Is Your Site ADA-Compliant
...
or a Lawsuit-in-Waiting?
More ADA-Compliance Information
An
estimated 48.9 million people, or 19.4 percent of the non-institutionalized
civilians in the United States, have a disability” according to the President’s
Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities (http://www.pcepd.gov/pubs/ek97/facts.htm).
That’s nearly one out of five -- a lot of people. So it’s not surprising
that a few years ago Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act
(ADA).
Signed into law in 1990, it “prohibits discrimination
on the basis of disability in employment, programs and services provided
by state and local governments, goods and services provided by private
companies, and in commercial facilities.” (See the U.S. Department
of Justice “ADA Homepage” at http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adahom1.htm.)
Government offices and agencies, and businesses
both large and small are affected by the ADA. Elevators and ATM machines
now feature Braille instructions for people with vision disabilities. Sidewalks
now have “curb-cuts” so that people using wheelchairs can easily cross
the street without meeting curb barriers. Wheelchair ramps have been
added to buildings that were pretty much off-limits to anyone who couldn’t
climb a flight of stairs, and TTY terminals are now being added to telephone
banks in building lobbies for people who are deaf or have speech disabilities.
Even public documents and financial statements are now being made accessible
in alternative formats such as Braille, large print and audio-tape.
But the ADA doesn’t just apply to the physical world.
According to the United States Justice Department,
the ADA also applies to the cyberspace “world.” In an opinion letter
dated September 9, 1996, The U.S. Department of Justice stated that:
“Covered entities under the ADA are required to provide
effective communication, regardless of whether they generally communicate
through print media, audio media, or computerized media such as the Internet.
Covered entities that use the Internet for communications regarding their
programs, goods, or services must be prepared to offer those communications
through accessible means as well.”
[Emphasis added].
DOES THIS MEAN YOU?
The first trick is to figure out what a “covered
entity” is. If a law firm has 15 or more employees, they are covered
as an “employer” under ADA Title I. If an employee with a disability protected
under the ADA (i.e., a lawyer or staff member) must access the law firm
intranet/internet as an essential function of their job, then the employee
is entitled to request a reasonable accommodation. (And this reasonable
accommodation could be the redesign of the law firm Web site.)
Not only that, but all law firms are considered “public accommodations”
under Title III as well. Thus a law firm Web site is a “program”
or “activity” of the law firm covered under Title III.
When members of the public who have a disability
attempt to access a Web site, they are therefore entitled to equal access
as are any other members of the public. But what exactly is
“effective communication”? According to a 1996 settlement letter
from The Office of Civil Rights of the United States Department of Education
(OCR):
[T]he issue is not whether the [person] with the
disability is merely provided access, but the issue is rather the extent
to which the communication is actually as effective as that provided to
others.
For a more detailed explanation of meaning of “effective
communication,” see “Applying the ADA to the Internet: A Web Accessibility
Standard “ (http://www.rit.edu/~easi/law/weblaw1.htm).
But even entities that are not covered by the ADA need to address accessible
Web design.
For example, a proposed rule on communications and
electronic accessibility is now being developed by an advisory committee
of The United States Access Board. The Access Board (a.k.a.
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board) is an independent
federal agency created in 1975 that is responsible for guideline development
under (1) Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, (2) The ADA, (3) The Telecommunications
Act of 1996 and (4) The Architectural Barriers Act. For more
information about this, see http://www.access-board.gov/notices/eitaac.htm.
Clearly, law firm Web sites are covered under the ADA (and quite
possibly the Rehabilitation Act, too). But is there really an access
problem with most Web sites? In short, yes.
WEB SITE ACCESSIBILITY
Web sites which are perfectly accessible to fully-abled
people may be impossible for people with disabilities to access.
For example, that beautiful new law firm site that your high-priced designer
just created may be impossible for a person using screen reading technology
to navigate; particularly if they are blind/low vision or have a specific
learning disability. Those “frames” or neat drop-down Java menus
on your site may be impossible to use via voice command software.
Your fancy “streaming audio” online CLE courses or video conferencing events
may be impossible for a deaf person to hear. And so on.
But ADA compliance shouldn’t be the only reason to
make your site fully accessible. The experts tend to agree
that universal design is good for everyone. According to Kelly Pierce,
the co-founder of “Digit-Eyes,” the Chicago blind computer users network,
and who serves on the Techwatch committee for the National Council on Disability,
“when World Wide Web sites are accessible to people with disabilities,
they are highly usable and accessible to everyone else as well.”
He continues: “As the Web matures and grows in popularity, webmasters
can be less and less certain that the visitor is using the latest version
of Navigator or Explorer.” In other words, accessible Web design
also assures “backwards compatibility” with older Internet browser software.
But it’s not just older technology that benefits from good design.
Many newer ways to access the internet benefit greatly from universal design,
“people may be online with their PalmPilot, or on WebTV, or browsing using
their telephone. The closer companies and other organizations design their
sites to HTML standards, the more accessible they are to people with disabilities
and everyone else,” says Pierce.
According to David Clark, webmaster for the Center
for Applied Special Technology (http://www.cast.org/),
“it is not just accessibility for people with disabilities, it's about
‘universal design.' Making the changes required for people with disabilities
benefits everyone. Examples include people with slow modems who turn
graphics off, people who access the Web while driving in a car, and even
doctors wanting to access the Web while their hands are busy with a surgery.”
In the future, therefore, universal access will mean that internet
kiosks, electronic textbooks and other new information appliances will
be accessible to everyone. But how do you make your site universally
accessible? It’s not that hard. It just requires some common sense.
(And if you do it right, it should not require the maintenance of a separate
“text-only” Web site).
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Probably the first thing that you should do is to
view your current site with a typical text-based internet browser. Back
before the advent of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer,
text-based browsers were the only way to go.
And like the name says, they are text-based. There’s no graphics, no
fancy fonts. Nothing but plain old “text-on-a-screen.” If you have
Internet “shell” access, try logging in to your shell account, and typing
“lynx” (sans quotes) at the command line. On most systems, this will bring
up the commonly used Lynx text browser. If you don’t even know what
“shell” means, or you don’t have shell access, don’t worry.
You can download a Windows 95/NT version of Lynx
for free at http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/lynxport.htm.
Simply download the zip file, unzip it into the desired directory on your
local computer, and you are ready to roll. If you are really lazy,
you can use the free online Lynx Viewer by going to http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html
and typing in the URL of your Web site.
Now start up Lynx and visit your firm’s homepage.
Are all of the links visible? Or does your homepage look like this: “[image]
[image] [image]?” If so, a visitor using screen reader technology
arriving at your page will only hear the word “image” and not be able to
“read” anything on the page. If this is the case, you should think
about adding “Alt-tags” to your HTML coding.
If you have “frames,” can you navigate through them
easily? Perhaps you do need a “text-only version” of your site.
When viewed with no graphics, does your page still make sense? Maybe your
graphics aren’t even the problem, but rather your page makes excessive
use of tables and columns. Do you have documents posted in PDF (portable
document format) format? Most screenreaders cannot currently
read PDF documents. If your site relies upon PDF documents, you will
need to post both PDF and HTML versions of everything.
Once you start viewing your site through the eyes
of a person with a disability, you will immediately start to get a sense
of how accessible your site really is. But remember that people who
are blind aren’t the only people with disabilities who surf the Web. For
example, if you have streaming audio content at your site, you probably
didn’t think to put in text transcripts for people who are deaf.
Although most of this is just plain old common sense, there really are
a lot of things to consider.
Hopefully, we’ve convinced you that the ADA does
apply to law firm Web sites. But please don’t panic!
Most sites are pretty easy to make universally accessible. Like we said
above, it’s usually just a matter of using your common sense, and testing
the site with a text-based browser. And as the sidebar article in
this issue indicates (see More ADA-Compliance Information), there are dozens
of online resources on the topic.
Making your site fully accessible not only protects
you from potential liability under The ADA, but it’s also just good business
sense. After all, why deny anyone the right to visit your site?
-----------------------------------------------------------
Cynthia D. Waddell, named to the “Top 25 Women
on the Web” by Webgrrls International, received her JD from the University
of Santa Clara School of Law and her BA from the University of Southern
California. Currently, Cynthia works for the City of San Jose as
the ADA compliance officer where she wrote Web accessibility standards
that have received state and federal recognition as a best practices model.
See http://www.amcity.com/sanjose/stories/102797/focus3.html
Kevin Lee Thomason, Esq. (415.732.5600, klt@seamless.com,
http://kevinleethomason.com/)
helps law firms market their services on the Internet.
Return to Article
MORE ADA-COMPLIANCE
INFORMATION
Luckily, there are scores of sites that relate to Web accessibility,
and that can help ensure your site is ADA-compliant. Here are some
of the best:
1) The World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative
resources (http://www.w3.org/WAI/).
This site includes dozens of online resources and how-to’s.
2) Bobby (http://www.cast.org/bobby/)
Sponsored as a free service by the Center for Applied Special Technology,
Bobby allows you to run an accessibility check on your Web site in seconds.
Simply type in your URL and press “submit.” Then click on any of
your links for further diagnostics.
3) The City of San Jose Web Accessibility Standards
(http://www.ci.san-jose.ca.us/oaacc/disacces.html)
San Jose is the first U.S. city to have developed minimum standards in
anticipation of the USDOJ Policy Ruling that the ADA applied to the Internet.
See also http://www.rit.edu/~easi/law/weblaw1.htm
This article is from the November 1998 issue
of The Internet Lawyer newsletter
All rights reserved. Copyright 1998 The Internet Lawyer
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