KenB - 6:18 pm on Sep 14, 2006 (gmt 0)

No you are missing the difference between standards and legally required safety guidelines. It is a legally required safety guidline to make sure all live wires are secured and grounded with no bare exposures. It is a standard to use red wiring for live and white wiring for grounds. Not legally required

Actually electrical codes (e.g. law) require the use of specific color codes for wiring in most areas.

With that said, I would agree that electricians are a poor comparison to web developers.

A more applicable comparable profession may be an interpreter or medical transcriptionist. In many areas these professionals are required to be licensed/certified and we would expect these individuals to maintain a specific level of professionalism.

Ideally there would be no need for laws regarding web development, but history has shown there do need to be laws to protect/enable those with disabilities. Think of how hard big companies like McDonald's fought against building the most basic levels of accessibility into their stores (e.g. curb cutouts). It was senseless, it took no more effort to add a curb cutout in the sidewalk and eliminate steps to the door when constructing new facilities, yet they fought against it every step of the way. Businesses like McDonald's did not add these basic levels of accessibility to their stores until it was mandated by law.

Given the fact of how long web development accessibility guidelines have been in existence, the fact that the WWW was designed from the ground up to be accessible and given the current state of the accessibility of sites like Target's it is all too apparent that these guidelines will not be taken seriously until they are required by law. Hopefully it can be done by applying existing laws without needing to write new laws.

Accessibility guidelines are in the end about creating more opportunities for those with disabilities like blindness, and affording them more opportunities to lead a more normal life. In short this is about basic human dignity and the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In the end the basic levels of website accessibility asked for in the lawsuit against Target and we have been talking about here does not add any extra costs or burdens to the website development process but it would make a tremendous difference in the lives of millions of people who are blind or have other disabilities that preclude their ability to use traditional input/output devices like a mouse and video display.