CNET: Judge: Disabilities Act doesn’t cover Web. A federal judge ruled Friday that Southwest Airlines does not have to revamp its Web site to make it more accessible to the blind.
Simply put, the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) does not apply to the Internet.
The article is disappointingly full of FUD from critics of the ADA. For instance:
- The slippery slope argument, that some random guy selling T-shirts online would have to comply with the ADA and would be put out of business. (False; the ADA exempts small businesses with less than 15 employees.)
- The undue burden argument, that making your web site accessible requires
chang[ing] everything about someone’s business practices to make it simple to do things
. (False; all he needed was ALT text.) - The lack of authority argument, that the W3C’s accessibility guidlines were not
a generally accepted authority
. (Tell that to the US government, which based its own accessibility guidelines for federal agencies on the W3C’s. Other governments have done likewise.) - The incredibly bizarre argument that the W3C’s accessibility guidelines somehow don’t count because they’re three years old. (I don’t even know what to say to that.)
