Accessibility NOT required by law

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Accessibility NOT required by law
by Gildas on Monday 12/Apr/2004, @18:02

What the government requires is that if the government purchases electronic information & technology they must purchase the MOST ACCESSIBLE version that meets all the requirements.

Saying the law requires accessibility is out of context and simply not true.

Related Links

·   Articles on Interviews
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Re: Accessibility NOT required by law
by Derek Kite on Monday 12/Apr/2004, @19:26

Under the American's with Disabilities Act, employers must make reasonable accommodations for those with disabilities. When it comes time to chose a computer system, and there is one (or many) that have accessibility functions, and one that doesn't, I suspect a judge would say that reasonable accommodation means choosing the systems that accommodate. It would be difficult to convince a judge that it is 'undue hardship' to provide a system when they are commonly available.

So, if I were an employer in the US, and I would consider it defacto required by law. That is why SUN and others have worked on the accessibility functions. Employers that want to use Linux for other cost savings should foot the bill for the development.

http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/q&aeng02.htm

And on human terms, I think it is a display of respect if our systems can be used by those with disabilities. Any one of us could be disabled by some accident or illness. It is one more design parameter that needs to be taken into consideration.

Derek

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Re: Accessibility NOT required by law
by David on Tuesday 13/Apr/2004, @10:15

Personally, I find the legality of all this hazy. We have stuff like this here in the UK for websites and other systems, but it has never been enforced at all (not likely to either). You just can't sell usability - the above interview is dead right. However, we have high standards in the free software community and there is no reason why something should not be done about accessibility, and it is. I think the free and open source community is great in this respect. If something can be done, and it is worthwhile, then it will be.

Matthias is very right though - we desperately need a system wide IPC/messaging system that anything can plug into. This will not be based on CORBA, or if it is then several layer of standards will need to be developed on top of it. Ask any programmer who does commercial development why they don't use CORBA if you don't know this already. Alternatively, go to your local bookstore, find a book on CORBA and try to 'lift it'. D-BUS looks like a good bet, but I haven't read enough about it and haven't tried it.

This is so badly needed that I really couldn't care a less whether it uses glib or not - I just want my desktop to be able to do things. If there can be a decent compromise where just about any part of a system can plug into it, I think it will be a massive step forward.

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