Net To Get More Accessible To Disabled
Inter@ctive Week
by Doug Brown
June 5, 2000
The World Wide Web may appear a vast, rich universe to many Netizens, but for people with disabilities it has long remained a fairly small, isolated island. Now that island is getting bigger, thanks, in part, to Uncle Sam.
The federal government in March published standards designed to make information technology (IT) used by the federal government - including Web sites - more accessible to people with disabilities. The regulations will not become law until at least August, and that date will probably be pushed back to March 2001. But federal bureaucrats are already worried about the lawsuits that could ensue if their sites are not readily accessible to people with disabilities, and some in industry feel the government set the bar too high.
The bottom line, in terms of the Internet: The government, the largest purchaser of IT in the world, will soon be forced to make its Web sites accessible to people who are blind, deaf, both blind and deaf, or unable to use a mouse.
People active in disability communities are hopeful the government's commitment will make the entire Web more accessible.
"If the biggest buyer is only going to be able to buy things that are compatible with accessibility, then that will influence what will be on the market for everybody else," said Melanie Brunson, director of advocacy and governmental affairs at the American Council of the Blind.
Brunson said most estimates place the percentage of sites accessible to the roughly 2.5 million blind people in the U.S. at 10 percent to 20 percent.
Mike Wagner, director of IT at newly launched disability portal iCan, described the current situation this way: "As we look for other sites to link to and for places for people to shop, people here in the company find them and send me e-mail and say, 'Mike, will you check to see if this site is accessible?' If I have time, I test it. If I don't, I just say, 'No,' and I'm usually right."
Wagner's site will compete with at least three other portals already targeting people with disabilities: We Media, Can Do and HalfThePlanet.com. We Media was the first to launch, going live in December 1999.
"We started the ball rolling and now others are realizing there is money to be made," said Laurence Bergman, director of product development at We Media.
Bergman, who also consults with corporations and federal agencies looking to make their Web sites accessible, said the government's commitment to accessibility will "have a tremendous tipping effect."
Marti McCuller, chief executive of accessibility consultancy Agassa Technologies, knows how behind industry and government are on this issue. She's blind, and depends on the awareness and sensitivity of Web designers for access to the Information Superhighway.
When the Internet started, it was largely a tool for disseminating text, and was highly accessible to blind people, who rely upon "readers" that read on-screen text aloud to navigate the Web, McCuller said. Today, the Internet is laden with graphics.
"This is why the blind community is a little more excited about this than other things," McCuller said.
Graphics don't have to be invisible to blind people. Designers can embed invisible textual descriptions behind the images. When the reader passes across the graphic, it doesn't merely announce: "Graphic." Instead, it might say: "Picture of a mustachioed man riding an elephant on a beach."
McCuller, who sits on a World Wide Web Consortium committee dedicated to setting model accessibility standards for the Internet, said she is heartened by the government's willingness to grapple with the issue. She agreed that it's bound to lead to more access overall for people with disabilities. "I think it's a market that will develop rapidly," she said.
She cited what she referred to as the brewing "portal wars" between the four disability-focused sites as fresh evidence. "I think the market is being recognized as a market force, beyond the federal government rules," McCuller said.
Larry Goldberg, director of the Media Access Group at public television station WGBH in Boston, sat on the federal advisory committee that was instrumental in shaping the regulations released in March by the Access Board, the small federal agency responsible for drafting and implementing the new accessibility standards. The Media Access Group works to make all media more accessible to people with disabilities.
He said there is some precedent to show that the government's decision will have a "ripple effect."
"A lot of this started with Windows 95," Goldberg said. "It was about to be released in the spring of 1995, when it came to be known there were a lot of access barriers. That's when state and federal government agencies began making noises to Microsoft, saying: 'You know, I don't think we can buy this,' and Microsoft got religion real quick."
Copyright 2000 ZD Inc.
