In the United States, a company has to make a good faith effort to provide accessibility. Target was sued after they were presented with a list of problems and given 6 months to correct them.
I would guess that the first major WCAG2 based lawsuit would be against a similar company that has disregarded accessibility completely. I don't expect it to be against a company that has tried, but not reached full validation. That would be too difficult to win and could set back the legal fight for accessibility in the long run. It's still our responsibility to educate those who build sites about what is needed and try to generate a world of good sites, big and small. They may not all be perfect but better. Ted www.last-child.com -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ian Stalvies Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2006 6:11 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [WSG] Accessibility standards - for commercial consumption Gian's comments certainly make sense, wondering though how this would fare if a large corporation appealed a case to the High Court (let's say they got a $2m fine, and having employed full-time accessibility lawyers, decided to prove a point) There's a section of the Aust. constitution (51, part 29 I think?) to do with the federal government's responsibilities to international treaties, agreements etc (this was used by the federal govt in 1983 to stop Tasmania creating the Franklin Dam) ... don't think this is strictly relevant but not sure whether the international standards would just be ignored in favour of the DDA, either (especially if it "recommends" rather than "dictates"). Would be interesting if there are any lawyers in this group to offer an opinion? Cheers ----Original Message Follows---- From: "Gian Sampson-Wild" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [email protected] To: <[email protected]> Subject: RE: [WSG] Accessibility standards - for commercial consumption Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 22:04:13 +1000 HREOC's big stick is to taking the offending company/government department to court. How do you think a case would go with HREOC saying the offending web site is inaccessible because it did not validate it's documents as required by the HREOC guidelines and the web site is inaccessible. And the defendant saying it complied with the accepted international standard, the WCAG 2.0 by ensuring that all it's documents could be parsed unambiguously. No judge is going to be able to understand the issues and with a good lawyer arguing accepted international standard vs HREOC guidelines, HREOC will be left paying hefty court costs. --- HREOC is the governing body in this instance and has successfully fought and won an accessibility case in Australia. When I talk to clients they ask why they have to worry about accessibility and I refer directly to the DDA. In Australia, what the DDA recommends is what is legally required. I think you do not give either judges or lawyers enough credit for being able to differentiate between overseas law and Australian law. Gian ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ****************************************************** ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
