Beagle - 7:44 pm on Sep 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

I know a webmaster who is mentally disabled. This person has worked very hard over several years to build a few websites, and is squeaking a living out with the help of those websites. Could this person follow some online ADA guidelines if they were made aware of them? Maybe. I imagine they would like to. However, I just don't have high hopes of their code ever being valid.

oneguy, can this person learn to make and use ALT tags? If so, he or she is way ahead of where Target was when they got sued. It's been said several times, but maybe needs to repeated again, that Target's problem wasn't not having valid code, but not providing very basic accessibility, which I think your friend could do, since he or she is capable of building a website in the first place. Target also wasn't blindsided by this suit, so I wouldn't worry about your friend getting sued "tomorrow," although there might be an email from someone who tried to use the site and couldn't. Using the basic accessibility techniques will also help your friend's site do better with the search engines and make it accessible to mobile device users.

As was also pointed out, when the ADA was passed, the internet as it now exists... didn't. The application of the ADA to the internet is in the case law stage, which almost always has to happen before legislation and/or set regulations are passed. Target made themselves [I'll avoid the pun] a sitting duck by not responding to requests to provide even the very basic level of accessibility, or as far as I can tell, to even say "We have a big site, so it'll take some time, but we're working on it." If this case stays the course, as I hope it does, it will provide a very basic bottom line of accessibility that sites should aim for.

I did do some looking around on government sites after this topic came up, and while there are no specific ADA regulations yet for the internet, everything I read referred to the WWWC's basic accessibility guidelines, which are the basis for the quote that was given above from section 508 (regulations that apply to government websites and sites of companies that do business with the government). If anything, the section 508 requirements will be more strict than those for non-government-related websites.

Generally I only lurk on this site, except for comments on writing/copyright in which I do have some background, and an occasional post about affiliate programs, because I'm not a webmaster in the strict sense of the word and am here to pick up what information I can. The only websites I run exist to communicate with others who share my hobbies/passions/obsessions, with enough affiliate links to (sometimes) cover my $5/month hosting costs. Because I realize I'm w-a-y below the level of other members, I don't generally advertise how pathetically ignorant I actually am, but IMVHO my ignorance is pertinent to this discussion:

I use an old WYSIWYG program (no longer available for purchase) that doesn't even allow me to edit all of the HTML - does that tell you how much HTML I know? But, guess what, even with that obsolete WYSIWYG program and HTML knowledge that's at the level of being able to ask, "Where's the bathroom?" in a foreign language, I can meet all of the WWWC's level 1 priority accessibility guidelines, most of the level 2 priority guidelines, and some of level 3; BTW, the info I found on government sites never mentioned website responsibility for anything beyond the priority 1 guidelines. Yes, I hope to keep learning more so I can continue to do better (that's why I lurk here), but in the meantime I'm just saying - meeting the basic accessibility guidelines does not take an unreasonable amount of ability, knowledge, or time.

The most difficult part of following the guidelines is finding them in a way that makes them easy to use. On the WWWC site, look for "list version of the checkpoints", which lists them by priority level.