The reshaping of an industry: Legal precedence set for web accessibility
A handful of Unites States court rulings throughout history have proven to reshape and completely transform American culture and its way of life. It appears as though on Thursday, a federal district court out of California may have made such a ruling for two very small, yet very important communities. It was ruled late last week that a retailer, Target.com specifically, may be sued if its website is inaccessible to the blind. This ruling, an obviously enormous victory for the American’s with disabilities community, will prove to be one of the largest influential factors in the adoption of web standards and over-all best-practices – making this ruling a triumph for accessibility and standards advocates across the globe.
The web is separated by no ocean and governed by no one force – you’d be mistaken and naive to assume that this US based ruling will not have a trickle effect of global proportions. Zeldman, Clark and other industry influencers can write articles and books to their hearts content; there is no more influential power than the furry and fist of the law. It is almost ironic that we’ve literally come to a point where we see the “blind leading the blind”. A group of citizens who lack the ability to see have successfully opened the eyes of the masses. As the demand for web accessibility grows, so will the unknowing support of web standards.
By this time next year, accessibility on the web may not be a priority, but it will be top-of-mind and thus a billion dollar niche industry will be spawned almost over overnight. I am confident that by the time I post this article, over a dozen firms across the country will have altered their services to focus on, if not include for the first time, web accessibility. Is being apart of this soon-to-be billion dollar niche selfish and greedy? Or, is it simply ambitious and opportunistic? Will there become a distinction, perhaps even a discontent, between those who simply focused on accessibility for profit and those exclusively interested in its ability to provide equal opportunity for all?
As I type each letter of this article, I myself am wondering how to seize this opportunity. Hell, lets just throw out the social-political non-sense and call it what it is – how can I take advantage of what will prove to be a high-demand product? I mean, I haven’t been holding onto aboutaccessibility.com all this time for nothing, have I? And for those interested, I wouldn’t even let it go for less than five-figures. It isn’t that the domain itself is worth it; it is that the industry will now prove extremely valuable. I think we can all agree, whether you are in the game simply for profit or not; only good things can come in making the internet more accessible to all.
- September 11th, 2006
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I think while the Target suit may be the first against a non-government agency and thus may be a bit more forefront, one cannot forget that for a while now, the gov’t has been required to make web sites accessible due to the Section 508 regulations. While they have made a quiet impact, there’s a lot of web businesses that are springing up around making 508-compliant websites, and thus if the Target suit is found in favor of the consumers’ side, you’ll only see a lot more of these come to light.
An excellent point – I appreciate you brining up “Section 508”. I do believe however you will see a shift away from this and its current usage and terminology. While “Section 508” has been synonymous with “web accessibility” for sometime now; it has also been, as you noted, extremely well tied to government properties.
Government sites have long been far from what commercial business want and expect out of the internet; the “web 2.0” universe. “Section 508” is easily implemented and adhered to with regard to the web – especially when working on the simplest of sites; less complexity equates to easier implementation.
I do believe the terms “accessibility”, “web accessibility” and even “web standards” will prove themselves unique – especially from “Section 508”.
Sure, I don’t consider 508 synomious with ‘accessibility’. 508 goes a lot of the way, but the end goals of 508 isn’t the same as what may result if commercial web sites are required to become accessible. (I expect that the commercial version of Section 508 will be less strict about what’s needed, even to the simple aspect of having a phone number on the front page that blind users could call instead to recieve service).
That said, in light of what your article suggests, is that if a web design company right now offers Section 508 compliance in their products, they’re going to see a LOT of business if Target should lose this case.
Of course, the funny part is, it’s much easier to design an accessible site from stratch than to make an inaccessible site (using flash or embedded content).
Yeah, I’d say those focusing on Section 508 right now already have a head-start on the game.
What concerns me about all this is the greedy nature of people wanting to jump in on this for the reason of money, not for the (noble) reason of making the web more accessible.
I’m talking about those dozens and dozens (if not thousands) of companies that will start including “web accessibility” in their list of marketing terms, without:
a) knowing what it actually is,
b) being able to build accessible sites,
c) actually caring for that group of people
I’ve already seen that happen in both the US and the Netherlands, where a web design agency claimed to build accessible websites – but their work proved they totally didn’t. They simply used it as a marketing slur to attract customers who “heard about these accessibility issues” – i.e. people who are uninformed but concerned about catering to the blind and otherwise handicapped, and/or being sued.
So my concern is that we’ll see lots more of these greedy phoneys pop up, all of whom aren’t making the web a better place at all.
Here’s hoping that large groups of people will actually start investigating accessibility, though.
Unfortunately, people in the past have tried tactics of saying “even if only 1% of the population can’t use your web site, that’s potentially 70 million customers you’ve lost” to invoke the financal side of non-accessibility without luck. A few business born out of the bust (like Google) “get it”, but the majority of companies doing business on the web won’t think it’s useful until there is something that will affect their bottom line. A lawsuit like the Target one is really the only way short of putting gov’t regulations on commercial sites (which is a very bad solution) to make companies listen and make accessibility a key factor for their sites.
And I would expect that further fallout that if a web design house says they make accessible web sites but fail on the above ‘a’ or ‘b’ criteria, that companies that hire them out are going to make them liable for any accessible lawsuits that may arise. Which will force design houses to quickly adopt accessibility requirements. This will weed out the greedy ones that don’t have a clue what they are doing.
“And I would expect that further fallout that if a web design house says they make accessible web sites but fail on the above ‘a’ or ‘b’ criteria, that companies that hire them out are going to make them liable for any accessible lawsuits that may arise. Which will force design houses to quickly adopt accessibility requirements. This will weed out the greedy ones that don’t have a clue what they are doing.“
You’d expect that, but in reality that tends to not happen, almost ever at all. These smaller companies don’t often get sued, so they continue to go on thinking their site is accessible (because that’s what they’ve been promised) even though it isn’t.
It is important to note that 1% might be those with disabilities, but the number is larger for those dependent on accessibility.
I wrote this post a little over a month ago that some of you might find of interest:
A Case for Web Accessibility – it’s not just for the disabled anymore!
“You’d expect that, but in reality that tends to not happen, almost ever at all. These smaller companies don’t often get sued, so they continue to go on thinking their site is accessible (because that’s what they’ve been promised) even though it isn’t.“
Sure, presently that would be the case. However, if Target loses big and similar suits follow, then I would fully expect that the SOP for outsourcing the creation of the web site to a web dev house will including taking legal responsibility for accessibility rules, and thus would require web dev houses to really take accessibility into full consideration.