22 ms·

Colleges improve website accessibility as they are defendants in lawsuits

166 points by ohjeez 7y ago

nradov 7y ago
It's a shame that it takes lawsuits to force colleges to do something they should have done voluntarily years ago.
- SilasX 7y ago
  Especially when such changes usually improve the experience for people without disabilities as well.
- boringuser1 7y ago
  The only thing they should have done years ago is spend millions to avoid rent seeking lawsuits.
- president 7y ago
  It's like how most companies treat information security: 1. Assess the cost of implementing proper security vs cost of doing damage control in the event of a breach 2. If former is less than latter, implement proper security. If not, ignore the problem until a breach happens Just replace "security" with "accessibility" and "breach" with "lawsuit"
  - nradov 7y ago
    College IT department managers aren't financially sophisticated enough to calculate explicit trade offs between accessibility compliance versus lawsuit costs.
    - jldugger 7y ago
      They probably are but a) lack the data they need and b) realize that breaking the law is not a 'and you get to keep your government job' career move.
      - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
        Surely if they don't have the data then their set up is, by definition, not sophisticated enough to address the balance point for payoff in costs of non-mandated accessibility work?
        jldugger 7y ago
        Mostly, but sometimes 'financially sophisticated' is interpreted as 'does not know / cannot derive the formulas involved.'
camjohnson26 7y ago
Web Developers need to start designing accessibility in from the start. Adding WCAG compliance after the fact is much more difficult. I wonder if part of the problem is that we still don’t have an official way to develop “blueprints” for websites the way building designers do. As the industry matures, having inaccessible websites could be as taboo as having inaccessible buildings is today.
- organsnyder 7y ago
  In my experience, too many websites are created design-first, content later. When your first consideration is visual appeal, it's much harder to go back and add meaning to the content that was never really intended to stand by itself without its surrounding visual context.
  - Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
    Design drives sales online. Entirely. If brick and mortar stores had to design their entire storefront and display area around wheelchair accessibility first to the detriment of 5-10% or more of recurring revenue we'd instantly have a small city worth of lobbyists to reverse it.
    - tylerrobinson 7y ago
      But don't brick and mortar stores indeed comply with accessibility laws through building codes?
      - organsnyder 7y ago
        In the US, the ADA does indeed mandate many things (reserved parking spaces, door widths, ramps/elevators, etc.). Though to continue the analogy, I think we'd need to extend it to how the merchandise itself is displayed/marketed—for example, requiring all products to be accessible by someone in a wheelchair, braille on all packaging, etc.
        7y ago
Panino 7y ago
Accessible websites are higher quality websites. The article mentions SiteImprove, a commercial service that can be used to assess website accessibility. But that's not appropriate for everyone. Want to improve yours but don't know where to start? Here are a few options: * WAVE add-on for Firefox (free): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wave-accessibility-tool/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wave-accessib... * Google LightHouse (free, part of Chrome): Developer Tools -> Audits * HTML Validator: https://html5.validator.nu/ https://html5.validator.nu/ The HTML validator isn't specifically aimed at accessibility issues but it does highlight some low-lying fruit. All 3 of these are free and easy to use. WAVE is the most helpful IMO.
- vanadium 7y ago
  Note: It's entirely possible to build a site that scores a 100 on Lighthouse, but be an abject failure in Accessibility compliance. We've done it ourselves on my team inadvertently (combo-box failure), so never forget that actual, manual testing with screen readers is 100% necessary. Automation often works against you when it comes to achieving compliance. To wit, you can create a really, really inaccessible site that scores 100 on Lighthouse: https://www.matuzo.at/blog/building-the-most-inaccessible-site-possible-with-a-perfect-lighthouse-score/ https://www.matuzo.at/blog/building-the-most-inaccessible-si...
- threezero 7y ago
  Why are accessible websites higher quality? If someone spends a good portion of their time making their site more usable for non-blind users, wouldn’t it be more likely that the less accessible site would be higher quality?
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Because they can work better for users on small screens, low bandwidth connections, who just want to find some information they need, etc. I was at a conference that had a theme of accessibility about a year ago and one of the repeated points was that accessibility (not just visual) tends to improve access for people under lots of circumstances. (Think closed captioning in a noisy environment or for viewers who aren't fully fluent or have trouble with strong accents.)
Torgo 7y ago
As a contractor I used to construct special websites for both universities and government agencies. I would bring up in meetings "this site is required by law to be accessible" and invariably I was told "accessibility's not in the list of requirements". So in my opinion, they've had this coming for a long time.
- ashooner 7y ago
  While it's easy to say the site must legally be 'accessible', the problem I've encountered is that there is apparently no legal standard for 'accessible'. Section 508, WCAG, etc. do not have US caselaw behind them that actually identifies them as such. From a practitioner's viewpoint, it might make perfect sense to target WCAG, and possibly consider anything less 'unaccessible'. However, from a legal viewpoint - which typically doesn't acknowledge any obligation or liability without precedent - it's a very different situation. I'm curious if these tort cases can set that precedent, and clarify things for the lawyers.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    In general courts look at standards IF you point the judge to it. The judge will look at the standard, and if it looks reasonable will accept it, thus creating precedent. If your website obeys a standard the other side needs to prove the standard isn't enough to meet the law. That is if you meet WCAG the judge will probably default to considering it a bug in the screen reader - putting the burden the screen reader to show that the standard is not enough for ADA, not only is this a higher bar, but the judge will generally cut you some slack for trying. The above assumes there is only one standard. Standards bodies (ANSI, ECMA, ISO) often accept multiple competing standards. This happens when they are not aware of the other standard, or when they believe the standards can compete (C++ doesn't prevent you from creating an ISO standard for a different programming language). Companies will often try to get their internal process encoded into a standard for this reason: it documents something that can be brought to court with more weight than something they came up with: if you sue latter the judge will ask if you care so much why didn't you get involved with the standards process when the company created their standard. Since part of becoming a standard is you have to take input from others this is somewhat reasonable. The above is a US perspective from not a lawyer. Other countries have different rules. Talk to a local lawyer if you need legal advice.
save_ferris 7y ago
I work on a product for higher-ed clients, and this has deeply impacted my team over the last two years. The process has been really tedious and painful for everyone involved: developers, product folks, management, and the users. University admins send us automated third party a11y reports constantly, demanding that we make all of the recommended fixes immediately. We learned really quickly that several of these reports are very opinionated about how to implement ARIA tags, sometimes in ways that contradict the documentation. It can be hard to explain this to a customer trying to protect themselves legally. In addition, screenreader apps are implemented inconsistently, and reproducing/debugging the screenreader bug in your app can be really infuriating. I felt truly horrible for people who use them on a daily basis because it's an utterly prehistoric experience compared to using the web normally. The last thing is that we've had issues with getting a11y right with our front end frameworks at times to address these screenreader bugs. Ultimately, a11y is so painful and costly for us to get right that it takes up a major chunk of our development efforts these days, and we all hate working on them. The state of developing and maintaining accessible web applications feels like a sad joke given the industry's mantra to make the world a better, more connected place.
- arthur_pryor 7y ago
  > The state of developing and maintaining accessible web applications feels like a sad joke given the industry's mantra to make the world a better, more connected place. this also feels true of most of the industry's business models. but yeah, the mantra's just a mantra. i think lots of people repeat that and think it sounds like a good goal, but they never really examine whether they're contributing to it. people can bullshit themselves pretty easily. and a lot of other folks just pay lip service to that mantra so they can make money.
- inetknght 7y ago
  > Ultimately, a11y is so painful and costly for us to get right that it takes up a major chunk of our development efforts these days, and we all hate working on them. Honestly, I expect this question would be difficult to answer in short time or without context. I think it'd be good discussion subject for a blog post. But: what are some examples of the pain and what would you change to simplify?
Shivetya 7y ago
One news story [1] has a copy of the suit within the article. Suit [2] No word on exact amounts being sued for over and beyond compliance enforcement. I am all for compliance but there needs to be safeguards against excessive lawyer fees and actual damages at most could only be applicable to one defendant. It is clear from previous cases that they are claiming damages The fact so many state colleges have not complied should be an embarrassment to the states which this is true and if wider spread should be an absolute requirement before federal funds are given to any state college to include providing backing to student loans. Compensatory and damages in an amount to be determined by proof, including all applicable statutory and punitive damages and fines, to Plaintiff and the proposed class for violations of their civil rights under The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, New York State Human Rights Law and City Law; f. Pre- and post-judgment interest; g. An award of costs and expenses of this action together with reasonable attorneys’ and expert fees; and -31- h. Such other and further relief as this Court deems just and proper [1] https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Colleges-including-Saint-Rose-hit-with-mass-13442769.php https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Colleges-including-S... [2] https://www.scribd.com/document/394914375/Camacho-v-St-Rose#from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/394914375/Camacho-v-St-Rose#...
yostrovs 7y ago
Like cars, soon all the websites will look nearly identical. Building your own, your choice will be the background color to use and one of a number of approved fonts you can select from. Cars have regulations about the size, color, brightness of all the external lights, airbags, emissions, noise levels, etc., that when you put all these together, you get a Chevy Impala. Or a Toyota Camry. Compare the SUVs, for example. I just bought one and I constantly turn my head when an SUV passes on the street thinking it's the same as mine. But turns out it's from a different maker altogether. Designed on a different continent by very different people.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  Yes, how could I possibly tell a Mini Cooper apart from a Chevy Camaro? They're just far too similar.
- sterkekoffie 7y ago
  I'm not sure if you've ever been in a building, but in case you haven't, I can assure you there's a lot that goes into their design and identity beyond the presence of a wheelchair ramp. Cars look identical because of consumer expectations, not because of the ozone resistance of their brake hoses.
  - Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
    Websites, however, can experience drastic swings in recurring revenue, brand loyalty, all from the addition or removal of a seemingly minor visual interface element. Design = Sales online. If compliance for brick and mortar stores moved out of the entryway and into the mandated height of display cases, counters, signage for colorblind patrons, and mandatory gluten free options there would be a deluge of lobbyists to stop it.
    - lexicality 7y ago
      All of those (except for the gluten) are already covered by the ADA though?
steelframe 7y ago
> using the web normally Perhaps one way to approach the issue is for people who build web frameworks to reconsider their anchor of "normal."
- ben_jones 7y ago
  You can hate the deficiencies of screen readers and accessibility specifications while still supporting the individuals who need to use them. Reading OP it seems like his team is shouldering a disproportionate amount of what should be a shared burden.
  - dymk 7y ago
    A common tactic of the ever-offended "woke" internet user is ignoring intended meaning, assuming the worst, and making some nonconstructive comment about how "unwoke" everybody else is (e.g. "your normal is the incorrect one")
  - inetknght 7y ago
    What burden do you think should be shared by whom?
    - oauea 7y ago
      The developers of screen reader apps are responsible for presenting the information to the user, just like a browser is. It is a mystery to me that they've managed to shove that burden onto every single developer who builds a website. The data is already there and Google manages to extract what's relevant, why can't the screen readers?
      - ckuhl 7y ago
        To me that argument doesn't make sense... It seems like arguing that because there are wheelchairs that can climb staircases, there's no need to make buildings wheelchair accessible. I thing the problem with this argument is that it shifts the burden of serving all people (including disabled people) from the company providing the service to a person who is disabled. That's exactly what the ADA was supposed to prevent.
boringuser1 7y ago
I like how people pretend these massive undertakings for a minority of the populace is somehow a justified standard. If Byzantine laws require massive resource investment for minorities, hire a specialized accessibility contractor. A web developer is not a social worker.
josefresco 7y ago
I've done WCAG / ADA work over the last two years and it's been a wake up call for government funded organizations and even small businesses, not to mention designers, developers and staff who manage content. From my experience, most of these lawsuits are "predatory" in nature. Law firm finds a sympathetic case, sues as many orgs as they can, and collects massive fees along the way while the web developers get thrown under the bus, or also collect massive fees (yay?!?). The same can be said for "workshops" that teach people about compliance. Passing automated WCAG tests, vs actually following the "spirit" of compliance are two completely different things. I've spent countless hours attempting to get my code to pass automated tests, just so when I pass back to the client they don't throw it back in my lap, despite my code being fully compliant and accessible. We also do design work, and work with external designers with no concept of accessibility. Often (most) times, clients dictate the design and often make decisions that violate accessibility rules. Color contrast, "wiz bang" features are the two most common violators. Full accessibility limits design freedom considerably. I met with a 100% government funded org just last week and told them their (hundred + page) site (no CMS) was not in any way compliant. You should have seen the look on their faces. They then proceeded to show me websites they like, to inspire a redesign project and NONE of them were even remotely compliant despite all the examples also being gov funded. 20-30% in the cost increase to make a new website project fully compliant. Retrofitting an old website? The cost could easily exceed the initial development. To be clear, I'm not saying websites should not be compliant, just that ... it's messy and the guidelines aren't always clear. Aggressive law firms are only making things worse. Final note: The accessibility capabilities of social networks are ... not good. Where do you post transcriptions of your Facebook video? Where do you specify alt tags, or "long descriptions"? The list is extensive. Final final note: Once your web developer is "done". Your staff who blogs and the content creators that fuel this work can ruin everything. Staff training is often overlooked.
- roel_v 7y ago
  "Aggressive law firms are only making things worse." Are they? Would you, or the one writing the cheque, care without them?
  - 7y ago
itsaidpens 7y ago
As an aside, I do not think Apple gets nearly enough credit for designing iOS, WatchOS and MacOS with the needs of the blind and disabled in mind. It's truly a beautiful thing.
PaulHoule 7y ago
This was a priority at Cornell until the Peoplesoft/Duffield Hall disaster happened and at that point anybody in IT had a target on their back. The most used web page at Cornell has been the weather report for the longest time, but CIT didn't know and shut it off out of ignorance. Then all of a sudden they get hundreds of calls. IT at Cornell was a center of excellence in the past, but since Lehman left, it as seem as a cost center that gets in the way of hiring more academics.
- driverdan 7y ago
  Your post assumes readers have a significant amount of knowledge about Cornell. Most of us have no idea what the "Peoplesoft/Duffield Hall disaster" was, what CIT stands for, or who Lehman is.
  - PaulHoule 7y ago
    CIT == Cornell Information Technology, the central IT organization. The Peoplesoft/Duffield Hall disaster was two connected scandals. David Duffield (the Peoplesoft founder) donated money to build Duffield hall, which houses a national nanotechnology center. That nanotechnology also received startup funds from the NSF, which required that Cornell raise matching funds from some source that wasn't the NSF. When they demanded documentation, Cornell said that was impossible (paperwork is SNAFU), the NSF said "This is an eligibility requirement, not a reporting requirement". Cornell was informed it wouldn't be getting any more funding from the NSF if it didn't correct the situation. Around the same time Cornell attempted a Peoplesoft implementation that went at least $50 million over budget while implementing only 20% of the original scope. The first project manager they hired said there was no way they could do the project with the budget they wanted, they fired him and hired a Yes Man. The rest is history. Jeff Lehman was president of Cornell for about a year. He announced his resignation at Alumni week, shocking people. The cause of his resignation was kept secret, but I can't help but believe that he took office when the above mentioned scandals hit. (These certainly were not his fault because the situations started before his watch) What I do know is that there was a severe money pinch, which caused a series of cascading failures, and also that everything at Cornell that was unique and special had to fight for it's right to exist, while they kept chasing the same fads as all the other Ivys. Was this why Lehman quit? I don't know. But I do know if he stayed he would have been cleaning up an awful mess instead of leading new initiatives.
challenger22 7y ago
The expected steady-state outcome of this situation is that all website-owning educational companies will be targeted for lawsuits, many of which are valid, and many of which are not. The net effect of these lawsuits will primarily be a massive loss of productivity. It is very technically challenging and labor intensive to make websites accessible to the blind or otherly disabled, and doing so is to the benefit of a very small population, who will continue to primarily use other communication platforms anyway. Net effect: For every hour of time saved for the blind or otherly disabled, dozens of hours of time spent by others. A saner society would choose a different path. I wish I could see actual statistics on this, I admit this is wild speculation on my part.
- dgacmu 7y ago
  You're thinking short term. And you're probably right, short term. But we had the same set of concerns raised about many other ADA issues in the past, such as wheelchair-accessible ramps and doors. Over time, the standard practices (and what we'd think of as tooling and common design patterns) for new construction evolved. ADA lawsuits about websites create a similar incentive for long-term change. and, hopefully, just as we've realized that ADA compliance benefits all of us, whether it's in the form of getting old or pushing strollers or nursing a sprained ankle, we'll get to the point where the improved information availability from ADA compliance becomes an intrinsic part of the power of the web.
  - challenger22 7y ago
    I think that even long-term the approach as described in TFA will always require many hours of work for an hour of time saved. The saner way to do it is probably have direct personal assistance for the blind. Phone call systems for the deaf and hard of hearing have been in place for decades, and many of these systems rely on direct personal assistance.
    - paulryanrogers 7y ago
      It's only saner if you value the money of website companies over the dignity of their users
jmenn 7y ago
My university went through an accessibility remediation process recently, and it was a rather nightmarish undertaking. Many universities have multiple (thousands) of individual microsites that are largely untouched for years at a time, and I've always wondered if these would be targeted by people looking to bring a complaint. Our HTML was more or less fine (though we found and fixed a few bugs), but the unbelievable number of PDFs and un-captioned videos nearly broke us. The culture shift has been difficult, particularly with people who want to post videos or PDFs but don't have the resources or training to make those pieces of content accessible.
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  And I'll bet the vast majority of those PDFs were bitmaps made by somebody printing them on paper and then scanning them in because they didn't know how to make a text-based PDF directly from Word, or why doing so was a better idea.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  > Many universities have multiple (thousands) of individual microsites that are largely untouched for years at a time Wholeheartedly agree with this. I once hosted a microsite on my personal server for a group at the university I was a web flunkey for as it needed to get up quickly, and well, corporate IT wasn't the fastest thing there, and it took them years to ask for changes after I'd left. It's usually pretty easy for universities to update their main public facing pages, but as you mention, it's the thousands of other, quite often slightly bespoke (as this Professional or that Dr wants their own, custom slice) that's the breaker.
umvi 7y ago
Ugh, implementing a11y correctly is onerous... I feel like screen readers need to get better, not the other way around
- simion314 7y ago
  Do you have an example of an improvement? I mean if you use ad iv or img instead of a button how will the reader know that is a button? Do you use the reader mode in Firefox or similar extensions? Have you seen webpages where it does not work or instead of grabbing only the content it grabs a lot of the advertising and other garbage? Accessible webpage would help people that use reader mode too.
  - infamia 7y ago
    Even when using semantic markup as you describe, there are still accessibility gotchas waiting to pounce. https://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2019/06/04/grid-content-re-ordering-and-accessibility/ https://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2019/06/04/grid-cont...
i_rawr_u 7y ago
I used to do Help Desk while attending University and often times people would have trouble using JAWS (screen reader) on Blackboard/Canvas pages. Almost made finishing school work impossible and those companies didn't seem to be putting in any effort accessibility wise.
iwasakabukiman 7y ago
I work in government and this is a major issue right now. We've basically pulled any and all content that wasn't required to be online from our website until it has been "certified accessible" by a third party. It's not the government I work for, but a nearby sheriff's office took their website completely offline and replaced it with a simple text based site[1]. The cost to make their old site accessible and the liability of leaving it up was too high. That said and as others have mentioned in their comments, all of these institutions know that accessibility is mandated by law and they've just kind of ignored it. [1] https://www.alachuasheriff.org https://www.alachuasheriff.org
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  That's not a "simple text based site", it's simply a landing page. A "simple text based site" would probably be easier for everyone involved.
  - iwasakabukiman 7y ago
    Is a landing page not a subset of simple text based site?
    - wtallis 7y ago
      No. You don't make a building accessible by putting a sign on the front saying "wheelchairs not welcome", and you shouldn't make a web site "accessible" by gutting it of all content and functionality that isn't already accidentally accessible. This is at best a case of malicious compliance.
      - iwasakabukiman 7y ago
        I never said it was accessible. I said it was a text based site, which it is. I feel like you're misunderstanding on purpose just to argue. I also never said that it was okay for them to do that. But it meets the minimum requirements of the law and is legally compliant (or so their lawyer says). In fact, my point was that they should not do that. They did it to avoid getting sued. Now any functionality they could have offered, such as online crime reporting or crime stat lookups, are not even options.
cujic9 7y ago
Isn't this the ADA working as designed? My understanding is that the ADA is enforced specifically by citizens filing complaints which turn into lawsuits. It's great that these lawsuits actually carry enough weight to make the universities take action. In other cases, companies repeatedly get fined for some violation (pollution comes to mind) and simply see it as a cost of doing business.
JamesBarney 7y ago
While I want the web to be maximally accessible to all individuals it seems like these lawsuit have had a chilling effect on things like opencourseware and open access to university courses.
miguelmota 7y ago
If you want to make a website accessible without much effort then don't add shitty animations that hide content, don't use divs for buttons and links, don't use modals for everything, don't make text that's barely readable, etc, keep it simple and stick to semantic HTML. I made a checklist years ago https://github.com/miguelmota/web-accessibility https://github.com/miguelmota/web-accessibility
mncharity 7y ago
Much of the discussion here is about commercially viable sites. Some budget and staffing exists to make progress, and some chunk of that will be redirected to a11y. I deal also with science research and education outreach content. There's often no budget. No staff. Crufty pages put up by graduate students. Or zombie sites left up long after their funding is gone. It's severely bottlenecked on overworked people finding a bit of time to volunteer on something that helps the world and largely doesn't help them. Even having a working web server is a challenge. It's profoundly marginal, and every tweak of barrier energy directly throttles how much of it occurs. High-stakes a11y could be a disaster for this area. The liability exposure, associated administrative hassle, and simple bare technical cost, might have severe impact. When Berkeley took down years of youtube lectures in response to DoJ ADA concerns, they had already stopped making new ones pubic. So while dramatic negative impact on the scale of large projects is a thing, I'm more worried about the smaller-scale but systemic stuff. For marginal efforts, an "if it's public, there are requirements and risks" has a straightforward impact - it won't be public, it won't exist. At least not there.* And if a11y requirements aren't grandfathered, then as standards rise, the long tail of pages that persist long after their authors have moved on, retired, or died, that persist until a host name changes or a disk dies, will likely be intentionally cut off. Like corporate email retention minimization, but for human knowledge on the web. Having watched copyright compliance dramatically slow open education content creation at a range of scales, and HIPAA kill off promising work on patient-created orientation content, and now hearing of "high-stakes" a11y... I worry that we don't fully appreciate just how large a price in retarded progress we're choosing to pay, since it's hard-to-see "that which might now exist... doesn't; those we might have helped... weren't". *Or... maybe small-scale content will simply be shifted off university sites, onto personal ones? And google and archive.org can fill in the gaps? There's already a trend of research groups having two sites; an institutional one, and a second more extensive one under the personal control of the professor who might move elsewhere. And graduate students having their own, describing their own work. So perhaps "high-stakes" a11y will merely accelerate this?
- shakna 7y ago
  Small scale educational and research sites tend to already be accessible. The default behaviours of HTML and default CSS are accessible to a reasonable degree. PDFs that aren't scans are accessible. It tends to be when one overrides behaviour that you start to become inaccessible. JS is awful for breaking a site for a screen reader as the purpose and contents can change after or during it being read. Scientists and researchers, in my experience, don't tend to futz with the markup, because it's just the delivery tool, not their purpose.
SamuelAdams 7y ago
Mods, can you update this article to have (2018) in the title? The original article [1] was published on December 4, 2018, nearly 6 months ago. The lawsuit was filed on November 17, 2018 [2]. [1]: https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Colleges-including-Saint-Rose-hit-with-mass-13442769.php https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Colleges-including-S... [2]:https://www.scribd.com/document/394914375/Camacho-v-St-Rose#from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/394914375/Camacho-v-St-Rose#...
dillonmckay 7y ago
I find some of these comments quite bizarre. Section 508 has been around, for what, 20 years? And using lynx to see how a document is rendered was used quite a bit, for both some accessibility assessment, and also SEO. I can definitely see how difficult this can be as an after-thought, but higher-ed should know better. This is not a new requirement.
- talmand 7y ago
  I always understood that Section 508 applied only to US Federal agencies and any third-party products they make use of.
  - dillonmckay 7y ago
    If they are receiving federal monies (student loans and grants), they must comply.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  I still used to use lynx on a semi-regular basis until modern frameworks resulted in sites that were simply not usable.
evunveot 7y ago
Would the plaintiff still have a case if the defendants staffed a phone line with someone available to navigate the websites by verbal instruction and made the availability of that service obvious? (I believe phone companies already provide speech <-> text services for people who can't speak and/or hear.) Seems like a decent compromise.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  I've seen some web sites recently that have small text at the bottom reading something like, "Need help reading this web site? Call 800-xxx-xxx for assistance." I don't know if that stands up in a court of law, but it's an interesting way to handle the problem.
sequoia 7y ago
My suspicion is that a major aspect of this is the proliferation of SPAs built with tools that make accessibility seriously difficult. If you have an old-fashioned web application that spits out HTML only, congratulations, your site is already 90% of the way to compliance! Most of the a11y issues arise not from omitting some special step, but from breaking behaviour the browser already provides by default. Tabstops: browsers have these but if you mix up forms with crazy CSS they don't work well. Focus states: there by default, frequently removed by CSS. Font sizes & contrast: high contrast & adequately large (and scalable!) by default. Semantic HTML, alt tags, and a "skip to content" link are up to you, combine those with not breaking the browser's behaviour and you're 90% there, maybe 100%. In the process of reinventing the web UI wheel, a lot of the a11y features of the browser were forgotten.
leepowers 7y ago
Accessibility is hard. It's not just a technical problem. It informs every stage of conceptualizing, designing, and implementing a web site. Accessibility is end-to-end. For instance WCAG 2.1 requires a minmum text color contrast ratio of 4.5:1. If a web designer and other stakeholders haven't taken this on board there's a risk they'll select an inaccessible color palette. And that's just one requirement. Designs that appeal to management and other stakeholders are more often hostile to accessibility than not. https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/#contrast-minimum https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/#contrast-minimum
nrjewknbgkr 7y ago
Why aren't we designing the web to be "accessible first" instead of "mobile first". It's gotta be exponentially more difficult to retrofit accessibility on top of a site designed for sighted users instead of vice-versa. Isn't that the same premise behind why the web started designing "mobile first"?
DesertShadow 7y ago
Plenty of water was flowing through Taughannock Falls on Tuesday

166 points by ohjeez 7y ago

nradov 7y ago

It's a shame that it takes lawsuits to force colleges to do something they should have done voluntarily years ago.

SilasX 7y ago
Especially when such changes usually improve the experience for people without disabilities as well.
boringuser1 7y ago
The only thing they should have done years ago is spend millions to avoid rent seeking lawsuits.
president 7y ago
It's like how most companies treat information security: 1. Assess the cost of implementing proper security vs cost of doing damage control in the event of a breach 2. If former is less than latter, implement proper security. If not, ignore the problem until a breach happens Just replace "security" with "accessibility" and "breach" with "lawsuit"
- nradov 7y ago
  College IT department managers aren't financially sophisticated enough to calculate explicit trade offs between accessibility compliance versus lawsuit costs.
  - jldugger 7y ago
    They probably are but a) lack the data they need and b) realize that breaking the law is not a 'and you get to keep your government job' career move.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Surely if they don't have the data then their set up is, by definition, not sophisticated enough to address the balance point for payoff in costs of non-mandated accessibility work?
      - jldugger 7y ago
        Mostly, but sometimes 'financially sophisticated' is interpreted as 'does not know / cannot derive the formulas involved.'

camjohnson26 7y ago

Web Developers need to start designing accessibility in from the start. Adding WCAG compliance after the fact is much more difficult. I wonder if part of the problem is that we still don’t have an official way to develop “blueprints” for websites the way building designers do. As the industry matures, having inaccessible websites could be as taboo as having inaccessible buildings is today.

organsnyder 7y ago
In my experience, too many websites are created design-first, content later. When your first consideration is visual appeal, it's much harder to go back and add meaning to the content that was never really intended to stand by itself without its surrounding visual context.
- Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
  Design drives sales online. Entirely. If brick and mortar stores had to design their entire storefront and display area around wheelchair accessibility first to the detriment of 5-10% or more of recurring revenue we'd instantly have a small city worth of lobbyists to reverse it.
  - tylerrobinson 7y ago
    But don't brick and mortar stores indeed comply with accessibility laws through building codes?
    - organsnyder 7y ago
      In the US, the ADA does indeed mandate many things (reserved parking spaces, door widths, ramps/elevators, etc.). Though to continue the analogy, I think we'd need to extend it to how the merchandise itself is displayed/marketed—for example, requiring all products to be accessible by someone in a wheelchair, braille on all packaging, etc.
      - 7y ago

Panino 7y ago

Accessible websites are higher quality websites. The article mentions SiteImprove, a commercial service that can be used to assess website accessibility. But that's not appropriate for everyone. Want to improve yours but don't know where to start? Here are a few options: * WAVE add-on for Firefox (free): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wave-accessibility-tool/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wave-accessib... * Google LightHouse (free, part of Chrome): Developer Tools -> Audits * HTML Validator: https://html5.validator.nu/ https://html5.validator.nu/ The HTML validator isn't specifically aimed at accessibility issues but it does highlight some low-lying fruit. All 3 of these are free and easy to use. WAVE is the most helpful IMO.

vanadium 7y ago
Note: It's entirely possible to build a site that scores a 100 on Lighthouse, but be an abject failure in Accessibility compliance. We've done it ourselves on my team inadvertently (combo-box failure), so never forget that actual, manual testing with screen readers is 100% necessary. Automation often works against you when it comes to achieving compliance. To wit, you can create a really, really inaccessible site that scores 100 on Lighthouse: https://www.matuzo.at/blog/building-the-most-inaccessible-site-possible-with-a-perfect-lighthouse-score/ https://www.matuzo.at/blog/building-the-most-inaccessible-si...
threezero 7y ago
Why are accessible websites higher quality? If someone spends a good portion of their time making their site more usable for non-blind users, wouldn’t it be more likely that the less accessible site would be higher quality?
- ghaff 7y ago
  Because they can work better for users on small screens, low bandwidth connections, who just want to find some information they need, etc. I was at a conference that had a theme of accessibility about a year ago and one of the repeated points was that accessibility (not just visual) tends to improve access for people under lots of circumstances. (Think closed captioning in a noisy environment or for viewers who aren't fully fluent or have trouble with strong accents.)

Torgo 7y ago

As a contractor I used to construct special websites for both universities and government agencies. I would bring up in meetings "this site is required by law to be accessible" and invariably I was told "accessibility's not in the list of requirements". So in my opinion, they've had this coming for a long time.

ashooner 7y ago
While it's easy to say the site must legally be 'accessible', the problem I've encountered is that there is apparently no legal standard for 'accessible'. Section 508, WCAG, etc. do not have US caselaw behind them that actually identifies them as such. From a practitioner's viewpoint, it might make perfect sense to target WCAG, and possibly consider anything less 'unaccessible'. However, from a legal viewpoint - which typically doesn't acknowledge any obligation or liability without precedent - it's a very different situation. I'm curious if these tort cases can set that precedent, and clarify things for the lawyers.
- bluGill 7y ago
  In general courts look at standards IF you point the judge to it. The judge will look at the standard, and if it looks reasonable will accept it, thus creating precedent. If your website obeys a standard the other side needs to prove the standard isn't enough to meet the law. That is if you meet WCAG the judge will probably default to considering it a bug in the screen reader - putting the burden the screen reader to show that the standard is not enough for ADA, not only is this a higher bar, but the judge will generally cut you some slack for trying. The above assumes there is only one standard. Standards bodies (ANSI, ECMA, ISO) often accept multiple competing standards. This happens when they are not aware of the other standard, or when they believe the standards can compete (C++ doesn't prevent you from creating an ISO standard for a different programming language). Companies will often try to get their internal process encoded into a standard for this reason: it documents something that can be brought to court with more weight than something they came up with: if you sue latter the judge will ask if you care so much why didn't you get involved with the standards process when the company created their standard. Since part of becoming a standard is you have to take input from others this is somewhat reasonable. The above is a US perspective from not a lawyer. Other countries have different rules. Talk to a local lawyer if you need legal advice.

save_ferris 7y ago

I work on a product for higher-ed clients, and this has deeply impacted my team over the last two years. The process has been really tedious and painful for everyone involved: developers, product folks, management, and the users. University admins send us automated third party a11y reports constantly, demanding that we make all of the recommended fixes immediately. We learned really quickly that several of these reports are very opinionated about how to implement ARIA tags, sometimes in ways that contradict the documentation. It can be hard to explain this to a customer trying to protect themselves legally. In addition, screenreader apps are implemented inconsistently, and reproducing/debugging the screenreader bug in your app can be really infuriating. I felt truly horrible for people who use them on a daily basis because it's an utterly prehistoric experience compared to using the web normally. The last thing is that we've had issues with getting a11y right with our front end frameworks at times to address these screenreader bugs. Ultimately, a11y is so painful and costly for us to get right that it takes up a major chunk of our development efforts these days, and we all hate working on them. The state of developing and maintaining accessible web applications feels like a sad joke given the industry's mantra to make the world a better, more connected place.

arthur_pryor 7y ago
> The state of developing and maintaining accessible web applications feels like a sad joke given the industry's mantra to make the world a better, more connected place. this also feels true of most of the industry's business models. but yeah, the mantra's just a mantra. i think lots of people repeat that and think it sounds like a good goal, but they never really examine whether they're contributing to it. people can bullshit themselves pretty easily. and a lot of other folks just pay lip service to that mantra so they can make money.
inetknght 7y ago
> Ultimately, a11y is so painful and costly for us to get right that it takes up a major chunk of our development efforts these days, and we all hate working on them. Honestly, I expect this question would be difficult to answer in short time or without context. I think it'd be good discussion subject for a blog post. But: what are some examples of the pain and what would you change to simplify?

Shivetya 7y ago

One news story [1] has a copy of the suit within the article. Suit [2] No word on exact amounts being sued for over and beyond compliance enforcement. I am all for compliance but there needs to be safeguards against excessive lawyer fees and actual damages at most could only be applicable to one defendant. It is clear from previous cases that they are claiming damages The fact so many state colleges have not complied should be an embarrassment to the states which this is true and if wider spread should be an absolute requirement before federal funds are given to any state college to include providing backing to student loans. Compensatory and damages in an amount to be determined by proof, including all applicable statutory and punitive damages and fines, to Plaintiff and the proposed class for violations of their civil rights under The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, New York State Human Rights Law and City Law; f. Pre- and post-judgment interest; g. An award of costs and expenses of this action together with reasonable attorneys’ and expert fees; and -31- h. Such other and further relief as this Court deems just and proper [1] https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Colleges-including-Saint-Rose-hit-with-mass-13442769.php https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Colleges-including-S... [2] https://www.scribd.com/document/394914375/Camacho-v-St-Rose#from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/394914375/Camacho-v-St-Rose#...

yostrovs 7y ago

Like cars, soon all the websites will look nearly identical. Building your own, your choice will be the background color to use and one of a number of approved fonts you can select from. Cars have regulations about the size, color, brightness of all the external lights, airbags, emissions, noise levels, etc., that when you put all these together, you get a Chevy Impala. Or a Toyota Camry. Compare the SUVs, for example. I just bought one and I constantly turn my head when an SUV passes on the street thinking it's the same as mine. But turns out it's from a different maker altogether. Designed on a different continent by very different people.

crooked-v 7y ago
Yes, how could I possibly tell a Mini Cooper apart from a Chevy Camaro? They're just far too similar.
sterkekoffie 7y ago
I'm not sure if you've ever been in a building, but in case you haven't, I can assure you there's a lot that goes into their design and identity beyond the presence of a wheelchair ramp. Cars look identical because of consumer expectations, not because of the ozone resistance of their brake hoses.
- Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
  Websites, however, can experience drastic swings in recurring revenue, brand loyalty, all from the addition or removal of a seemingly minor visual interface element. Design = Sales online. If compliance for brick and mortar stores moved out of the entryway and into the mandated height of display cases, counters, signage for colorblind patrons, and mandatory gluten free options there would be a deluge of lobbyists to stop it.
  - lexicality 7y ago
    All of those (except for the gluten) are already covered by the ADA though?

steelframe 7y ago

> using the web normally Perhaps one way to approach the issue is for people who build web frameworks to reconsider their anchor of "normal."

ben_jones 7y ago
You can hate the deficiencies of screen readers and accessibility specifications while still supporting the individuals who need to use them. Reading OP it seems like his team is shouldering a disproportionate amount of what should be a shared burden.
- dymk 7y ago
  A common tactic of the ever-offended "woke" internet user is ignoring intended meaning, assuming the worst, and making some nonconstructive comment about how "unwoke" everybody else is (e.g. "your normal is the incorrect one")
- inetknght 7y ago
  What burden do you think should be shared by whom?
  - oauea 7y ago
    The developers of screen reader apps are responsible for presenting the information to the user, just like a browser is. It is a mystery to me that they've managed to shove that burden onto every single developer who builds a website. The data is already there and Google manages to extract what's relevant, why can't the screen readers?
    - ckuhl 7y ago
      To me that argument doesn't make sense... It seems like arguing that because there are wheelchairs that can climb staircases, there's no need to make buildings wheelchair accessible. I thing the problem with this argument is that it shifts the burden of serving all people (including disabled people) from the company providing the service to a person who is disabled. That's exactly what the ADA was supposed to prevent.

boringuser1 7y ago

I like how people pretend these massive undertakings for a minority of the populace is somehow a justified standard. If Byzantine laws require massive resource investment for minorities, hire a specialized accessibility contractor. A web developer is not a social worker.

josefresco 7y ago

I've done WCAG / ADA work over the last two years and it's been a wake up call for government funded organizations and even small businesses, not to mention designers, developers and staff who manage content. From my experience, most of these lawsuits are "predatory" in nature. Law firm finds a sympathetic case, sues as many orgs as they can, and collects massive fees along the way while the web developers get thrown under the bus, or also collect massive fees (yay?!?). The same can be said for "workshops" that teach people about compliance. Passing automated WCAG tests, vs actually following the "spirit" of compliance are two completely different things. I've spent countless hours attempting to get my code to pass automated tests, just so when I pass back to the client they don't throw it back in my lap, despite my code being fully compliant and accessible. We also do design work, and work with external designers with no concept of accessibility. Often (most) times, clients dictate the design and often make decisions that violate accessibility rules. Color contrast, "wiz bang" features are the two most common violators. Full accessibility limits design freedom considerably. I met with a 100% government funded org just last week and told them their (hundred + page) site (no CMS) was not in any way compliant. You should have seen the look on their faces. They then proceeded to show me websites they like, to inspire a redesign project and NONE of them were even remotely compliant despite all the examples also being gov funded. 20-30% in the cost increase to make a new website project fully compliant. Retrofitting an old website? The cost could easily exceed the initial development. To be clear, I'm not saying websites should not be compliant, just that ... it's messy and the guidelines aren't always clear. Aggressive law firms are only making things worse. Final note: The accessibility capabilities of social networks are ... not good. Where do you post transcriptions of your Facebook video? Where do you specify alt tags, or "long descriptions"? The list is extensive. Final final note: Once your web developer is "done". Your staff who blogs and the content creators that fuel this work can ruin everything. Staff training is often overlooked.

roel_v 7y ago
"Aggressive law firms are only making things worse." Are they? Would you, or the one writing the cheque, care without them?
- 7y ago

itsaidpens 7y ago

As an aside, I do not think Apple gets nearly enough credit for designing iOS, WatchOS and MacOS with the needs of the blind and disabled in mind. It's truly a beautiful thing.

PaulHoule 7y ago

This was a priority at Cornell until the Peoplesoft/Duffield Hall disaster happened and at that point anybody in IT had a target on their back. The most used web page at Cornell has been the weather report for the longest time, but CIT didn't know and shut it off out of ignorance. Then all of a sudden they get hundreds of calls. IT at Cornell was a center of excellence in the past, but since Lehman left, it as seem as a cost center that gets in the way of hiring more academics.

driverdan 7y ago
Your post assumes readers have a significant amount of knowledge about Cornell. Most of us have no idea what the "Peoplesoft/Duffield Hall disaster" was, what CIT stands for, or who Lehman is.
- PaulHoule 7y ago
  CIT == Cornell Information Technology, the central IT organization. The Peoplesoft/Duffield Hall disaster was two connected scandals. David Duffield (the Peoplesoft founder) donated money to build Duffield hall, which houses a national nanotechnology center. That nanotechnology also received startup funds from the NSF, which required that Cornell raise matching funds from some source that wasn't the NSF. When they demanded documentation, Cornell said that was impossible (paperwork is SNAFU), the NSF said "This is an eligibility requirement, not a reporting requirement". Cornell was informed it wouldn't be getting any more funding from the NSF if it didn't correct the situation. Around the same time Cornell attempted a Peoplesoft implementation that went at least $50 million over budget while implementing only 20% of the original scope. The first project manager they hired said there was no way they could do the project with the budget they wanted, they fired him and hired a Yes Man. The rest is history. Jeff Lehman was president of Cornell for about a year. He announced his resignation at Alumni week, shocking people. The cause of his resignation was kept secret, but I can't help but believe that he took office when the above mentioned scandals hit. (These certainly were not his fault because the situations started before his watch) What I do know is that there was a severe money pinch, which caused a series of cascading failures, and also that everything at Cornell that was unique and special had to fight for it's right to exist, while they kept chasing the same fads as all the other Ivys. Was this why Lehman quit? I don't know. But I do know if he stayed he would have been cleaning up an awful mess instead of leading new initiatives.

challenger22 7y ago

The expected steady-state outcome of this situation is that all website-owning educational companies will be targeted for lawsuits, many of which are valid, and many of which are not. The net effect of these lawsuits will primarily be a massive loss of productivity. It is very technically challenging and labor intensive to make websites accessible to the blind or otherly disabled, and doing so is to the benefit of a very small population, who will continue to primarily use other communication platforms anyway. Net effect: For every hour of time saved for the blind or otherly disabled, dozens of hours of time spent by others. A saner society would choose a different path. I wish I could see actual statistics on this, I admit this is wild speculation on my part.

dgacmu 7y ago
You're thinking short term. And you're probably right, short term. But we had the same set of concerns raised about many other ADA issues in the past, such as wheelchair-accessible ramps and doors. Over time, the standard practices (and what we'd think of as tooling and common design patterns) for new construction evolved. ADA lawsuits about websites create a similar incentive for long-term change. and, hopefully, just as we've realized that ADA compliance benefits all of us, whether it's in the form of getting old or pushing strollers or nursing a sprained ankle, we'll get to the point where the improved information availability from ADA compliance becomes an intrinsic part of the power of the web.
- challenger22 7y ago
  I think that even long-term the approach as described in TFA will always require many hours of work for an hour of time saved. The saner way to do it is probably have direct personal assistance for the blind. Phone call systems for the deaf and hard of hearing have been in place for decades, and many of these systems rely on direct personal assistance.
  - paulryanrogers 7y ago
    It's only saner if you value the money of website companies over the dignity of their users

jmenn 7y ago

My university went through an accessibility remediation process recently, and it was a rather nightmarish undertaking. Many universities have multiple (thousands) of individual microsites that are largely untouched for years at a time, and I've always wondered if these would be targeted by people looking to bring a complaint. Our HTML was more or less fine (though we found and fixed a few bugs), but the unbelievable number of PDFs and un-captioned videos nearly broke us. The culture shift has been difficult, particularly with people who want to post videos or PDFs but don't have the resources or training to make those pieces of content accessible.

dreamcompiler 7y ago
And I'll bet the vast majority of those PDFs were bitmaps made by somebody printing them on paper and then scanning them in because they didn't know how to make a text-based PDF directly from Word, or why doing so was a better idea.
wastedhours 7y ago
> Many universities have multiple (thousands) of individual microsites that are largely untouched for years at a time Wholeheartedly agree with this. I once hosted a microsite on my personal server for a group at the university I was a web flunkey for as it needed to get up quickly, and well, corporate IT wasn't the fastest thing there, and it took them years to ask for changes after I'd left. It's usually pretty easy for universities to update their main public facing pages, but as you mention, it's the thousands of other, quite often slightly bespoke (as this Professional or that Dr wants their own, custom slice) that's the breaker.

umvi 7y ago

Ugh, implementing a11y correctly is onerous... I feel like screen readers need to get better, not the other way around

simion314 7y ago
Do you have an example of an improvement? I mean if you use ad iv or img instead of a button how will the reader know that is a button? Do you use the reader mode in Firefox or similar extensions? Have you seen webpages where it does not work or instead of grabbing only the content it grabs a lot of the advertising and other garbage? Accessible webpage would help people that use reader mode too.
- infamia 7y ago
  Even when using semantic markup as you describe, there are still accessibility gotchas waiting to pounce. https://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2019/06/04/grid-content-re-ordering-and-accessibility/ https://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2019/06/04/grid-cont...

i_rawr_u 7y ago

I used to do Help Desk while attending University and often times people would have trouble using JAWS (screen reader) on Blackboard/Canvas pages. Almost made finishing school work impossible and those companies didn't seem to be putting in any effort accessibility wise.

iwasakabukiman 7y ago

I work in government and this is a major issue right now. We've basically pulled any and all content that wasn't required to be online from our website until it has been "certified accessible" by a third party. It's not the government I work for, but a nearby sheriff's office took their website completely offline and replaced it with a simple text based site[1]. The cost to make their old site accessible and the liability of leaving it up was too high. That said and as others have mentioned in their comments, all of these institutions know that accessibility is mandated by law and they've just kind of ignored it. [1] https://www.alachuasheriff.org https://www.alachuasheriff.org

inferiorhuman 7y ago
That's not a "simple text based site", it's simply a landing page. A "simple text based site" would probably be easier for everyone involved.
- iwasakabukiman 7y ago
  Is a landing page not a subset of simple text based site?
  - wtallis 7y ago
    No. You don't make a building accessible by putting a sign on the front saying "wheelchairs not welcome", and you shouldn't make a web site "accessible" by gutting it of all content and functionality that isn't already accidentally accessible. This is at best a case of malicious compliance.
    - iwasakabukiman 7y ago
      I never said it was accessible. I said it was a text based site, which it is. I feel like you're misunderstanding on purpose just to argue. I also never said that it was okay for them to do that. But it meets the minimum requirements of the law and is legally compliant (or so their lawyer says). In fact, my point was that they should not do that. They did it to avoid getting sued. Now any functionality they could have offered, such as online crime reporting or crime stat lookups, are not even options.

cujic9 7y ago

Isn't this the ADA working as designed? My understanding is that the ADA is enforced specifically by citizens filing complaints which turn into lawsuits. It's great that these lawsuits actually carry enough weight to make the universities take action. In other cases, companies repeatedly get fined for some violation (pollution comes to mind) and simply see it as a cost of doing business.

JamesBarney 7y ago

While I want the web to be maximally accessible to all individuals it seems like these lawsuit have had a chilling effect on things like opencourseware and open access to university courses.

miguelmota 7y ago

If you want to make a website accessible without much effort then don't add shitty animations that hide content, don't use divs for buttons and links, don't use modals for everything, don't make text that's barely readable, etc, keep it simple and stick to semantic HTML. I made a checklist years ago https://github.com/miguelmota/web-accessibility https://github.com/miguelmota/web-accessibility

mncharity 7y ago

Much of the discussion here is about commercially viable sites. Some budget and staffing exists to make progress, and some chunk of that will be redirected to a11y. I deal also with science research and education outreach content. There's often no budget. No staff. Crufty pages put up by graduate students. Or zombie sites left up long after their funding is gone. It's severely bottlenecked on overworked people finding a bit of time to volunteer on something that helps the world and largely doesn't help them. Even having a working web server is a challenge. It's profoundly marginal, and every tweak of barrier energy directly throttles how much of it occurs. High-stakes a11y could be a disaster for this area. The liability exposure, associated administrative hassle, and simple bare technical cost, might have severe impact. When Berkeley took down years of youtube lectures in response to DoJ ADA concerns, they had already stopped making new ones pubic. So while dramatic negative impact on the scale of large projects is a thing, I'm more worried about the smaller-scale but systemic stuff. For marginal efforts, an "if it's public, there are requirements and risks" has a straightforward impact - it won't be public, it won't exist. At least not there.* And if a11y requirements aren't grandfathered, then as standards rise, the long tail of pages that persist long after their authors have moved on, retired, or died, that persist until a host name changes or a disk dies, will likely be intentionally cut off. Like corporate email retention minimization, but for human knowledge on the web. Having watched copyright compliance dramatically slow open education content creation at a range of scales, and HIPAA kill off promising work on patient-created orientation content, and now hearing of "high-stakes" a11y... I worry that we don't fully appreciate just how large a price in retarded progress we're choosing to pay, since it's hard-to-see "that which might now exist... doesn't; those we might have helped... weren't". *Or... maybe small-scale content will simply be shifted off university sites, onto personal ones? And google and archive.org can fill in the gaps? There's already a trend of research groups having two sites; an institutional one, and a second more extensive one under the personal control of the professor who might move elsewhere. And graduate students having their own, describing their own work. So perhaps "high-stakes" a11y will merely accelerate this?

shakna 7y ago
Small scale educational and research sites tend to already be accessible. The default behaviours of HTML and default CSS are accessible to a reasonable degree. PDFs that aren't scans are accessible. It tends to be when one overrides behaviour that you start to become inaccessible. JS is awful for breaking a site for a screen reader as the purpose and contents can change after or during it being read. Scientists and researchers, in my experience, don't tend to futz with the markup, because it's just the delivery tool, not their purpose.

SamuelAdams 7y ago

Mods, can you update this article to have (2018) in the title? The original article [1] was published on December 4, 2018, nearly 6 months ago. The lawsuit was filed on November 17, 2018 [2]. [1]: https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Colleges-including-Saint-Rose-hit-with-mass-13442769.php https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Colleges-including-S... [2]:https://www.scribd.com/document/394914375/Camacho-v-St-Rose#from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/394914375/Camacho-v-St-Rose#...

dillonmckay 7y ago

I find some of these comments quite bizarre. Section 508 has been around, for what, 20 years? And using lynx to see how a document is rendered was used quite a bit, for both some accessibility assessment, and also SEO. I can definitely see how difficult this can be as an after-thought, but higher-ed should know better. This is not a new requirement.

talmand 7y ago
I always understood that Section 508 applied only to US Federal agencies and any third-party products they make use of.
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  If they are receiving federal monies (student loans and grants), they must comply.
ineedasername 7y ago
I still used to use lynx on a semi-regular basis until modern frameworks resulted in sites that were simply not usable.

evunveot 7y ago

Would the plaintiff still have a case if the defendants staffed a phone line with someone available to navigate the websites by verbal instruction and made the availability of that service obvious? (I believe phone companies already provide speech <-> text services for people who can't speak and/or hear.) Seems like a decent compromise.

reaperducer 7y ago
I've seen some web sites recently that have small text at the bottom reading something like, "Need help reading this web site? Call 800-xxx-xxx for assistance." I don't know if that stands up in a court of law, but it's an interesting way to handle the problem.

sequoia 7y ago

My suspicion is that a major aspect of this is the proliferation of SPAs built with tools that make accessibility seriously difficult. If you have an old-fashioned web application that spits out HTML only, congratulations, your site is already 90% of the way to compliance! Most of the a11y issues arise not from omitting some special step, but from breaking behaviour the browser already provides by default. Tabstops: browsers have these but if you mix up forms with crazy CSS they don't work well. Focus states: there by default, frequently removed by CSS. Font sizes & contrast: high contrast & adequately large (and scalable!) by default. Semantic HTML, alt tags, and a "skip to content" link are up to you, combine those with not breaking the browser's behaviour and you're 90% there, maybe 100%. In the process of reinventing the web UI wheel, a lot of the a11y features of the browser were forgotten.

leepowers 7y ago

Accessibility is hard. It's not just a technical problem. It informs every stage of conceptualizing, designing, and implementing a web site. Accessibility is end-to-end. For instance WCAG 2.1 requires a minmum text color contrast ratio of 4.5:1. If a web designer and other stakeholders haven't taken this on board there's a risk they'll select an inaccessible color palette. And that's just one requirement. Designs that appeal to management and other stakeholders are more often hostile to accessibility than not. https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/#contrast-minimum https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/#contrast-minimum

nrjewknbgkr 7y ago

Why aren't we designing the web to be "accessible first" instead of "mobile first". It's gotta be exponentially more difficult to retrofit accessibility on top of a site designed for sighted users instead of vice-versa. Isn't that the same premise behind why the web started designing "mobile first"?

DesertShadow 7y ago

Plenty of water was flowing through Taughannock Falls on Tuesday