Judge Rejects Web Site Disability Suit

Computerworld - A federal judge in Miami last month rejected a lawsuit contending that Southwest Airlines Co. violated the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) because its Web site was inaccessible to blind users.

At issue in the case is whether corporate Web sites fall under the aegis of the ADA. In one of the first court decisions on the act's applicability to the Internet, U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Seitz ruled that the ADA concerns physical spaces, not virtual ones. She left it up to Congress to decide whether to broaden the disability law to include cyberspace.

But in a footnote to her 12-page decision, Seitz expressed surprise that Dallas-based Southwest hasn't used "all available technologies to expand accessibility to its Web site for visually impaired customers who would be an added source of revenue."

Southwest spokeswoman Christine Turneabe-Connelly acknowledged that some screen readers—software that converts on-screen text to audio or a refreshable Braille display—may have had compatibility problems with the company's Web site. Southwest is "exploring some possibilities" to make the site more user-friendly for blind or visually impaired users, she said.

Problems with Web site accessibility aren't uncommon, said Edward Resnick, president of Access Now Inc., a Miami Beach, Fla.-based advocacy group that filed the suit. Accessibility is strictly a matter of whether a Web site's designer "programmed it for people who are blind," he said. Access Now and a blind individual claimed in the suit that Southwest's online virtual ticket counters are "extremely difficult"—though technically possible—for the blind to use. The plaintiffs plan to appeal Seitz's decision.

Many companies rush to create Web sites without considering accessibility issues and may later balk at spending money to retrofit their sites, said Jennifer Vollmer, an analyst at Meta Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn. As a rule, she said, building in accessibility during the site design process costs one quarter of retrofitting work.

Web site accessibility "should be a no-brainer," she said. "But it has just not been a priority for companies."

The World Wide Web Consortium has published a set of accessibility guidelines that developers can follow to open up Web sites. But companies also have to increase the accessibility awareness and training of programmers, said Gerry Santoro, an assistant professor of information sciences and technology at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

Web Site Accessibility Tips INCLUDE background descriptions of images that can be read by screen readers. PROVIDE captioning for multimedia. ALLOW users to stop or pause elements that are moving, blinking or scrolling. AVOID the use of color by itself to signal links or actions that users could take. USE headings, lists and a consistent structure to organize pages. Source: World Wide Web Consortium