Lisa Fedorak cried for an entire week. She recently moved in to her newly built home by Habitat for Humanity. This new home accommodates the needs of her seven-year-old daughter, Scarlett who is permanently disabled and wheelchair-bound due to a rare genetic disorder. In their previous home, Scarlett’s wheelchair couldn’t even fit through the doors of the bathroom; she was forced to crawl on the floor and was in constant care of her parents. In her new home, Scarlett can roam around independently like any other seven-year-old. She can get up the stairs by herself, use the bathroom without crawling or assistance and even set the table for family meals. Habitat for Humanity didn’t just give her a new home, they gave her access to life.
In North America, we have placed a commendable amount of effort to ensure that we provide equal access to people with physical disabilities. We have building codes that legally dictate the accessibility design requirements a building must fulfill. Architects are taught how to adhere to those very same building codes and design for accessibility in their schooling. We live in a society where we recognize that we need to care for one another by providing equal access to those of us who are physically disadvantaged. But as a society, we are missing the mark to provide everyone equal access to the web regardless of their apparent abilities.
An accessible web reduces the barrier for those with disabilities to “perceive, understand, navigate, and interact” on the web. The range of disabilities that are affected by web accessibility include health conditions, such as blindness, arthritis and ADHD, to age-related impairments or even temporary or situational impairments, which could be as simple as using a screen in bright sunlight. The majority of us can identify with these disabilities whether we have it, experienced it or know some who have. But then why do we fail so poorly when it comes to providing the same level of service that we have in place for physical access to those with disabilities that affects their ability to access the web, especially when more and more of our daily transactions are now online?
United Nations Global Audit of Web Accessibility
In 2006, the United Nations commissioned a global audit of 100 leading websites from 20 countries in the world. Unsurprisingly, they found that most of the audited websites did not meet the international standards for web accessibility at that time. You may be thinking that 2006 was almost a decade ago and the modern internet was still young. You say — Twitter just launched as an SMS service back then. But in all of the inter-web’s history, 2006 already marked the 10-year anniversary of the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), the organization that provides guidance and leads the standards development for web accessibility. Then why were those audited websites unsuccessful at even the simplest accessibility best practices like adding alt (alternative) text for images when web accessibility guidelines endorsed by the White House have already been around for a decade? A Dyson vacuum cleaner can tell the story…
National Federation of the Blind vs. Target Corporation
2006 was another big year for web accessibility. The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) filed a class action lawsuit against Target Corporation to challenge whether the limitations of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 applied to websites. What did Target neglect in web accessibility to cause this amount of outrage? It wasn’t that they weren’t fulfilling higher level accessibility requirements, such as providing captions for their videos. Like their peers in the UN audit, Target merely failed at the most basic level to provide adequate alt text for clickable images so that visually impaired shoppers using screen readers can navigate an online catalogue and understand what they were browsing. It was alleged that at that time, a screen reader will readout a Dyson vacuum cleaner merchandised on Taget.com as “Link GP browse dot html reference zero six zero six one eight nine six three eight one eight zero seven two nine seven three five 12 million 957 thousand 121” instead of a useful description of the image. Target even tried to get the case thrown out of court arguing that the disability act only applied to physical stores and the blind can simply access those stores as an alternative. Steve Jacobsen, a blind Target customer and a veteran computer system analyst says that “…[f]or years most of us were used to paying somebody to go with us shopping or relying on store help and going there, and then the Web came along. We found web pages were pretty easy to use and a lot of us who are blind found that this is pretty neat.” But unfortunately, the web was easy until it wasn’t. Target’s checkout process was inaccessible enough that Jacobsen claims that “[o]n occasion we’ve ordered from the Target website but when we have we’ve had to have somebody click on the button.”
Paying for Access
Jacobsen is just one of many who rely on others or pay for access to services that most of us view as nominal everyday tasks. Perhaps you’ve received such emails when you went to college:
Hello:
A student with a disability in your CHEM 205, 288 class is looking for a notetaker to start as soon as possible. Please drop-off your application by following the instructions below.
Notetakers are paid $337 for each 3 credit course and $674 for each 6 credit course. The job involves photocopying your notes or using NCR paper. This position is being posted by the Access and Diversity Office.
If you take neat and complete notes and attend class regularly, please fill out an application form available online…
These weren’t just opportunities for cash-strapped college students to earn some fast dollars. The diligent notetakers were lending their abilities to provide others with disabilities the opportunity for equal access to education.
While online in education, in the same year that Target was sued, the Project Management Institute (PMI) was also being sued for violating the United Kingdom’s Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) for failing to provide an accessible version of their internationally recognized computer-administered certification exam. Sam Latif, a blind IT Project Manager with Proctor & Gamble in the UK was studying to be a certified project manager with the PMI. In her course to obtain the certification, she struggled to find an adequate digital copy of the PMI-issued certification study guide that was compatible with her screen reader despite the fact that more than a million physical copies of the same guide were distributed worldwide. She finally paid a student six hours a week to read the guide aloud to her so that she can transcribe the text to study. Latif’s nightmares didn’t stop there. When it came time to take her exam, the testing centre refused her request to install her screen reader program in the testing computers so that the screen reader can dictate the exam for her. They also didn’t provide her with alternatives, such as transcribing the exam in a word processing document that can be read by her screen reader. At the end, she did however, finish and pass the exam with the help of a human reader and a laborious transcription process over the course of eight hours for what is supposed to be a four hour exam.
A Tidal Wave of Web Accessibility Lawsuits
Writing an exam and shopping online are typical tasks, but Latif and Jacobsen had to fight their way to receive an equal level of access to do things for what most of us would take for granted. For both the Target and the PMI cases, the plaintiffs were successful and the courts ruled that the defendants had violated the respective discrimination acts in the jurisdictions of the lawsuits.
In the case of Target, it was a landmark lawsuit in the history of web accessibility in the US, because it marked the first time that the federal court recognized an e-commerce store acts as a “gateway to a brick-and-mortar store” despite the fact that the ADA does not specifically mention any accessibility requirements for online stores. As a result of the case, Target established a $6 million fund for settlement claims. After they improved the accessibility of their site, the National Federation of the Blind even granted Target a Gold Level NFB-NVA (National Federation of the Blind Non-Visual Accessibility) certification in recognition of their efforts.
Critics of web accessibility lawsuits claim that accessibility plaintiffs are taking advantage of the situation seeing that most companies are not adequately prepared for an accessible online presence. For the last four years, the US federal Department of Justice delayed clarifying regulation for web accessibility causing more uncertainty around the subject. The new wave of web accessibility class action lawsuits generally target organizations that offer essential services in spaces such as finance, travel, job placement, large retailers, education and government, but that doesn’t mean that other organizations are immune.
The Government is Not Immune
Governments are not exempt to the tidal wave of accessibility lawsuits and often have to hold themselves to a higher standard. Most recently, the Government of Canada was sued by Donna Jodhan, a legally blind accessibility consultant, when she was unable to apply for a job and fill in application forms on the government’s websites.
The government lost the case and immediately followed the ruling by accelerating their implementation for federally-operated websites to meet the W3C’s web accessibility standards. Now, the Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada sponsors an innovative, award-winning open source project called the Web Experience Toolkit (WET) that serves as a framework built with best practices for web accessibility that any organization can leverage and reuse.
The Province of Ontario quickly followed the footsteps of their federal Ottawa counterparts. The province is leading accessibility regulation in Canada by easing in a phased enforcement of their regulation that mandates the minimum web accessibility standards, which companies and organizations operating in Ontario must meet to comply. The regulation also recognizes the challenges that small businesses may face when implementing these changes and therefore only organizations with over 50 employees are liable to the regulation. It’s a step in the right direction.
You’re Handicapped and You Probably Don’t Even Know It
You don’t have to be legally blind to be handicapped on the web. Remember that time when you’re outside squinting at your phone’s screen, because the sun is too bright and you can’t increase the screen’s brightness anymore? Or when your wireless mouse ran out of batteries and you had to tab your way to restart your computer? Then you’ve experienced technical disability.
Maybe you’re part of 8% of the male population of who is colour blind and can’t tell the difference between a red warning message vs. a green success one. Or perhaps you’ve broken your arm after that unfortunate ski run and was only able to use your keyboard to tap your way around the web. Or you may know of someone who may have had routine eye surgery for cataracts or maybe even a vanity face lift for the eyes. This is called transient disability.
Although many of the legal cases cited here are concerning the blind and those who are permanently disabled, if you have experienced technical or transient disability, then you can also be a benefactor of an accessible web.
Is Web Accessibility Worth It?
Many organizations and web developers still struggle with deciding whether or not to implement accessibility features, arguing that the user base that will likely take advantage of the features is too small to justify the additional costs in development and maintenance. Regulations and the risk of class action lawsuits are perceived just as scare tactics with questionable consistency of enforcement. But, accessibility can be good for business and there are case studies to prove it so.
Tesco in the UK was also an alt text criminal. The Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) took it upon themselves to invite Nick Lansey, a Tesco IT manager, to their office for a demonstration on how it was painfully slow for blind people to shop on Tesco.uk. After half an hour of frustration seeing no items in the demo shopper’s cart, Lansey’s visit ended with a realization of how inaccessible the Tesco website was and set out to fix it.
Between 2000 and 2001, Tesco launched a new and separate accessible website with the target goal of allowing all shoppers, including those who are visually impaired, the ability to checkout 30 items within 15 minutes. Their ambition paid off handsomely — the site’s sales increased by 13 million GBP annually, including 700k GBP increase per week during the Christmas season. Since then, Tesco has combined their main site and their accessible site for one web property that is accessible to all. Accessibility isn’t just for good development practices, it’s good for business.
A Future for Web Accessibility #a11y
Web accessibility is getting renewed attention in the web developer community. Developer evangelists like Marcy Sutton and Stephanie Hobson are making rounds at conferences and bringing the audiences to tears with their moving persuasion for #a11y (developer-speak for accessibility). Even some of those websites in the 2006 United Nations audit, such as Globe and Mail, now have official statements for web accessibility.
True, by the time you finish this article, you probably think that you should make accessible websites just to fend off class action lawsuits and potentially reap the benefits of untapped revenue. But, at the end of the day, we’re building the web for real people — people who we know, even yourself. You may say that you don’t know anyone who is blind or have apparent difficulties using the computer, but perhaps you do know of these types of people:
- Men: For every 12 men you know, likely 1 of them is colour blind.
- Women and people under age 65: 1 in 5 adults under the age of 65 are affected by doctor-diagnosed arthritis, with the disease more prevalent in the female population. Arthritis limits dexterity and fine motor movements required for operating a mouse.
- People aged 50+: About 65 % of this age group that makes up 20% of the world’s population are visually impaired. This age group is only increasing with the aging baby boomer generation.
These are just some of the conditions that affect the general population. As we age, we are likely to fall under these very same categories and rely on the technologies we build today.
So, go on, be selfish, create an accessible web that you can use in the future and others can use now — one alt text at a time.
If you are interested in learning more about web accessibility for your projects, visit W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative for best practices and resources.
Thanks to Alice Ko, Jeff Ling, and Laurent Goderre for reading drafts of this.
