Comments on: NYT on web accessibility suits

By: Walter Olson

Walter Olson — Sat, 04 Nov 2017 20:51:00 +0000

N.B.: I did a separate post highlighting the discussion here of Braille drive-through ATMs.

https://www.overlawyered.com/2017/11/comments-braille-drive-atms/

By: MattS

MattS — Sat, 04 Nov 2017 19:47:35 +0000

In reply to jdgalt.

“Braille on a drive-through ATM will make sense someday”

It makes sense today. There are far more walk up ATMs than drive through ATMs it simply isn’t economical to manufacture separate non-braille control panels for drive-through ATM installations.

” A friend at Moffett Field/NASA Ames reports that the elevator to their air traffic control tower — which serves only controllers — has braille buttons.”

How many air traffic control towers are there vs office buildings and apartment buildings. Since the same models of elevators are used in all three cases, It is simply uneconomical to manufacture separate non-braille control panels for air traffic control tower elevators.

By: jdgalt

jdgalt — Sat, 04 Nov 2017 03:14:49 +0000

Braille on a drive-through ATM will make sense someday, when the blind show up in self-driving cars to use the ATM.

Let me tell you a better one. A friend at Moffett Field/NASA Ames reports that the elevator to their air traffic control tower — which serves only controllers — has braille buttons.

I suppose someday we may have self-flying aircraft, but if so I doubt they’ll need or want human-staffed ATC. Much less ATCs who can’t see. At the rate we’re going, though, the first blind person who files an ADA lawsuit to be hired as an ATC will win, and then we’re all in trouble.

By: MattS

MattS — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 06:42:36 +0000

“gopher, ftp, telnet, smtp, snmp, blah, blah, blah, all the building blocks of what we now call the internet”

And none of those things including the “internet” is the web or World Wide Web, which itself came slightly after and sits on top of the internet..

By: cecil

cecil — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 14:31:33 +0000

BS. Sorry, maybe you were doing lawyer things for navigator 0.x, but I assure you I was doing computer things. And pictures came later. gopher, ftp, telnet, smtp, snmp, blah, blah, blah, all the building blocks of what we now call the internet were at their heart… drum roll please… text. Pure, unadulterated text. And that includes hyper text markup language / html, see, right there in the name.:D

By: MattS

MattS — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 18:50:24 +0000

“In short, put the reasonable back into reasonable accomodations.”

The web is an inherently visual medium. Your definition of reasonable in this context is drastically different than mine.

By: cecil

cecil — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 15:37:48 +0000

@Matts, they aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, from a purely economic perspective, text takes less bandwidth, that’s why _all_ the html tags are text rather than little pictures. 😀 Understand, I am not advocating that everything on the web be properly labeled. Just make sure that the controls are useable and if you are using some fancy script to convert text into a picture of text to amaze the masses, maybe provide a separate and unequal page that is just the text? 😀 Seriously, if it’s a stupid cat video, just label it stupid cat video and move on, I don’t need any more than that to know there’s no interest for me here. But if that t-shirt at target says “i’m with stupid”, then I probably need to know that because I am really sure that my wife would inform me once it arrived. 😀 In short, put the reasonable back into reasonable accomodations.

By: MattS

MattS — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 05:20:53 +0000

” As for the server side, it isn’t the web server, it’s the content… Text is always your friend when trying to be accessible.”

Perhaps, but those without visual impairments (or less severe impairments) prefer having a good bit of graphics. Visual content is a large part of the appeal of the web for the vast majority of users.

By: Emily

Emily — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 00:48:04 +0000

In reply to Bernie. Sure, there are utilities and apps that enable people to use computers and the internet. But without the right structure and content on a website, people using screen readers can still hit roadblocks that prevent them from getting the information they need - hence these lawsuits.

By: cecil

cecil — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 00:43:02 +0000

On the client end a screen reader or magnifier is needed, consider it a monitor replacement in the most extreme cases. NVDA, JAWS, Orcha and the like all “understand” html to some degree and reformat things for understandability. Prime example: a newspaper site that prints in columns just like the “paper” version. My screen reader will read down the columns rather than across the page. As for the server side, it isn’t the web server, it’s the content… Text is always your friend when trying to be accessible. WCAG 2.0 does a pretty good job of identifying problems and I believe they give suggestions for resolving specific issues?
I don’t do web development… I have stood up a lot of IIS servers and patched them as well. But i’m an admin nowadays, I don’t do content generation. But I look at sites and if I have a problem, I try to explain it as best I can and how it could be presented in a way that would work for someone using a screen reader. I also check with a couple versions of jaws and nvda just because sometimes it’s the tool not the site.
I guess the best statement I can make is that I am here, I enjoy the articles, and when I feel the urge/need to comment I can.