Accessibility
Declan McCullagh’s popular Politech e-mail listserv recently published an essay by James Gattuso on “Why Americans with Disabilities Act should not apply to web”, supporting the recent court decision Access Now v. Southwest Airlines, which held that the ADA did not apply to Internet websites.
Although I’m not totally certain whether the court reached the correct result (i.e., whether the result was “best” and whether the result was “right”), Gattuso’s piece was rife with misconceptions. Here’s the response I sent Declan, although he declined to publish it [update 11/13/2002: Declan did, in fact, publish the response]:
CEI Research Fellow Gattuso’s claim that making websites accessible will stunt creativity, spontaneity, and functionality is disingenuous. Accessible websites need not eschew the use of color to convey information; rather, if certain information is conveyed through color or images, there ought to be an alternative mode that also conveys the same information. This is often as simple as adding ALT tags to images, as required by w3c standards. Accessibility rules would set a baseline for website design, but wouldn’t prevent any web designer from going beyond that with non-accessible chrome if she so desires.
Furthermore, accessibility is not just an ADA issue. A non-accessible website is often one that only renders properly with Internet Explorer; the pressure to create “Best viewed with IE” sites significantly reinforces Microsoft’s monopolostic powers.
Finally, I had trouble finding a weblog that fails basic accessibility guidelines. Weblogs are mostly plain text with hyperlinks in simple tables; although they don’t always pass w3c validation, they are usually quite readable by browsers designed for the blind, for example. Perhaps Gattuso can point us to some weblogs that would be harmed by a contrary ADA court decision. (not to mention that utter improbability of the ADA being applied to non-commercial personal weblogs even had the court decided otherwise).
Although there are few enforcement mechanisms for Internet standards, good netizens are expected to comply with them. These standards don’t stunt creativity; they create a democratic space where ideas can be exchanged, flourish, and grow. If not for some adherence to HTTP and HTML standards, the Internet would not be the rich informational resource it has become. For Gattuso to suggest that these sorts of rules would limit creativity on the web is to deny these first principles.