ADA guidelines for webpages?

[Prentiss Riddle]

> From drewwe at MORRISVILLE.EDU  Wed May 13 14:47:27 1998
> Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 15:51:42 -0400
> From: Wilfred Drew <drewwe at MORRISVILLE.EDU>
> Subject: Re: ADA guidelines for webpages?
> To: Prentiss Riddle <riddle at is.rice.edu>
> Organization: SUNY Morrisville College Library
> 
> I am actually looking for a document that lists the
> guidelines or requirements much in the way that DOJ's ADA
> wesite has a document clearly telling you how to stripe a
> parking lot for handicapped spaces.
> There are many sites with conflicting "standards" for
> improving access to the web by the so-called disabled or
> handicapped. Clearly we need a concise set of standards from
> the feds.

Yes and no.  I hesitate to drag web4lib into a philosophical argument
about government regulation, but it does seem clear to me that with the
technology changing as fast as it is, rigid guidelines might do more
harm than good.

Even in the parking lot example you cite, there's always the
possibility that a clever engineer could come up with a better way of
striping them.  On the web, with the technology changing under our feet
every day, it seems certain that a single standard would get very old
very fast and might impede creative solutions that would better serve
the needs of disabled users.

That said, most of us don't have time to engage in thorough
disability/usability research, so an authority we can fall back on
would be welcome, provided it allows flexibility for more creative
approaches.  My reading of the DOJ letter cited by Tom Gooch
(http://www.disrights.org/data/doj.webaccess.txt -- thanks, Tom, as I'm
not sure what I had seen previously but it wasn't that letter) is that,
wonder of wonders, the DOJ does permit such flexibility and seems also
to give a back-handed endorsement of lynx compatibility as an
acceptable and easily implemented minimum standard.  Or am I being
overly generous to the author of the DOJ letter?

-- Prentiss Riddle ("aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada") riddle at rice.edu
-- Webmaster, Rice University / http://is.rice.edu/~riddle