The Web Struggles with Calls for Universal Design for the Disabled
When the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990, it was met with much enthusiasm from those the law was designed to enable. However, it also was met with criticism from businesses and even churches arguing that being required by law to meet the new accessibility requirements would be “too costly“ and even “disastrous.”
As business shifts from the brick and mortar stores of old to the Internet of tomorrow, this fight is back in the news. In the past, building a concrete ramp alongside your stairs may have made a government building or retail location compliant with the ADA. Regarding online compliance, the task is not only potentially costlier but also unclear.
Accommodating those with speech, sight, hearing, and other difficulties presents a new set of challenges that many companies are simply not rushing to make. By its very nature, the computer is designed to make shopping easier, but those with any of the aforementioned limitations often find that using computers, tablets, and smartphones is far more difficult than visiting physical locations.
eBay was recently sued by a deaf woman from Nevada who faced difficulty selling her wares on the site due to an inability to follow “eBay's verification system, which requires sellers to retrieve and submit a password from a telephone call.” CNN recently spoke with attorney William D. Goren who points out both the ADA’s importance and its limitations:
The ADA was signed in 1990. The Internet didn't really start going until the 1990s… This is a topic we're going to have to be watching. This is not going away.
In 2010 Netflix, facing its own discrimination lawsuit related to failing to accommodate those with hearing disabilities, has agreed to make 100 percent of their movies captioned by 2014.
A Federal Communications Commission report shows that “In the United States, people classified as 'disabled' are accessing the World Wide Web 23 percent less than the rest of the population.” It is hard to attribute this fact to anything other than the absence of a law requiring “web only” companies to make their sites accessible to the disabled. CNN details this discrepancy by stating:
Other courts have opined that ADA regulations should obviously be extended to Web companies, since the widespread popularity of Web commerce didn't exist when the law was written. It all makes for a confusing jumble of opinions that legal experts say needs to be clarified.
In conjunction with the aforementioned FCC report, the Department of Education points out that while “separate accessibility software and assistive devices” do exist to enable those with disabilities, it comes at their own “economic burden”—something the disabled were not saddled with in the past.
