For the Blind, a Welcoming Web

For the Blind, a Welcoming Web

Braille Monitor

January

2005

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For the

Blind, a Welcoming Web

by

Sarah Lacey

From the Editor: The

following story appeared in Business Week Online on October 27, 2004.

Slowly but surely disability

advocates are gaining ground in their quest to make Internet sites more accessible

to the visually impaired. Lainey Feingold is trying to use the carrot instead

of the stick in her dealings with America's big financial institutions. Feingold,

an attorney in Berkeley, California, specializes in brokering agreements between

corporations and advocates for the blind, who think companies aren't doing enough

to make their bank machines, brochures, and Web sites accessible to the vision-impaired.

Having

spent much of her career writing letters in support of ATMs that talk, her latest

cause is Web site accessibility. In 1999 the World Wide Web Consortium, known

as W3C, which sets computer-programming standards for Web-related technologies,

issued voluntary guidelines to help the blind access Web sites.

Setting

Standards: To Feingold, who says vision-impaired customers should have the same

access to online banking as they do to ATMs, it's a key issue: "You wouldn't

put up a Web site and say, `To enter, you need blond hair,' but if you don't

code the pages so that a [vision-] disabled person can access it, you may as

well have that kind of sign," she says.

Feingold

is one of many advocates for the blind trying to woo--not sue--companies into

compliance with the W3C's accessibility guidelines. The issue came to the forefront

in the late nineties, when banking sites started appearing on the Net. By now

many industry watchers expected there would be a law requiring Web sites to

adopt the W3C's standards.

So

far only a handful of countries, Britain foremost among them, have turned those

guidelines into law. In 1999 Web accessibility was included in Britain's Disabled

Discrimination Act. The Web accessibility portions just went into effect on

October 1.

Mixed

Reviews: The U.S. hasn't ignored the issue, but it lags behind Britain. In 1998

the federal government amended the thirty-one-year-old Rehabilitation Act to

include Section 508, which requires all federal agencies and companies doing

business with the government to comply with some basic Web site accessibility

guidelines. Section 508 has received mixed reviews. Many companies seeking federal

dollars are still confused how to abide by the law. And some advocates say many

sites are technically compliant under Section 508 but still difficult to use.

Instead,

most advocacy groups say the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits

discrimination by employers and businesses, should be the legal benchmark for

Web-site accessibility. But that's yet to be tested in court. "There's

a misunderstanding that the ADA automatically applies to the Web, and it's not

clear at all that it does," says Bradley Hodges, technology accessibility

manager for the National Federation of the Blind. "Reasonable people disagree

on this."

Count

on Eliot Spitzer to use the stick if Web sites don't come through with more

options for the nation's ten million blind and visually impaired. In July New

York's crusading attorney general announced Web-accessibility agreements with

Ramada.com and Priceline.com (PCLN). Spitzer sent a letter to the companies

in January and launched an investigation, but they complied before he filed

suit and even reimbursed the New York attorney general's office for the cost

of the probe. Spitzer had argued that making a Web site that's not accessible

violates the ADA.

Site

Revamps: Priceline didn't argue and started working on its site right away,

says spokesman Brian Ek. By the time the August announcement was made in Spitzer's

office, the airline-ticketing part of the Norwalk, Connecticut, discount e-tailer's

site had been recoded to be easily read by screen readers. These PC programs

typically read sites like a page of a book--left to right and top to bottom.

They allow a blind person to hear, rather than read, a Web site. "Once

we were made aware of it, we did it because it was the right thing to do,"

Ek says.

Nonetheless,

advocacy groups say they want to keep this fight out of the legal system. "We'd

rather not have Congress tell anyone how to design their Web sites," Hodges

says. "We'd rather work collaboratively to make it happen."

Web

accessibility can be tricky, and guidelines have to constantly be updated. For

the visually impaired it's really all about making sure that the programming

code used to build the site is friendly to screen readers. That's why many banks

now have log-in information on the top-right-hand corner. Before, blind users

would have to listen to everything on the page before they could log in to check

account balances.

Advocates

say they want Web-site usability, not mere compliance. Hodges, who is blind,

says he's able to use more sites than he could a few years ago but says few

are flawless. By playing nice with companies, organizations like the NFB and

other groups hope they can consult with big companies, rather than bicker with

them. And because blind people are weighing in, advocacy groups say the results

are better.

Friendly

Tactics: By all accounts, the amicable approach is working for Feingold, too,

who often represents advocacy groups such as the American Council of the Blind.

Just last summer she wrote a letter to Citizens Bank of Providence, Rhode Island,

asking for talking ATMs and blind-friendly improvements to its Web site. Citizens

Bank agreed and three months ago detailed its plans for both by the end of the

year.

She's

helped negotiate similar agreements with more than a half-dozen other financial

institutions, ranging from Bank of America (BAC) to Citibank, part of Citigroup

(C). For all the friendly talk, the advocates' attorneys are hardly powerless.

There's potential for lousy public relations if a company ignores them. Many

believe that the ambiguities of the ADA will be better defined in the courtroom.

And companies are always reluctant to lock out potential customers. "We

really don't even have an idea how large a market it potentially represents,"

says Priceline's Ek.

Nonetheless,

adding accessibility for blind people to a Web site can be a costly process.

If a company isn't starting a site redesign, retrofitting can cost about $160,000,

estimates Forrester Research. In the case of Sovereign Bank, Andrew Peterson,

vice president of Internet and emerging technology, says there was tremendous

pressure to create a flashy, glitzy site--the sort that isn't as easily comprehensible

to screen readers. "If we hadn't been contacted by an advocacy group,"

Peterson says, "I'm not sure we would have addressed it."

Web

Watchers: So why do it? Feingold hopes common sense wins out. By making a Web

site accessible to a blind person, the bank wins fans and keeps lawsuits at

bay. And it's not always expensive--at least if a site is already undergoing

a redesign. In the case of Philadelphia-based Sovereign Bank, complying with

accessibility guidelines carried just a 5 percent to 10 percent addition to

the budget when it launched its new site late last year.

It's

hard to say exactly how many Web sites are becoming more friendly to blind people.

Watchfire Corp., a Waltham, Massachusetts, tech outfit that makes tools to measure

how well Web sites work and comply with various regulations, says its software

is selling fast. Sales of its accessibility product, Bobby, are projected to

increase 79 percent this year. Agency.com and Avenue A Razorfish, a division

of aQuantive (AQNT), say more than half of big corporate customers ask about

Web accessibility for the blind. Just a few years ago it was no more than 10

percent. However, Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group doubts it's that

high across all businesses. His firm does usability studies for Web sites and

says every year companies with accessible sites increase by about 4 percent.

Ungentle

Persuasion? Advocacy groups aren't insisting sites be perfect. Most just want

a signal that companies are trying. But make no mistake--it's serious business.

The NFB wasn't around when the printing press was invented, but "we're

around today, and we do believe the Internet should be accessible," Hodges

says.

The friendly letters are

working. But if the carrots can't encourage more progress, expect the lawyers

with their big sticks to get to work.

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