Resources

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview, W3C, 2008
• WCAG2 At a Glance, W3C
• How to Meet WCAG 2.0, W3C, 2008,
• Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board, 36 CFR Part 1194, Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards; Final Rule" Federal Register / Vol. 65, No. 246 / Thursday, December 21, 2000 / Rules and Regulations
• NFB Nonvisual Accessibility Web Certification