[Promotion-technology] Blind Americans demand Web access; Target fights back (fwd)

[David Andrews]

>
>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.