[gui-talk] ] Blind Americans demand Web access; Target fights back (fwd)

[Peter Donahue]

Good afternoon everyone,

    I read this story with mixed emotions as for some time I have been
trying to urge our national office to fix a few accessibility issues on both
the NFB Web Site, and on the NCBYS Web Portal. Whenever audio or video
content is posted to our Web site I would hope that more effort would be
made to include an alternative text transcript for the deaf-blind. Many
audio presentations such as the NFB Banquet Speeches and the 2006
Presidential Report all ready have an audio and a text version allowing site
visitors to either read, or listen to these presentations. I would hope that
this could be done for our other audio and video presentations such as the
Straight Talk About Vision Loss With Dr. Z Video Series. These are excellent
by the way, and I want to see them made available to deaf-blind individuals
as a text transcript.

    There is another problem I, and several others have tried to bring to
the attention of the NFB Jernigan Institute concerning two of the interviews
in the Blind STEM Professionals Area of the National Center for Blind Youth
in Science, (NCBYS)  Web Portal. There are interviews of Dr. Abraham Nemeth,
and John Miller, President of our Science and Engineering Division. The
Nemeth Interview has biographical information available in text, but the
actual interview of Dr. Nemeth is an interesting animal. One can read the
questions he was asked that are in text format, but his answers are given
audibly. The deaf-blind can read the questions put to him and John Miller,
but they can't hear their answers. Any deaf-blind person who wants to learn
about John Miller's life and career is up the creek as there is no text
transcript or biographical information they can read in a form they can
access.

    I realize that fixing some of these accessibility issues is a
time-consuming business, and the staff of our national center often have
full plates and have higher priorities. I've suggested to several
individuals that those of us with time on our hands could assist with fixing
this, and help our Web team in other ways such as creating electronic text
files of material not currently available in that form to be included on our
Web sites.  I'm glad we're taking on Target, and that this case is causing a
ripple effect by raising awareness with other retailers and companies of the
need to ensure that their Web sites can be accessed by blind visitors. I
would hate to see the problems I described above jeopardize our credibility
as a champion of Web accessibility. Here's hoping these problems can be
fixed in the coming months.

Peter Donahue



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Andrews" <dandrews at visi.com>
To: <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>; <blindtlk at nfbnet.org>; <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>;
<gui-talk at nfbnet.org>; <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>; <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>;
<promotion-technology at nfbnet.org>; <nfb-science at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 12:33 PM
Subject: [Nfb-science] Blind Americans demand Web access;Target fights back
(fwd)



>
>This story appeared on Network World at
>http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/010508-target.html
>
>Blind Americans demand Web access; Target fights back
>Court battle expected to heat up in coming months
>By Jon Brodkin, Network World, 01/05/07
>Retailer Target's refusal to make its Web site more accessible to the
>blind
>has fueled a high-profile court battle that is causing many companies to
>quietly upgrade their Web sites in the hopes of avoiding negative
>publicity
>and legal liability.
>The case will unfold over the next several months, but a federal judge
>has
>already dismissed Target's claim that Americans with Disabilities Act
>prohibitions against discrimination do not apply to commercial Web
>sites.
>This ruling, and other advocacy efforts on behalf of the blind, has
>caused a
>number of "major e-tailers" to upgrade their sites to make them
>compatible
>with software the blind use to access the Internet, says Paul Rosenfeld,
>senior vice president of federal accessibility solutions at the SSB BART
>Group in San Francisco, a consulting firm founded by technologists with
>disabilities.
>These online retailers contacted SSB BART to assist in that upgrade, but
>Rosenfeld says he can't identify the companies because they wish to
>remain
>anonymous.
>"This Target case, it's been a wake-up call for e-tailers," Rosenfeld
>says.
>Before the case, advocacy groups for the blind would often ask companies
>to
>upgrade their Web sites and not receive immediate results, he says.
>Retailers typically don't make those upgrades right away "unless there's
>litigious action or some need for risk management," he says.
>There are 1.3 million legally blind Americans, and nearly 9 million more
>who
>are visually impaired, according to the American Foundation for the
>Blind.
>Click to see: A Web site as a sighted user sees it.
>  Targeting Target
>A class action lawsuit filed by the National Federation of the Blind
>(NFB)
>accused Target.com of lacking alt-text for many graphics, preventing
>blind
>customers from browsing products and looking for Target locations.
>Moreover, Target.com requires that all transactions be performed with a
>mouse, the NFB said, a barrier that prevents blind people from
>purchasing
>products online. While a blind person can use a keyboard, just as a
>sighted
>person can type without looking at the keys, a blind person cannot use a
>mouse because it requires the ability to see the mouse cursor on the
>screen.
>Accessible Web design allows the blind to navigate sites using just Tab,
>Shift-Tab, and Enter.
>The Target lawsuit is unique because most companies, when told by blind
>people that their Web sites are inaccessible, are willing to make the
>necessary upgrades, says John Pare, spokesman for the National
>Federation of
>the Blind. They may not make the change instantly, but companies at
>least
>begin the process of fixing the problems. Legal action is a last resort
>for
>the NFB, he says.
>"We really work to resolve it locally," he says. "The only company,
>certainly in the last several years, that has said just plain 'no' is
>Target."
>Target's refusal surprised the NFB, because the retailer is losing out
>on
>money blind people are willing to spend, and the lawsuit may damage the
>company's public image. "We're just completely shocked," Pare says.
>When contacted by Network World, Target reiterated a statement the
>company
>originally issued in October, which reads as follows: "Target.com is
>committed to providing an online experience that is accessible to all of
>our
>guests. Despite the lawsuit brought forward by the National Federation
>of
>the Blind (NFB), we have always and will continue to implement new
>technologies to our Web site. We are in the process of making online
>enhancements that will benefit all of our guests, including those with
>disabilities. These enhancements will occur regardless of the outcome of
>this lawsuit."
>In court, Target argued that its Web site is not a "place of public
>accommodation" the way a brick-and-mortar store is, and that the site is
>therefore not governed by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). A
>U.S.
>District Court judge in California rejected the argument, saying that
>restricting the ADA's discrimination provisions to physical locations
>"would
>contradict the plain language of the statute."
>More than three years ago, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
>argued
>that the ADA requires commercial Web sites to be accessible, while
>investigating Priceline.com and Ramada.com. The companies agreed to pay
>fines totaling $77,500 and implement a variety of upgrades to help the
>blind
>navigate their Web sites.
>Despite that agreement, the Target court ruling was the first to
>directly
>state that the ADA applies to private Web sites, advocates for the blind
>say. The court has not yet addressed the practical question of how to
>define
>accessibility, Pare says. A court date is scheduled for April to
>determine
>whether the suit against Target can go forward as a class action.
>"This is not going to happen quickly," Pare says.
>Tracy Andrews, a 43-year-old resident of Cheshire, Conn., who has been
>legally blind since she was a child, says she often encounters
>difficulty
>when searching the Web but is surprised Target has opted to fight the
>lawsuit.
>"I think in the long run, if Web sites can make themselves more
>accessible
>it's going to be to their advantage," Andrews says. "To fight it is only
>being a stick in the mud. The tide is moving, you might as well go along
>with it."
>State and federal government Web sites are already required to be
>accessible
>to the blind due to the ADA and other laws, says Judy Brewer, director
>of
>the Web Accessibility Initiative at W3C in Cambridge, the World Wide Web
>Consortium, an international standards organization.
>Although the legal requirements for private companies are not as clear,
>many
>commercial Web sites have already made the switch to accessibility.
>Amazon.com and Wal-Mart have Web sites that are in good shape, Pare
>says.
>Organizations can apply to the NFB for a certification demonstrating
>that
>their site complies with accessibility guidelines. Ten have obtained the
>certification, including Merck, Legal Sea Foods, HP, General Electric,
>Wells
>Fargo and the Social Security Administration.
>Merck became certified in April 2005, before the Target lawsuit. An
>external
>contract to upgrade the site cost about $35,000, and Merck devoted at
>least
>two employees to the project, says Larry Tattoli, associate director of
>Merck.com. The process "wasn't that difficult," he says.
>A bigger challenge has been maintaining accessibility as the Web site
>grows
>and changes, Tattoli says. Whenever a new image is added, a Web site
>developer has to add alt-text that can be read to a blind person.
>On a positive note, Merck officials found that making the site
>accessible to
>the blind did not alter the visual presentation, as they had feared.
>"It was this feeling that the text would have to be huge, or you
>couldn't
>have any images on it, it would be text-only pages. It's not true,"
>Tattoli
>says. "The pages I could show you before it was accessible and after it
>was
>accessible are exactly the same."
>The cost of making a Web site accessible usually equals 5% to 10% of the
>cost of Web maintenance, says Preety Kumar, CEO of Deque Systems, a
>Reston,
>Va., company that helps Web site designers automate the task of
>complying
>with accessibility standards.
>"A very small percentage" of companies have made their sites accessible,
>she
>says.
>"They're overwhelmed, that's what I'm sensing," Kumar says. "There are
>companies that are responding to the Target lawsuit, and they're paying
>attention because they realize the risks of noncompliance are not
>insignificant."
>Beyond the blind
>Blind people aren't the only ones with disabilities using the Internet.
>Deaf
>people, for example, can access visual portions of the Web without
>assistance but are often out of luck when it comes to audio files or
>sound
>on video files, even though there are tools Web developers can use to
>add
>captions.
>People with severe motor disabilities can use voice recognition software
>to
>surf the Web, as paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve did before his death.
>If
>they still have some ability to use their hands, they can also be helped
>by
>the same accessibility guidelines designed for the blind. Someone who
>can
>type but cannot manipulate a mouse can surf Web sites that are fully
>accessible with a keyboard.
>"If you do it right and you make your Web site accessible to the blind,
>you
>do cover other [disabled] populations largely," Kumar says.
>Among the disabled, Kumar says she thinks blind people are the most
>challenged because they need a clean text-to-speech translation in
>addition
>to a mouse alternative.
>People who are deaf and blind would be worse off, obviously, but they
>can
>use a Braille display, a strip located in front of the computer
>keyboard. A
>mechanism inside the strip controls small pins that go up and down to
>form
>Braille letters.
>Andrews, the legally blind Connecticut resident, says she's using a
>7-year-old version of ZoomText, a program that reads text out loud and
>magnifies the screen. Sometimes text is read to her in a nonsensical
>order,
>particularly when it is arranged in columns instead of paragraph form.
>Andrews says her outdated version of ZoomText may be causing problems
>but
>that poor text-to-speech translation is also often due to the Web sites
>themselves.
>"Newer Web sites are better than older Web sites," she says. Learning
>how to
>use the Internet when you can't see is something that takes time, even
>if
>the technology is up to date, she says.
>"It can be a little slow going. Like anything, you get better at it.
>It's a
>skill you develop," Andrews says.
>Web site developers may find it easier to establish accessibility if
>they
>are building a whole new site, rather than upgrading an old one. That's
>what
>officials at Legal Sea Foods found when they decided to replace their
>Web
>site in January 2005 because it had become old and stale, says Ken
>Chaisson,
>vice president of information technology at the Boston restaurant chain.
>Starting from scratch is a "heck of a lot easier" than changing
>everything
>on an existing Web site, he says. Financially, making the site
>accessible to
>the blind is worth it for Legal even if just five extra groups of people
>come to one of the restaurants, he says.
>But only a small number of companies have upgraded their Web sites,
>according to some observers. A March 2006 survey found that
>three-quarters
>of businesses listed in the FTSE 100 Index in London failed to meet
>minimum
>Web site accessibility requirements set by British laws to end
>discrimination against disabled people.
>Observations by Brewer of W3C square with the study's findings.
>"The majority of sites on the Web are not fully accessible to people
>with
>disabilities," she says.
>Click to see:
>
>Can the blind, and other disabled people, use your Web site?
>
>
>Here are 10 quick tests to check accessibility:
>1       Make sure informational images (like your organization's logo)
>have
>alternative text. Place the cursor over the image. A box should appear
>with
>a brief, accurate description.
>2       Check decorative images for alternative text. If the image has
>no
>function other than to look nice, it should not have any alternative
>text.
>
>3       "Listen" to audio and video content with the volume turned off.
>This
>is the situation faced by a deaf person. Make sure your Web site
>supplies
>written transcripts for all audio content.
>4       Make sure forms are accessible. Each item in a form should have
>a
>prompt text. When you click on the prompt text, a flashing cursor should
>appear in the box next to the text.
>5       Check that text can be resized. In Internet Explorer go to
>View>Font
>size>Largest. If the text does not increase in size, your site may be
>inaccessible to users with low vision.
>6       Check your Web site in the Lynx browser. This is a text-only
>browser. If a site makes sense in Lynx, it probably fulfills many
>accessibility guidelines.
>7       Use your Web site without a mouse. If you can't navigate your
>site
>using just tab, shift-tab, and enter, then neither can people using only
>a
>keyboard or voice recognition software.
>8       Make sure there is a site map
>9       Make sure alternative text associated with links make sense out
>of
>context. Blind users often jump from one link to the next with the tab
>button.
>10      Check your Web pages with an automated program, such as WebXACT
>or
>Wave.
>11      Use ASCII text that screen access software can convert to speech
>or
>Braille.
>12      Provide meaningful text labels for hypertext links. Labels like
>"click here" aren't good enough.
>13      Make sure tables and multi-column text does not prevent screen
>access software from rendering pages in an intelligible and useful
>manner.
>Even sophisticated screen access software has trouble with tables that
>contain many columns, such as bus and train schedules.
>Source: Webcredible, London
>All contents copyright 1995-2007 Network World, Inc.
>http://www.networkworld.com
>

David Andrews and white cane Harry.


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