Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joseph Taylor]

I'm glad to hear that so many of us are experts on law and other topics 
that have nothing to do with web standards whatsoever.


What does this suit have to do with web standards?

Well, perhaps down the road somewhere more strict governing will be put 
in place. 


Do we want the government involved with web page construction?  No.

Maybe this is an opportunity to point out the exact failure in the site, 
offer a fix, and then go through our own commerce sites to make sure we 
don't have any similar problems.


Maybe the more entrepreneurial of us will spam store owners offering 
"shopping cart repair" services.


Maybe, just maybe this will get thrown out of court and quickly forgotten.

Maybe, target will fess up to being an evil corporation and explain the 
whole problem was the inability of the English speaking executives to 
clearly explain the problem to the developers in China that earn $0.15 
an hour working on the site, reminding us why to hire local people.


Hopefully something positive will come from it.

Joseph R. B. Taylor
-
Sites by Joe, LLC
"Clean, Simple and Elegant Web Design"
Phone: (609) 335-3076
Web: http://sitesbyjoe.com
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Elizabeth Spiegel]

The argument that providing reasonable access for blind/vision-impaired
visitors/customers implies an equal need to provide translations into every
language on the planet is a straw man.  Last time I looked, the inability to
speak English was not a disability (in any legal sense) although it's
certainly a disadvantage in Australia! I don't know of anywhere that
requires businesses to provide services in anything other than the official
language/s of the country.

Target apparently provided discounts that were available only online.  They
built their site in a way which made those discounts inaccessible to blind
people and refused to change the site when the problem was politely pointed
out to them. An equivalent bricks-and-mortar equivalent would perhaps be to
offer discount vouchers that were not available to people in wheelchairs.

If you could rely on businesses to act in a non-discriminatory way because
otherwise a group of their potential customers would shop elsewhere,
anti-discrimination legislation would not be necessary.  And no-one would
ever miss out on a job for which they were the best-qualified applicant
merely because of their gender/ ethnic background/ sexuality etc etc etc.
 
Elizabeth
www.spiegelweb.com.au




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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Nancy Johnson]

Hi 

I hope this thread isn't closed.  

I have never worked on large retail sites as I tend to work on non-profit and 
government sites, but if the problem has to do with alt tags then I have very 
little sympathy for Target as this seems like a minor thing.

A person with a disability expends at least 4 times as much energy than someone 
with no disability just to get through the day.  Target could use a bit of 
kindness on that level alone, what could this company do to make the life of 
someone a bit easier and hopefully little cost. 


The argument that says that folks with visually disabilities can physically go 
to the store to shop is also not true. 

Blind folks cannot shop in a store without a sited person there to help them 
and tell them where things are and so they can't browse easily.  Websites have 
the ability to open doors, allowing the visually impaired to browse and do this 
alone and independently.

Although I am not an expert and may be incorrect, all assistive devices are 
extremely expensive, and I have a feeling at least some or not all of the 
burden falls on the person who needs the assistive device (at least in the US), 
such as a screen reader and an up-to-date computer to support it.   In 
comparison, I think making a website accessible is a minor cost. 

Nancy Johnson








   

Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, 
photos & more. 
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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Dennis Lapcewich]

> That's not what Target are saying. It's like a deaf person comes
> into their store and requests for assistance but no one speaks the
> sign language and he can't lip read. Is it discrimination not to
> have a sign-speaking person in your store just in case a deaf personcomes
in?

You analogy is incorrect.  There are two concepts at work here, reasonable
accommodation and undue hardship.  Although both concepts apply to actual
employment, they can serve as an educational basis for education and
enlightenment in this thread.  You can read about them here --->
http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/accommodation.html

Requiring a sign speaker to be employed at every Target store would impose
an undue hardship upon the company, especially if statistics prove the
customer base of deaf customers requiring such assistance is effectively
nonexistent.  There could very well be isolated cases, however, where it
would make sense, if not required.  For example, if a Target store were
located near Gallaudet University  (http://www.gallaudet.edu/x266.xml) it
would make sense to not only offer such services, but outreach to employ
deaf people for their deaf customers.   Then again, creating and
maintaining a commercial web site effectively expands the potential
customer base to where it is quite reasonable to assume that a fair number
of potential customers are disabled and accommodation for their
disabilities not only makes sense, but is warranted.

On the other hand, Target is hard-pressed to prove that offering an
accessible web site is not reasonable accommodation for any of their
customers (including disabled customers), let alone pose an undue hardship
upon the company to maintain such a site.  On the contrary, the tools,
techniques and expertise are readily available to do that no added cost as
part of regular site maintenance.

>From a purely technical perspective, IMHO, there is no defense that Target
(or any other large company) can make that they cannot
design/build/maintain an accessible web site where doing so would impose an
undue burden upon the company.  (More importantly, under the concept of
undue burden, a large employer cannot claim cost as a mitigating factor
when it comes to making a reasonable accommodation.  Target had earnings in
excess of US$59 billion in 2006.)

 In fact, based on maturity of the web environment these days, any company
with a web site (including traditional "mom and pop" businesses), or
desiring one, would be hard pressed to make a claim of undue burden they
cannot have their web site built/maintained according to web standards,
including web accessibility as defined within those standards.  If that
means a fair number of these web building companies (including one person
outfits) need to lift their game, or get out of the web business, then
that's the cost of doing business in a free marketplace.

> It doesn't sound right. Why should anyone be forced to do the right
> thing? You can't force anyone to be nice, generous and good-natured,
> you can only encourage that. Forcing people to do the right thing is
wrong.

Actually, you can, and it happens every day.  Laws and regulations are
enacted all the time to impact upon and change personal behavior.   It's
been that way throughout human history, first as families then expanding
into larger society as social norms and graces.  And when that proved
insufficient as societies matured, governments and laws.  You may claim a
person has the right to get drunk and act like an idiot (which they do),
but society deemed long ago that such egregious behavior in public is not
in society's best interest, nor that individual.  More so, when the
behavior of that individual has a negative impact upon innocent people
(think drunk drivers).

It seems to me the real issue here is ignorance of life these days, with
respect to others who are perceived to be not like you.  Just because
someone is "different" is too often a misguided and immature excuse to
exclude them from being treated equally and on their merits.   We even have
words for the two most pronounced of these attitudes and behaviors, racism
and sexism.  Individuals and companies will always take the easy way out
here, unless society at large says this is wrong.

Target is wrong.


 Dennis Lapcewich   
 USDA Forest Service Webmaster  
 Pacific Northwest Region - Vancouver, WA   
 360-891-5024 - Voice | 360-891-5045 - Fax  
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]   

 "People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing 
 it." -- Anonymous  

Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Andrew Maben]

What is baffling about Target's position here is that while on the  
question of the web site they behave like ignorant trolls, meanwhile  
they managed to really break ground in usability with their  
prescription delivery system - 


go figure...


Andrew







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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Christie Mason]

From: Ortenzi

No but you DO have an escalator at your local shopping mall because not
everyone finds the climb up the stairs easy. Or should we remove the
escalators and elevators from shopping malls too because they CHOSE to go to
that shopping mall didn't they?


Escalators and elevators were not legislated into existence.  Before there
were malls, stores figured out that it was more efficient to build multiple
levels and then make it easy for customers to access those multiple levels.

Christie Mason


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Or Golan]

>Target are saying "If you are blind, you are worthless. We only take
>money from people who aren't like you." In a physical environment the
>equivalent would be turning them away at the door. Would you tolerate
>that if it was based on gender, religion or race?"


That's not what Target are saying. It's like a deaf person comes into their
store and requests for assistance but no one speaks the sign language and he
can't lip read. Is it discrimination not to have a sign-speaking person in
your store just in case a deaf person comes in?

>we have to
>force corporations to do good things.

It doesn't sound right. Why should anyone be forced to do the right thing?
You can't force anyone to be nice, generous and good-natured, you can only
encourage that. Forcing people to do the right thing is wrong.


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Nick Cowie]

Well the first round has been decided a couple of days ago:
http://www.nfb.org/nfb/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=221
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071003/wr_nm/target_blind_dc_4

the DDA does apply to websites
let more legal battles begin


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Or Golan]

>Target are saying "If you are blind, you are worthless. We only take
>money from people who aren't like you." In a physical environment the
>equivalent would be turning them away at the door. Would you tolerate
>that if it was based on gender, religion or race?"


That's not what Target are saying. It's like a deaf person comes into their
store and requests for assistance but no one speaks the sign language and he
can't lip read. Is it discrimination not to have a sign-speaking person in
your store just in case a deaf person comes in?

>we have to
>force corporations to do good things.

It doesn't sound right. Why should anyone be forced to do the right thing?
You can't force anyone to be nice, generous and good-natured, you can only
encourage that. Forcing people to do the right thing is wrong.


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Or Golan]

>Target are saying "If you are blind, you are worthless. We only take
>money from people who aren't like you." In a physical environment the
>equivalent would be turning them away at the door. Would you tolerate
>that if it was based on gender, religion or race?"


That's not what Target are saying. It's like a deaf person comes into their
store and requests for assistance but no one speaks the sign language and he
can't lip read. Is it discrimination not to have a sign-speaking person in
your store just in case a deaf person comes in?

>we have to
>force corporations to do good things.

It doesn't sound right. Why should anyone be forced to do the right thing?
You can't force anyone to be nice, generous and good-natured, you can only
encourage that. Forcing people to do the right thing is wrong.


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joseph Ortenzi]

oops!

Target are not offering a website to help clients. You can bet your  
last penny they have a website to make it easier to reach more  
customers and convince them to spend their money with Traget.


Period!
Don't be so ignorant. There is nothing in Target's behaviour that  
says they want to make life easier for their customers. If ther DID  
they would make it accessible!


sheesh!

They were asked to fix a tiny thing that would be so easy it is  
laughable. they said we don't want to make the site easier to use or  
accessible by a vociferous and disadvantaged group of keen shoppers.
Imagine if target said "let's improve the site, make a big deal about  
it and show how we lead the pack in an inclusive society"


... yeah I though it was funny too!



On Oct 04, 2007, at 01:40, Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] wrote:

What Target offer is an additional service to their clients. They  
don’t have to offer a website, they just do it to make it easier  
for their customers (and of course to sell more products).




If they are being sued for having an inaccessible website, they  
might as well turn around and take the site down. That doesn’t help  
anybody.




It’s like suing your local gym for not turning on the volume of the  
TVs they’ve got hanging of their walls. They could do it, it’s easy  
to do, it would make a small group of people happy, but they chose  
not to.




That’s the right of every private company: they can choose what  
services they offer and they can choose in what format those  
services come. If you do not like it, then you go and shop  
somewhere else.




From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Green

Sent: Thursday, 4 October 2007 8:11 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard



I think you'll find the people of Tibet didn't build Mount Everest  
and weren't even able to influence its design.




Target chose to design their site the way they did, and a  
professional designer would have known that they were excluding  
some people from using the website. In the face of such wilful or  
ignorant behaviour I believe it is necessary to legislate. Sure  
it's inconvenient to have to worry about people with disabilities  
and incur additional costs to support them, but it's a mark of a  
civilised country that we do. At least where I live.




Steve





From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris Wilson

Sent: 03 October 2007 22:51
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard


"Or do you think that your right to 'do what the hell you like'  
outweighs other people's right to be treated equally?"


Be treated equally? They have to CHOOSE to visit the site. So,  
because they want (want need)to do something, others should  
accommodate?


I want to visit the summit of mount everest... I suppose the people  
of tibet should install an escalator just so I can reach the top  
due to my less-then-perfect phisical status. Damn them for not  
allowing me to the summit, I'm going to sue.


Idiocy.

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__ NOD32 2570 (20071003) Information __

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==
Joe Ortenzi
[EMAIL PROTECTED]




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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joe Ortenzi]

No but you DO have an escalator at your local shopping mall because  
not everyone finds the climb up the stairs easy. Or should we remove  
the escalators and elevators from shopping malls too because they  
CHOSE to go to that shopping mall didn't they?


Can you please use logic and sense?

On Oct 3 2007, at 22:50, Chris Wilson wrote:



"Or do you think that your right to 'do what the hell you like'  
outweighs other people's right to be treated equally?"


Be treated equally? They have to CHOOSE to visit the site. So,  
because they want (want need)to do something, others should  
accommodate?


I want to visit the summit of mount everest... I suppose the people  
of tibet should install an escalator just so I can reach the top  
due to my less-then-perfect phisical status. Damn them for not  
allowing me to the summit, I'm going to sue.


Idiocy.

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Joe Ortenzi
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.joiz.com




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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Nick Cowie]

Andrew Maben  wrote:
>
> On Oct 4, 2007, at 12:23 AM, Michael MD wrote:
>
> Opening the door to yet more lawsuits...
>
>
> In 2000, Bruce Maguire's accessibility complaint against the 
> Olympics.comwebsite was upheld. Did this lead to a spate of "frivolous",
> "discriminatory" lawsuits in Australia? As none of the advocates of
> business' "freedom" to discriminate in any way they choose has brought such
> a flood to our attention, I would assume that there have in fact been few or
> no accessibility suits filed.
>

0 law suits to be precise.
If fact between 2000 and 2006 only 3 complaints about inaccessible web sites
were lodged with HREOC and all three where resolved amicably. None made it
to court, and nobody attempted to bypass HREOC negotiation and go directly
into court.

On the other hand the existence of WSG is surely a measure of how seriously
> the issue of accessibility is now taken in the Australian developer
> community...
>

Only in some sectors,there a still a number of inaccessible web sites in the
.au domain, but is has been steadily improving.

-- 
Nick Cowie
http://nickcowie.com


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Ben Buchanan]

> The question is, why should we force anyone to do it?

Well the short answer is: because corporations won't do it without
being forced. So if we want a non-discriminatory society, we have to
force corporations to do good things.

> No one makes his site
> non-accessible out of discriminating motives.

That doesn't help the people being discriminated against.

> They do it because they are
> either lazy or ignorant. Ignoring a request to fix the site is still not
> discrimination, it is simply not caring. Target's managers are dumb, but
> they didn't do anything illegal.

I don't know American law well enough to be sure, but under .au law
that would actually be classed as discrimination and hence illegal...
because it is discriminating against a group of people based on
disability. They are treating disabled people as second-class
citizens. Australia has laws against that. They're not enforced all
that effectively, but we have laws.

Target are saying "If you are blind, you are worthless. We only take
money from people who aren't like you." In a physical environment the
equivalent would be turning them away at the door. Would you tolerate
that if it was based on gender, religion or race?

cheers,
Ben

-- 
--- 
--- The future has arrived; it's just not
--- evenly distributed. - William Gibson


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Christian Montoya]

On 10/4/07, Matthew Cruickshank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Mark Harris wrote:
> > I'm frightened you knew that, or even thought to google it...
>
> I've been waiting a while to post this again, so now will do...
>
>
> > In a survey of attitudes and responses to audio description of TV and
> > video, the American Foundation for the Blind found that some
> > respondents would indeed like to watch audio-described X-rated films.
> > In one poll as part of this single survey, 9% of respondents voiced
> > that preference; in another poll, 22%. Men wanted described adult
> > films more often than women. The mind fairly boggles as to how this
> > would actually be done, but the desire is there. And certain
> > broadcasters in the United Kingdom are required to audio-describe a
> > portion of their programming; "adult" programming is not, in fact,
> > exempt, so all this may actually come to pass!
> >
> > -- http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter06.html#h2-6030
>

I feel really embarrassed saying this, but the amount of cyber-sex on
the Internet and "hot love" telephone hotlines should make this a
no-brainer. You don't need to *see* to be aroused.

And that's the last time I'm going to comment on that.

-- 
--
Christian Montoya
christianmontoya.net


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Matthew Cruickshank]

Mark Harris wrote:

I'm frightened you knew that, or even thought to google it...


I've been waiting a while to post this again, so now will do...


In a survey of attitudes and responses to audio description of TV and 
video, the American Foundation for the Blind found that some 
respondents would indeed like to watch audio-described X-rated films. 
In one poll as part of this single survey, 9% of respondents voiced 
that preference; in another poll, 22%. Men wanted described adult 
films more often than women. The mind fairly boggles as to how this 
would actually be done, but the desire is there. And certain 
broadcasters in the United Kingdom are required to audio-describe a 
portion of their programming; “adult” programming is not, in fact, 
exempt, so all this may actually come to pass!


-- http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter06.html#h2-6030



.Matthew Cruickshank
http://holloway.co.nz/


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Barney Carroll]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  In 2000, Bruce Maguire's accessibility complaint against the 
Olympics.com website was upheld.  
  Did this lead to a spate of "frivolous", "discriminatory" lawsuits in 
Australia?  
 
Did it lead to any improvement in accessibility of commercial, 
government or hobby web sites in Australia?
 
Did it lead to any improvement in the Olympics website itself?
 
 
I try to ensure my professional work is accessible, but I am far from 
being persuaded that legislation of this nature can ever be effective, 
without also being a burden on smaller sites, particularly those that 
are no longer actively maintained.


Necessary and important websites are where it really matters.

If your homepage with your Quake highscores, photos of your cat, 
favourite animated .gifs and the depths of space as the background isn't 
accessible, I don't really think anybody gives a sh!t. It really isn't 
going to damage the standards movement in the slightest.



Regards,
Barney


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Tony Crockford]

On 4 Oct 2007, at 17:27, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


I try to ensure my professional work is accessible, but I am far from
being persuaded that legislation of this nature can ever be effective,
without also being a burden on smaller sites, particularly those that
are no longer actively maintained.




Maybe we *should* legislate to get rid of sites that are no longer  
actively maintained?




;)


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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[michael.brockington]

>  In 2000, Bruce Maguire's accessibility complaint against the
Olympics.com website was upheld.  
>  Did this lead to a spate of "frivolous", "discriminatory" lawsuits in
Australia?  
 
Did it lead to any improvement in accessibility of commercial,
government or hobby web sites in Australia?
 
Did it lead to any improvement in the Olympics website itself?
 
 
I try to ensure my professional work is accessible, but I am far from
being persuaded that legislation of this nature can ever be effective,
without also being a burden on smaller sites, particularly those that
are no longer actively maintained.
 
Mike
 


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Andrew Maben]

On Oct 4, 2007, at 1:01 AM, Michael MD wrote:

I think the best response to ignorance is education ... not  
lawsuits...


But as Target chose to dismiss attempts at education? Obviously  
education is preferable to recourse to law, but education sometimes  
fails. That's how people end up in jail...


Andrew







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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Andrew Maben]

On Oct 4, 2007, at 12:23 AM, Michael MD wrote:

Opening the door to yet more lawsuits...


In 2000, Bruce Maguire's accessibility complaint against the  
Olympics.com website was upheld. Did this lead to a spate of  
"frivolous", "discriminatory" lawsuits in Australia? As none of the  
advocates of business' "freedom" to discriminate in any way they  
choose has brought such a flood to our attention, I would assume that  
there have in fact been few or no accessibility suits filed. On the  
other hand the existence of WSG is surely a measure of how seriously  
the issue of accessibility is now taken in the Australian developer  
community...


And, please, arguing that legislating that business accept the  
responsibility to provide accessibility (or be legally accountable in  
general) is unacceptable unless "they are in receipt of government  
monies" is laughable - every member of a society is the recipient of  
all manner of benefits, the price we pay to enjoy the benefits is to  
accept the society's behavioral norms, which are commonly codified in  
law.


Andrew








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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Stuart Foulstone]

Which takes us back to the beginning (you should now get plausible
costings of non-adherence):

On Wed, October 3, 2007 4:52 pm, Andrew Maben wrote:
> Judge allows class action against Target Web site:
>
> <http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071003/wr_nm/target_blind_dc_4>
>
> This might advance the cause of standards and accessibility, one
> might hope...
>
>
> Andrew
>

On Thu, October 4, 2007 2:21 pm, Steve Green wrote:
>
> The industry is crying out for plausible costings to justify adherence to
> web standards and accessible design. All we have is heresay. Companies
> (especially large ones) are not simply prepared to take our word for it.
> They want proof, and we can't give it to them.
>
> Steve
>
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Joseph Ortenzi
> Sent: 04 October 2007 12:16
> To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
> Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard
>
> Sorry I have to disagree some of these points.
> Comments among your text >>
>
> On Oct 04, 2007, at 01:56, Steve Green wrote:
>
>> "can anybody help me understand where the idea that accessibility
>> costs money comes from?"
>>
>> It certainly can do depending on the content of your site and the
>> target audience. I would concede that it probably doesn't cost more to
>> produce a standards-compliant static website (i.e. has semantic
>> structure and is valid HTML and CSS) but that is only the first step
>> in making a website accessible.
>
> ...but a very big one IMHO.
>>
>> We've discussed many examples here, and I encounter them every day in
>> our work. Obvious ones are the provision of captions, transcripts and
>> audio descriptions for multimedia; that does not come cheap.
> ... but do provide value! And you can easily separate crucial information,
> like a user's manual, from advertising, "our widgets are 20% better than
> theirs!" and prioritise the crucial translations (but you KNOW they will
> prioritise the non-crucial at times don't you ;-))
>>
>> It is not trivial to accommodate text resizing and screen widths
>> ranging from less than 800px wide to upwards of 1600px while
>> maintaining an acceptable layout. Especially so if someone else told
>> you what the layout has to be.
> A fixed layout solves this and this is not an accessibility issue exactly,
> more a design and usability one.
>>
>> Converting artwork into accessible code takes more time than slicing
>> and dicing a PhotoShop image. Making interactive content accessible
>> (such as discovery-based e-learning applications) can be seriously
>> challenging.
> Yes, but the experience makes the site much better, so it has a return on
> the investment.
>>
>> And then there's the cost of maintaining the accessibility of a site
>> on an ongoing basis when most CMSs don't enforce the creation of
>> accessible content. Big sites might have many dozens of content
>> authors, none of whom gives a monkeys about accessibility so you need
>> periodic or ongoing testing and repair to prevent the accessibility
>> from degrading.
> we build our own cms's -and cms's can also be hacked if they truly are
> template based. Separation of structure from content os one of the
> cornerstones so you should not be choosing CMS's that won't let you do
> this.
>
>>
>> So yes, it often does cost more. These costs may well be offset to
>> some extent by savings and other kinds of benefits but we need to be
>> able to quantify this before we can make sweeping statements that it
>> doesn't cost
> I remember reading some people putting a cost value on this but forget
> where
> I read it. You can bet Target have a very clear understanding of the value
> of accessible design right now.
>> any more.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>
>
>
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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Stuart Foulstone]

This was a warning of others on WSG - not a threat by me.

To get on the list you have to respond to a post by Chris Wilson in an
intelligent reasoned way. He will then make some bah-hoo comment about
your Website (because he can't defend himself by intelligent reasoning).

This will then be seized upon by the Keeper of the List, Felix Miata (He
who can do no wrong), and you will be put on his little list on his
Website.

Also, if your wondering about Chris Wilson and his "support" of
accessibility see 26bits.com



On Thu, October 4, 2007 11:11 am, Joseph Ortenzi wrote:
> there is a world of difference between a site I would love to redo
> when I have the time that was only meant as a portfolio site and one
> providing services to a very large population. But ultimately, I
> confess to having a bad site and am prepared to face the gauntlet of
> complaints. I am NOT saying "it is my site and if you don't like it,
> lump it."
>
> BIG difference, n'est-ce-pas?
>
> SO putz me on zee leest, comrade!
>
>
> On Oct 04, 2007, at 07:59, Stuart Foulstone wrote:
>
>> Careful...
>>
>> "You vill also go on ze list!"
>>
>> On Thu, October 4, 2007 7:28 am, Joe Ortenzi wrote:
>>> yes for an old site I no longer need. but been too busy fixing sites
>>> that people actually need and use.
>>>
>>> fair nuff. you gonna sue me?
>>>
>>>
>>> On Oct 3 2007, at 23:33, Chris Wilson wrote:
>>>

 If you are going to argue for standards and accesability, follow
 your own advice first. Captain table layout over here. You don't
 even have alt tags on your images. Hypocritical aren't ya?


 Joe Ortenzi
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 www.joiz.com






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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Patrick Lauke]

> Jermayn Parker

> 1992
> that is 15 years ago :shock:
> surely its time for a new updated version that includes up to date web
> version of rules etc.
> 
> If you want businesses and websites to follow these standards 
> they need
> to be update

Because, you know...they've simply been ignoring 15 year old guidelines because 
they felt they didn't apply to them anymore...
They're probably avidly reviewing the current final stages of WCAG 2.0 and 
simply biding their time until it becomes an official W3C recommendation. Oh, 
even if they did, though, the issue of ALT attributes hasn't changed in the new 
version either...maybe they're holding out for 3.0?

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
M5 4WT
UK

T +44 (0) 161 295 4779
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

www.salford.ac.uk

A GREATER MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY  


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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Steve Green]

Actually Joseph, we're in (near) total agreement. I am not arguing that
these things should not be done. I do them every day and advocate to others
that they should be done. I am merely saying that there is a cost associated
with doing them. Accessible, standards-compliant design does cost more at
the point that you do it, and this may or may not be outweighed by benefits
(many of which are unquantifiable) in the future.

Where we differ is that in my opinion a fixed-width layout is not an
acceptable or accessible solution. A few years ago I would have said it was,
but not now.

With regard to CMSs, you have a lot of choice if you're building small
websites. You may have almost no choice at all if you're building a very
large one, and none whatsoever if you have inherited an existing system.

The industry is crying out for plausible costings to justify adherence to
web standards and accessible design. All we have is heresay. Companies
(especially large ones) are not simply prepared to take our word for it.
They want proof, and we can't give it to them.

Steve




-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Joseph Ortenzi
Sent: 04 October 2007 12:16
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

Sorry I have to disagree some of these points.
Comments among your text >>

On Oct 04, 2007, at 01:56, Steve Green wrote:

> "can anybody help me understand where the idea that accessibility 
> costs money comes from?"
>
> It certainly can do depending on the content of your site and the 
> target audience. I would concede that it probably doesn't cost more to 
> produce a standards-compliant static website (i.e. has semantic 
> structure and is valid HTML and CSS) but that is only the first step 
> in making a website accessible.

...but a very big one IMHO.
>
> We've discussed many examples here, and I encounter them every day in 
> our work. Obvious ones are the provision of captions, transcripts and 
> audio descriptions for multimedia; that does not come cheap.
... but do provide value! And you can easily separate crucial information,
like a user's manual, from advertising, "our widgets are 20% better than
theirs!" and prioritise the crucial translations (but you KNOW they will
prioritise the non-crucial at times don't you ;-))
>
> It is not trivial to accommodate text resizing and screen widths 
> ranging from less than 800px wide to upwards of 1600px while 
> maintaining an acceptable layout. Especially so if someone else told 
> you what the layout has to be.
A fixed layout solves this and this is not an accessibility issue exactly,
more a design and usability one.
>
> Converting artwork into accessible code takes more time than slicing 
> and dicing a PhotoShop image. Making interactive content accessible 
> (such as discovery-based e-learning applications) can be seriously 
> challenging.
Yes, but the experience makes the site much better, so it has a return on
the investment.
>
> And then there's the cost of maintaining the accessibility of a site 
> on an ongoing basis when most CMSs don't enforce the creation of 
> accessible content. Big sites might have many dozens of content 
> authors, none of whom gives a monkeys about accessibility so you need 
> periodic or ongoing testing and repair to prevent the accessibility 
> from degrading.
we build our own cms's -and cms's can also be hacked if they truly are
template based. Separation of structure from content os one of the
cornerstones so you should not be choosing CMS's that won't let you do this.

>
> So yes, it often does cost more. These costs may well be offset to 
> some extent by savings and other kinds of benefits but we need to be 
> able to quantify this before we can make sweeping statements that it 
> doesn't cost
I remember reading some people putting a cost value on this but forget where
I read it. You can bet Target have a very clear understanding of the value
of accessible design right now.
> any more.
>
> Steve
>



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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Patrick Lauke]

If you're doing business in a country (as in your company has offices and/or 
stores in that country), that country's legislation applies.
 
P




From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris 
Wilson
Sent: 03 October 2007 23:58
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
    Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard



Those are all well and good, but utterly useless in a global 
marketplace. Should I be under your countries guidelines? Mine? What if I'm 
international? All of them? What if country As guidelines are incompatible with 
country Bs... Or should legislation hinge on guidelines proposed, created, and 
managed by a non government body (WSG)?

You are all so quick to support legislation, but do you have any 
concept of how that would change the web, a concept not just of the 
accesability impact but the real impact? 





On 10/3/07, russ - maxdesign <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 

> Which idea of accessability should be imposed? Yours? Mine?

There are clearly defined "ideas" of accessibility for most 
countries - such
as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

Or Section 508 in the case of America:
http://www.section508.gov/

In Australia, for example, web accessibility hinges on the 
Disability Act of 
1992
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/dda1992264/

And is backed up by HEREOC's "World Wide Web Access: Disability 
Discrimination Act Advisory Notes":

http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/www_3/www_3.html#s3_3

"In June 2000, the Online Council, representing the 
Commonwealth and all 
State and Territory governments, agreed that the Worldwide Web 
Consortium's
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 will be the common 
best practice
standard for all Australian government websites."

All this will change soon when WCAG2 hits the stands  :)

Thanks
Russ





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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Or Golan]

You are right, there is no reason in the world not to make your site
accessible. It's easy and it is cheap, and it makes your site better.

The question is, why should we force anyone to do it? No one makes his site
non-accessible out of discriminating motives. They do it because they are
either lazy or ignorant. Ignoring a request to fix the site is still not
discrimination, it is simply not caring. Target's managers are dumb, but
they didn't do anything illegal.
On 10/4/07, Joseph Ortenzi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Please compare like with like.
> Target and your local grocery store are not a valid comparison.
> target were approached, had the issue politely explained, were shown
> suggestions as to how it could be fixed, were given both financial
> and legislative reasons to do so and decided to say no.
>
> "I don' wwanna stop usin' slaves coz they's cheaper to manage than
> cattle and they work in my financial favour.
> My farm, my business, my decision, so get off my land!
> So take your northern ways back to New York with ya!"
>
> ...h.
>
> The legislature is supposed to be a check on business poractices for
> the benefit of the populace in general.
>
>
> On Oct 04, 2007, at 02:00, Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] wrote:
>
> >> -Original Message-
> >> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >> On Behalf Of Breton Slivka
> >> Sent: Thursday, 4 October 2007 10:34 AM
> >> To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
> >> Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard
> >>
> >> Target is a business, and they ain't in the business of
> >> making art.
> >>
> >> We are talking about a business that, despite one of the comments on
> >> that blog, HAS made a concious decision to exclude a portion of the
> >> populace from using their website. I know this because I've seen the
> >> reasoning before. "Who cares about blind people? they're a small part
> >> of the population anyway. Let's just make the whole thing flash."
> >
> > Yes, they are a business. They are trying to make money. Like all
> > of us. All
> > of their decisions were conscious and based on the premise to make
> > money:
> > use flash for marketing purposes. Save money by getting in a crappy
> > web
> > development company. Save money by not targeting a select group of
> > people.
> >
> > So what? Are you blaming them for running a business? We all have
> > to make
> > these kind of decisions: how do we save money, who are the customer
> > groups
> > we are trying to address... If you don't make those decisions you
> > are a
> > crappy business person and your business won't exist for very long.
> >
> > Whether their decisions were right or wrong in our eyes is not the
> > point.
> > They have got the right to make those decisions because they are a
> > private
> > company.
> >
> > Would anybody go and sue the local grocery store for having an
> > inaccessible
> > website? No. Because nobody would expect them to spend much time or
> > money or
> > effort into building a website that works. So where do you draw the
> > line? If
> > a company earns millions of dollars then they should suddenly have
> > to be
> > liable for making their websites accessible? But if the company
> > only earns a
> > few thousands of dollars then it's all fine?
> >
> > ***
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> ==
> Joe Ortenzi
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
>
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>


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard [long]

[Mark Harris]

Rimantas Liubertas wrote:


I think these were mentioned in the part of the post you did not
include in your quote... Interesting quoting tactics.



Oh, please! Guilt by assertion?

Jim Davies made no mention of taxes in his post. What he did say was:

"Of course the private businesses should do some things"

which you might construe to mean pay taxes, except that paying taxes is 
compulsory - if you don't then you are breaking the law. This use of 
'should' is somewhat less than perfect. 'Must' would be better, if you 
are to remain a solid citizen or corporate entity.


Jim Davies followed this with:

"accessible websites may be one of them but it is not the governments 
job to force it."


And, actually that's what this whole thing is about - finding out 
whether or not Target has broken the law. If they have, the legal system 
 _is_ required to enforce it.


What has happened so far is that:

* Bruce Sexton, with the help of the National Federation of the Blind, 
has brought a suit against Target, claiming they are violating the 
Americans With Disabilities Act, and two California statutes - the 
California Unruh Civil Rights Act and the California Disabled Persons Act.


* Target claim that a) they haven't broken those laws and b) they have 
changed their site since the suit was issued and so they asked for 
summary judgment and dismissal of the case. The judge has denied their 
plea for summary judgment. (For the non-legal out there, summary 
judgment is usually sought when a party claims that there are no grounds 
for a suit to proceed but the plaintiff won't withdraw it, or when there 
is no opposition to a claim and everybody wants to avoid the cost of a 
pointless trial - yes, I know that is a simplistic explanation)


* The judge further granted the plaintiff's motion to certify a 
nationwide class under the ADA for injunctive relief - that means that 
others with similar claims against Target are joined to this dispute and 
these proceedings and will share equally in any damages that the court 
may award. The district court must find that the claims of the class 
members contain questions of law or fact in common before the lawsuit 
can proceed as a class action.



The judge has _not_ ruled on the case, as to whether or not Target is in 
breach of those statutes. She has ruled that there is a case to answer 
and, as I understand it, the certification of the class action means she 
thinks it is wide ranging and needs to be dealt with in one hit, rather 
than claim by claim which could drag on for years.


I think, therefore, that the NFB press release is a little premature. 
It's a sign that the courts are going to take the matter seriously but 
it's hardly the momentous  victory Maurer seems to be claiming.


To quote from the judge's order:
"Plaintiffs filed the instant motion for class certification on February 
   1, 2007. On March 8, 2007 defendant filed a motion for summary 
judgment on the grounds that plaintiff Sexton has not suffered a 
cognizable injury under the ADA. The court held an initial hearing on 
these matters on April 12, 2007. At the hearing, the court requested 
supplemental briefing on the reach of the relevant state statutes before 
ruling on the class certification motion as it related to the California 
subclass. Following the hearing, the court issued an order on the motion 
for class certification on April 25, 2007. In its order, the court 
narrowed the proposed class definition for the nationwide class to 
include the nexus requirement from its earlier order. Accordingly, the 
nationwide class consists of all legally blind individuals in the United 
States who have attempted to access Target.com and as a result have been 
denied access to the enjoyment of goods and services offered in Target 
stores. Subsequently, the parties submitted supplemental briefing on 
whether the DPA and the Unruh Act apply to websites. Plaintiffs also 
submitted supplemental declarations of class members in accordance with 
the court's April 25, 2007 order. Both parties submitted additional 
briefing on the class certification issues."


We clear on that? The plaintiffs (Sexton and the NFB) asked the judge in 
February to certify the case as a class action, which enables them to 
bring in lots more blind people to give testimony to the jury, whether 
they know Sexton or not. She, rightly IMHO, asked for more information 
from both sides and then spent 8 months considering it. By my reading of 
the US legal system, that's pretty swift work, but it's hardly the 
knee-jerk activism that Malkin's commentators were bemoaning. However I 
am neither a lawyer nor an American (IANALOAA - catchy, no?) so I stand 
to be corrected by someone who is both.


On the matter summary judgment, the judge says:
"Summary judgment is proper when the pleadings, discovery and affidavits 
show that there is "no genuine issue as to any material fact and that 
the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter 

Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joseph Ortenzi]

Please compare like with like.
Target and your local grocery store are not a valid comparison.
target were approached, had the issue politely explained, were shown  
suggestions as to how it could be fixed, were given both financial  
and legislative reasons to do so and decided to say no.


"I don' wwanna stop usin' slaves coz they's cheaper to manage than  
cattle and they work in my financial favour.

My farm, my business, my decision, so get off my land!
So take your northern ways back to New York with ya!"

...h.

The legislature is supposed to be a check on business poractices for  
the benefit of the populace in general.



On Oct 04, 2007, at 02:00, Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] wrote:


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

On Behalf Of Breton Slivka
Sent: Thursday, 4 October 2007 10:34 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

Target is a business, and they ain't in the business of
making art.

We are talking about a business that, despite one of the comments on
that blog, HAS made a concious decision to exclude a portion of the
populace from using their website. I know this because I've seen the
reasoning before. "Who cares about blind people? they're a small part
of the population anyway. Let's just make the whole thing flash."


Yes, they are a business. They are trying to make money. Like all  
of us. All
of their decisions were conscious and based on the premise to make  
money:
use flash for marketing purposes. Save money by getting in a crappy  
web
development company. Save money by not targeting a select group of  
people.


So what? Are you blaming them for running a business? We all have  
to make
these kind of decisions: how do we save money, who are the customer  
groups
we are trying to address... If you don't make those decisions you  
are a

crappy business person and your business won't exist for very long.

Whether their decisions were right or wrong in our eyes is not the  
point.
They have got the right to make those decisions because they are a  
private

company.

Would anybody go and sue the local grocery store for having an  
inaccessible
website? No. Because nobody would expect them to spend much time or  
money or
effort into building a website that works. So where do you draw the  
line? If
a company earns millions of dollars then they should suddenly have  
to be
liable for making their websites accessible? But if the company  
only earns a

few thousands of dollars then it's all fine?

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==
Joe Ortenzi
[EMAIL PROTECTED]




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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joseph Ortenzi]

Sorry I have to disagree some of these points.
Comments among your text >>

On Oct 04, 2007, at 01:56, Steve Green wrote:

"can anybody help me understand where the idea that accessibility  
costs

money comes from?"

It certainly can do depending on the content of your site and the  
target
audience. I would concede that it probably doesn't cost more to  
produce a
standards-compliant static website (i.e. has semantic structure and  
is valid

HTML and CSS) but that is only the first step in making a website
accessible.


...but a very big one IMHO.


We've discussed many examples here, and I encounter them every day  
in our
work. Obvious ones are the provision of captions, transcripts and  
audio

descriptions for multimedia; that does not come cheap.
... but do provide value! And you can easily separate crucial  
information, like a user's manual, from advertising, "our widgets are  
20% better than theirs!" and prioritise the crucial translations (but  
you KNOW they will prioritise the non-crucial at times don't you ;-))


It is not trivial to accommodate text resizing and screen widths  
ranging

from less than 800px wide to upwards of 1600px while maintaining an
acceptable layout. Especially so if someone else told you what the  
layout

has to be.
A fixed layout solves this and this is not an accessibility issue  
exactly, more a design and usability one.


Converting artwork into accessible code takes more time than  
slicing and
dicing a PhotoShop image. Making interactive content accessible  
(such as

discovery-based e-learning applications) can be seriously challenging.
Yes, but the experience makes the site much better, so it has a  
return on the investment.


And then there's the cost of maintaining the accessibility of a  
site on an

ongoing basis when most CMSs don't enforce the creation of accessible
content. Big sites might have many dozens of content authors, none  
of whom
gives a monkeys about accessibility so you need periodic or ongoing  
testing

and repair to prevent the accessibility from degrading.
we build our own cms's -and cms's can also be hacked if they truly  
are template based. Separation of structure from content os one of  
the cornerstones so you should not be choosing CMS's that won't let  
you do this.




So yes, it often does cost more. These costs may well be offset to  
some
extent by savings and other kinds of benefits but we need to be  
able to
quantify this before we can make sweeping statements that it  
doesn't cost
I remember reading some people putting a cost value on this but  
forget where I read it. You can bet Target have a very clear  
understanding of the value of accessible design right now.

any more.

Steve



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On

Behalf Of Ian Chamberlain
Sent: 04 October 2007 00:18
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

I must be having a stupid attack as I can't find anywhere on the  
site where

I can register and then comment.

As for the left / right -  Accessibility/ Freedom agrument (it doesn't
deserve to be called a debate) it leaves me with the feeling that I  
would
not wish to be trapped in a lift (elevator) or even a medium sized  
country

with most of these people.

All that said; can anybody help me understand where the idea that
accessibility costs money comes from?

Agreed, updating an existing site may cost money, however creating  
a clean
semantic and accessibile site can be done at the same price as a  
nasty old
site and if we all take the semantic thing to heart who knows they  
should be

less expensive than todays sites.

The final puzzle is quite why Target are happy to spend more than they
should simply to discriminate against a significant proportion of  
their

potential market.

Seems plain dumb to me.



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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Julie Romanowski]

Since I started it, I'll ask that we conclude the thread. Thanks to
everyone for your input. The discussion was excellent and I now have
some good ammo to use when debating this issue with others. I also see
that the discussion has spread to other sites. Thanks again!

>Anyone want to conclude the thread or is this one going to fly forever?
>Joe



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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joseph Ortenzi]

oops!

Target are not offering a website to help clients. You can bet your  
last penny they have a website to make it easier to reach more  
customers and convince them to spend their money with Traget.

Period!
There is nothing in Target's behaviour that says they want to make  
life easier for their customers. If ther DID they would make it  
accessible!


sheesh!

They were asked to fix a tiny thing that would be so easy to fix  it  
is laughable. They said "we don't want to make the site easier to use  
or accessible by a vociferous and disadvantaged group of keen  
shoppers, willing to politely show how it can be done".
Imagine if target said "let's improve the site, make a big deal about  
it and show how we lead the pack in an inclusive society"


... yeah I though it was funny too!

Target could have been the "shop somewhere else" leader, if it wanted  
to...


Your analogy, again, fails. we are not saying make the site  
accessible to the blind but painful for the sighted. The opposite in  
fact.


Making the site accessible ADDS to the experience, it does not remove  
pleasure from one group to give it to the other - EVERYONE benefits.
A better analogy would be to supply everyone in the gym with a socket  
in all the machines so they can bring their own headphones and set  
their own volumes, like mine does. WIN-WIN.



On Oct 04, 2007, at 01:40, Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] wrote:

What Target offer is an additional service to their clients. They  
don’t have to offer a website, they just do it to make it easier  
for their customers (and of course to sell more products).




If they are being sued for having an inaccessible website, they  
might as well turn around and take the site down. That doesn’t help  
anybody.




It’s like suing your local gym for not turning on the volume of the  
TVs they’ve got hanging of their walls. They could do it, it’s easy  
to do, it would make a small group of people happy, but they chose  
not to.




That’s the right of every private company: they can choose what  
services they offer and they can choose in what format those  
services come. If you do not like it, then you go and shop  
somewhere else.




From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Green

Sent: Thursday, 4 October 2007 8:11 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard



I think you'll find the people of Tibet didn't build Mount Everest  
and weren't even able to influence its design.




Target chose to design their site the way they did, and a  
professional designer would have known that they were excluding  
some people from using the website. In the face of such wilful or  
ignorant behaviour I believe it is necessary to legislate. Sure  
it's inconvenient to have to worry about people with disabilities  
and incur additional costs to support them, but it's a mark of a  
civilised country that we do. At least where I live.




Steve





From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris Wilson

Sent: 03 October 2007 22:51
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard


"Or do you think that your right to 'do what the hell you like'  
outweighs other people's right to be treated equally?"


Be treated equally? They have to CHOOSE to visit the site. So,  
because they want (want need)to do something, others should  
accommodate?


I want to visit the summit of mount everest... I suppose the people  
of tibet should install an escalator just so I can reach the top  
due to my less-then-perfect phisical status. Damn them for not  
allowing me to the summit, I'm going to sue.


Idiocy.

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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joseph Ortenzi]

we do Chris, that's the point!

Someone give Chris some glasses, he seems to be lost in some foggy soup!

WE are so passionate about tthe proven improvements to he experience  
that we spend hours explaining it in great detail to clients and  
showing the FINANCIAL, BUSINESS CASE, LEGISLATIVE, CORPORATE and PR  
benefits.


And everyone enjoys a smoother, faster, more efficient intelligent  
experience, meaning your site is your sales team and enlisting new  
happy shoppers by itself


Really, Chris. take a deep breath, visit the webstandards.org website  
and read the clear arguments in there, and think about it for a bit.



On Oct 03, 2007, at 23:57, Chris Wilson wrote:

You are all so quick to support legislation, but do you have any  
concept of how that would change the web, a concept not just of the  
accesability impact but the real impact?


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joseph Ortenzi]

*SIGH*

I know, that JAWS Activex/AD statement floored me, it really did  
How did he get on this list? Might be a newb like me but I though  
he'd know better than that.


This is why it is taking me ages to recruit a LAMP developer who know  
who webstandards.org are and what they are for!


Personally I am seriously entertained by this discussion.

There iss quite a lot of old skool versus new school in this debate,  
alongside the usual political big/small government issue. Good to se  
the new school is in the majority though. But as my Venezuelan  
brother-in-law says, we're "preaching to the  
convertible" [sic:converted] which is not only poetic but charming!


Anyone want to conclude the thread or is this one going to fly forever?
Joe


On Oct 04, 2007, at 11:21, Rob Crowther wrote:


Mike Brown wrote:
[Mike - see, the problem is this guy is only a part-time web  
developer. If he was full-time, he'd totally have time and be able  
to solve the "verbalise the text into every spoken language"  
problem.]




The funny thing for me was his later comment - someone else  
mentioned JAWS, he obviously went away and did some 'research', and  
from that concluded that JAWS required a website built with Active  
Directory (the Microsoft network management system) instead of  
standard web technologies.  But the frightening part about it was  
that everyone seemed to take him seriously and value his 'expertise'.


Rob

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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joseph Ortenzi]

Bless you Kat for a very intelligent and reasoned argument.


On Oct 04, 2007, at 09:44, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


Quoting Or Golan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

First things first. I am a complete and total grammar snob; I think  
it is because I see myself as a designer. Punctuation is important,  
as is spacing and capitalisation. They do not hinder you, contrary,  
they promote your argument, as it makes you seem educated and  
reasoned.


This entire thread seems to have lost all proper respect for our  
poor punctuation. It's disgraceful.



Secondly, I agree with Tony. We create a government to create a  
social fabric we are happy with. Are we happy with children being  
exploited, for example, are we happy with children under the age of  
six spending all day in a mine? No? Then we legislate against it,  
and all have to abide by it. That is point of a government.


Accessibility is about recognising everyone's difference. We all  
have differing capabilities and needs. Accessibility is ensuring a  
giving environment where everyone is welcome, regardless of those  
needs. So we legislate accessibility to promote a mannerly  
interaction with other members of our community.




it doesn't mean the law should force them to do it.


What should the law force them to do? How about treating their  
workers carefully? Protecting their safety? What about race? Is it  
OK that some businesses will supply goods and services to some  
races, but not to others? What about gender? Is it OK to  
discriminate based on gender? If you say no to these ideas, why say  
discrimination based on ability is OK?


Yes, there should be moral and legal compulsion, on all, to do the  
correct thing. What sort of community do we want to live in?


As far as I was aware, this is a web standards list, and  
accessibility is but one of the many standards. Those who are pro- 
standards are also pro-accessibility.


Kat



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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joseph Ortenzi]

Two mistakes.

As already mentioned, they do, in legislation, need to make the site  
accessible or at least show the attempt to, NOT to say "we don't want  
to so we won't".
If they bar people who speak Spanish from the shop they are also  
being discriminatory, both to the Spanish they are barring simply  
because they speak Spanish and to the users of the site because there  
is not a version non-Spanish speakers can use.


YOu keep using examples to support your case that are faulty because  
they ARE legislated ()rightly) against. Barring Spanish-speakers from  
a shop is the same as banning someone from the shop with a "whites  
only" sign. I am amazed you can't see this!



On Oct 04, 2007, at 08:59, Or Golan wrote:

even if making their site accessible to the blind costs target 0  
dollars and 0 work, even if they need to just flip a button and  
bang - their site is accessible, it doesn't mean the law should  
force them to do it.


what i really don't understand is why did the blind people sued  
target..if target doesn't want to make their site accessible it's  
their right to do it. there is no reason for the government to  
force its will on a private company. you can and you should make  
the stores accessible to everyone, but telling the stores how to  
make their sites is like telling them what services should the  
staff give to the people who come in. it's like Andreas said, the  
company is allowed to choose what service it wants to give to the  
public. if a company doesn't want to make a site, they are allowed  
to. but if they make a site, it doesn't mean they have to make it  
available to everyone. if they choose to make a Spanish site so  
that they won't have to have people who speak spanish in the shop,  
but still be able to sell to the Hispanic community, is it  
discrimination against english-speakers?




On 10/4/07, Karl Lurman < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Russ, time to step in the ring perhaps?

On 10/4/07, Joe Ortenzi < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> yes for an old site I no longer need. but been too busy fixing  
sites that

> people actually need and use.
>
> fair nuff. you gonna sue me?
>
>
>
> On Oct 3 2007, at 23:33, Chris Wilson wrote:
>
> If you are going to argue for standards and accesability, follow  
your own
> advice first. Captain table layout over here. You don't even have  
alt tags

> on your images. Hypocritical aren't ya?
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Joe Ortenzi
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > www.joiz.com
> >
> >
> >
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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Rob Crowther]

Mike Brown wrote:
[Mike - see, the problem is this guy is only a part-time web developer. 
If he was full-time, he'd totally have time and be able to solve the 
"verbalise the text into every spoken language" problem.]




The funny thing for me was his later comment - someone else mentioned 
JAWS, he obviously went away and did some 'research', and from that 
concluded that JAWS required a website built with Active Directory (the 
Microsoft network management system) instead of standard web 
technologies.  But the frightening part about it was that everyone 
seemed to take him seriously and value his 'expertise'.


Rob


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joseph Ortenzi]

there is a world of difference between a site I would love to redo  
when I have the time that was only meant as a portfolio site and one  
providing services to a very large population. But ultimately, I  
confess to having a bad site and am prepared to face the gauntlet of  
complaints. I am NOT saying "it is my site and if you don't like it,  
lump it."


BIG difference, n'est-ce-pas?

SO putz me on zee leest, comrade!


On Oct 04, 2007, at 07:59, Stuart Foulstone wrote:


Careful...

"You vill also go on ze list!"

On Thu, October 4, 2007 7:28 am, Joe Ortenzi wrote:

yes for an old site I no longer need. but been too busy fixing sites
that people actually need and use.

fair nuff. you gonna sue me?


On Oct 3 2007, at 23:33, Chris Wilson wrote:



If you are going to argue for standards and accesability, follow
your own advice first. Captain table layout over here. You don't
even have alt tags on your images. Hypocritical aren't ya?


Joe Ortenzi
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.joiz.com



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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joseph Ortenzi]

RalphNader legislatively proved that you cannot "budget" the risks  
involved in the 70's with the famous Ford Pinto debacle.
they forgot to include the bad press or legal challenge when ignoring  
the rights of the community.


On Oct 04, 2007, at 06:24, Mike at Green-Beast.com wrote:


I really have to wonder just how ignorant Target really is, or was the
decision to implement or act based on a calculated risk. I believe  
many
larger corporations will make some decisions based on the  
probability of the
plan backfiring (or them getting caught) versus the plan's  
profitability.


An example could be a manufacturer faced with a flaw found in their
production. They might weight the risks, even calculate settlement  
amounts
in advance, then look at recall costs... ultimately taking the low  
road. Am

I wary of large corporations? Yes, and government too. I founded a
corporation 15 years ago, a small one, but I have had some exposure  
to some

things that were, well, less than cool I'll say.

Target sort of proved they are in the latter category because they  
were
informed of the problems and the specifics of how to address them,  
yet they
chose not to act. Hindsight may tell them that this was foolish, or  
maybe
they're a really stubborn company. But there may be another  
possibility. Who

knows, maybe they are members of some business club/group/union whose
members begged them to fight it so a precedent wouldn't be set and  
thus they

wouldn't have to act themselves. Just speculation, right?

@Steve Olive:

Some people have mentioned converting books into
Braille and audio formats as too difficult. This is wrong
and there are specific exemptions in copyright legislation
that permit this, without the publishers' express permission.


I was the person stating that copies in Braille are made for  
copyrighted
books in the US (for free, so easy), with the copyright holders  
permission.

Two things you mentioned specifically prompted me to respond:

1) "Audio formats."
This is true. It's been a couple of years since I've filled out an
application but if I recall seeing Braille and Phonographs Records  
(if I

recall the terminology). Thanks for reminding me of this.

2) "Without the publishers' express permission"
I recall seeing a checkbox asking me if it was okay that copies  
in the
above mentioned formats be made. Like I said, it's been a couple of  
years...

is it an automatic conversion that's done with all applicable works
nowadays?

Thanks. Again, sorry to all if this email strays off topic too much.

Respectfully,
Mike Cherim



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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joseph Ortenzi]

I thought legislature and regulation are constitutionally separate in  
the US?



On Oct 04, 2007, at 06:01, Michael MD wrote:

Speaking only of businesses int he United States, no government  
entity should be telling a private business what it must do and  
that includes telling a business
it must provide health coverage, or spend a certain percentage on  
it and what the covereage must include.  If that business accepts  
government monies, then
the ball game changes.  Of course the private businesses should do  
some things,  accessible websites may be one of them but it is not  
the governments job to

force it.


The Target website is probably a case of ignorance in management there
I think the best response to ignorance is education ... not  
lawsuits...


(yes it is probably different if there is government funding  
involved - but even then I think education should be attempted  
first and perhaps accessability could be made part of the  
conditions for getting the funding)





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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Mark Harris]

Matthew Cruickshank wrote:

Karl Lurman wrote:


P.s A braille issue of Playboy - is it perverted that I think this is 
a cool idea??!
  


You know this exists right? 
http://www.banterist.com/archivefiles/000305.html  [link is safe for work]





I'm frightened you knew that, or even thought to google it...

mark


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Stuart Foulstone]

Alas, it's the American way:

Human rights and the constitution are vitally important (US only)- except
when I'm turning a quick buck.

On Thu, October 4, 2007 9:44 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Quoting Or Golan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> First things first. I am a complete and total grammar snob; I think it
> is because I see myself as a designer. Punctuation is important, as is
> spacing and capitalisation. They do not hinder you, contrary, they
> promote your argument, as it makes you seem educated and reasoned.
>
> This entire thread seems to have lost all proper respect for our poor
> punctuation. It's disgraceful.
>
>
> Secondly, I agree with Tony. We create a government to create a social
> fabric we are happy with. Are we happy with children being exploited,
> for example, are we happy with children under the age of six spending
> all day in a mine? No? Then we legislate against it, and all have to
> abide by it. That is point of a government.
>
> Accessibility is about recognising everyone's difference. We all have
> differing capabilities and needs. Accessibility is ensuring a giving
> environment where everyone is welcome, regardless of those needs. So
> we legislate accessibility to promote a mannerly interaction with
> other members of our community.
>
>
>> it doesn't mean the law should force them to do it.
>
> What should the law force them to do? How about treating their workers
> carefully? Protecting their safety? What about race? Is it OK that
> some businesses will supply goods and services to some races, but not
> to others? What about gender? Is it OK to discriminate based on
> gender? If you say no to these ideas, why say discrimination based on
> ability is OK?
>
> Yes, there should be moral and legal compulsion, on all, to do the
> correct thing. What sort of community do we want to live in?
>
> As far as I was aware, this is a web standards list, and accessibility
> is but one of the many standards. Those who are pro-standards are also
> pro-accessibility.
>
> Kat
>
>
>
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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[kaz]

Quoting Or Golan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

First things first. I am a complete and total grammar snob; I think it  
is because I see myself as a designer. Punctuation is important, as is  
spacing and capitalisation. They do not hinder you, contrary, they  
promote your argument, as it makes you seem educated and reasoned.


This entire thread seems to have lost all proper respect for our poor  
punctuation. It's disgraceful.



Secondly, I agree with Tony. We create a government to create a social  
fabric we are happy with. Are we happy with children being exploited,  
for example, are we happy with children under the age of six spending  
all day in a mine? No? Then we legislate against it, and all have to  
abide by it. That is point of a government.


Accessibility is about recognising everyone's difference. We all have  
differing capabilities and needs. Accessibility is ensuring a giving  
environment where everyone is welcome, regardless of those needs. So  
we legislate accessibility to promote a mannerly interaction with  
other members of our community.




it doesn't mean the law should force them to do it.


What should the law force them to do? How about treating their workers  
carefully? Protecting their safety? What about race? Is it OK that  
some businesses will supply goods and services to some races, but not  
to others? What about gender? Is it OK to discriminate based on  
gender? If you say no to these ideas, why say discrimination based on  
ability is OK?


Yes, there should be moral and legal compulsion, on all, to do the  
correct thing. What sort of community do we want to live in?


As far as I was aware, this is a web standards list, and accessibility  
is but one of the many standards. Those who are pro-standards are also  
pro-accessibility.


Kat



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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Tony Crockford]

On 4 Oct 2007, at 08:33, Rimantas Liubertas wrote:


Speaking only of businesses int he United States, no government
entity should be telling a private business what it must do


WHAT?

with that one line you have just summarised all that is strange about
America.  Private business is above the law?  They can do whatever
they like?

so it's okay if a private business murders people?

what about paying taxes?  the government tells them to do that, are
you saying that a private business can decide not to pay tax?



I think these were mentioned in the part of the post you did not
include in your quote... Interesting quoting tactics.


well, no, they weren't specifically mentioned.  what was said was my  
quote above and this (which you might be referring to):


"Bottom line is the government has no business sticking its nose in a  
private business as long as health and safety issues are not the  
issue. It doesn't even need to know how much money a business makes  
except we are forced to report it for our out of control IRS  
requirements."


to which I strongly disagree, but that's not the point, and I'm not  
sure why you tackled me on it, when the issue is about if an anti  
discrimination law should be enforced - I think it should, and Jim  
Davies disagrees, that's all I'm saying - what are you saying?


;)







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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Or Golan]

even if making their site accessible to the blind costs target 0 dollars and
0 work, even if they need to just flip a button and bang - their site is
accessible, it doesn't mean the law should force them to do it.

what i really don't understand is why did the blind people sued target..if
target doesn't want to make their site accessible it's their right to do it.
there is no reason for the government to force its will on a private
company. you can and you should make the stores accessible to everyone, but
telling the stores how to make their sites is like telling them what
services should the staff give to the people who come in. it's like Andreas
said, the company is allowed to choose what service it wants to give to the
public. if a company doesn't want to make a site, they are allowed to. but
if they make a site, it doesn't mean they have to make it available to
everyone. if they choose to make a Spanish site so that they won't have to
have people who speak spanish in the shop, but still be able to sell to the
Hispanic community, is it discrimination against english-speakers?


On 10/4/07, Karl Lurman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Russ, time to step in the ring perhaps?
>
> On 10/4/07, Joe Ortenzi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > yes for an old site I no longer need. but been too busy fixing sites
> that
> > people actually need and use.
> >
> > fair nuff. you gonna sue me?
> >
> >
> >
> > On Oct 3 2007, at 23:33, Chris Wilson wrote:
> >
> > If you are going to argue for standards and accesability, follow your
> own
> > advice first. Captain table layout over here. You don't even have alt
> tags
> > on your images. Hypocritical aren't ya?
> >
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Joe Ortenzi
> > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > www.joiz.com
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > ***
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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Rimantas Liubertas]

> > Speaking only of businesses int he United States, no government
> > entity should be telling a private business what it must do
>
> WHAT?
>
> with that one line you have just summarised all that is strange about
> America.  Private business is above the law?  They can do whatever
> they like?
>
> so it's okay if a private business murders people?
>
> what about paying taxes?  the government tells them to do that, are
> you saying that a private business can decide not to pay tax?


I think these were mentioned in the part of the post you did not
include in your quote... Interesting quoting tactics.


Regards,
Rimantas
--
http://rimantas.com/


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Tony Crockford]

On 4 Oct 2007, at 04:33, Jim Davies wrote:


Speaking only of businesses int he United States, no government  
entity should be telling a private business what it must do


WHAT?

with that one line you have just summarised all that is strange about  
America.  Private business is above the law?  They can do whatever  
they like?


so it's okay if a private business murders people?

what about paying taxes?  the government tells them to do that, are  
you saying that a private business can decide not to pay tax?


sheesh.

whatever country we live in, we're all on the same planet and laws  
are generally made by the people for the people to protect the people...



I just woke up to an inbox full of misguided bigotry and confused  
logic that makes me wonder why I'm on this list.


;(




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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Stuart Foulstone]

Careful...

"You vill also go on ze list!"

On Thu, October 4, 2007 7:28 am, Joe Ortenzi wrote:
> yes for an old site I no longer need. but been too busy fixing sites
> that people actually need and use.
>
> fair nuff. you gonna sue me?
>
>
> On Oct 3 2007, at 23:33, Chris Wilson wrote:
>
>>
>> If you are going to argue for standards and accesability, follow
>> your own advice first. Captain table layout over here. You don't
>> even have alt tags on your images. Hypocritical aren't ya?
>>
>>
>> Joe Ortenzi
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> www.joiz.com
>>
>>
>>
>> ***
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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Karl Lurman]

Russ, time to step in the ring perhaps?

On 10/4/07, Joe Ortenzi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> yes for an old site I no longer need. but been too busy fixing sites that
> people actually need and use.
>
> fair nuff. you gonna sue me?
>
>
>
> On Oct 3 2007, at 23:33, Chris Wilson wrote:
>
> If you are going to argue for standards and accesability, follow your own
> advice first. Captain table layout over here. You don't even have alt tags
> on your images. Hypocritical aren't ya?
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Joe Ortenzi
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > www.joiz.com
> >
> >
> >
> ***
> >
> > List Guidelines:
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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joe Ortenzi]

yes for an old site I no longer need. but been too busy fixing sites  
that people actually need and use.


fair nuff. you gonna sue me?


On Oct 3 2007, at 23:33, Chris Wilson wrote:



If you are going to argue for standards and accesability, follow  
your own advice first. Captain table layout over here. You don't  
even have alt tags on your images. Hypocritical aren't ya?



Joe Ortenzi
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.joiz.com



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Joe Ortenzi
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.joiz.com




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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Karl Lurman]

> Well that's a matter of opinion (preferably a matter of legal opinion).

The thing is, it really should be, but right now, there aren't many
laws written that protect much of what occurs online (read as: none).

Sometimes I am glad thats the case however.

I bet everyone around here has a website thats still alive and kicking
on the Net filled with nested layout tables and nonsemantic HTML. What
if all of a sudden, you have to fix those evil mistakes because a law
is introduced that says you have to? And if you don't, you go to jail?

But then again, who is accountable when that building you built
collapses in a pile of rubble solely because you forgot a few
important bricks?

As time goes by, websites will probably become so intrinsically linked
to our existence that it would be catastrophic to be without access to
the services or information they provide. When that day comes, and God
help us, we will expect and demand access for everyone. Fair nuff.

For now though, I get by when the Internet Banking servers are down
and I fire up my copy of Parallels and Windows XP to run a Windows
application to lodge my Tax return. Just as I believe it's entirely
possible blind people will surf to another website because "this one
is crap". It's only a mouse click after all - if they can use a mouse
that is, maybe its some other assistive technology.

Speaking of Microsoft, AHHH another big company to bash, does anyone
else find it strange that no one has sued them for the countless hours
lost to the incompatibilities of IE? I have a few years owing by
reckoning...

Karl

> > P.s A braille issue of Playboy - is it perverted that I think this is a 
> > cool idea??!
> You know this exists right?
> http://www.banterist.com/archivefiles/000305.html  [link is safe for work]

I was hoping for a something a bit more graphic... Hehe.


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Genesis One And One]

Steve Green wrote:

"I suspect that this lawsuit was premature"

The WCAG were published 8 years ago. How long should we wait? I don't know
when Section 508 came into law but the UK's DDA was passed in 1995. Seems
like long enough to me.


508 was 1998.
WCAG was 1999
Target came online in 1997?
IE is just now becoming compliant.
Target is just now becoming usable in FF.


>How long should we wait?

You're waiting? I thought that WCAG was already coming into it's own. It 
maps very closely to 508.


This group isn't waiting
"All e-commerce businesses should take note of this decision and 
immediately take steps to open their doors to the blind," Maurer said.


My only issue is the way they are going about it. They are suing Target. 
Why didn't they sue a small set of companies? Or Sears and Target and 
JoAnns?


They are trying to set precedent in the law. I don't think that's the 
right strategy at this point. The web isn't that old and in the 10+ 
years I've been online technology is changing so fast somethings haven't 
caught up or kept up. I think Accessibility is an idea that would have 
become standard without legal strong arming. I think that because it 
makes good business sense as more users with disabilities can use/afford 
technologies to let them experience the web.


Anyway, the wheels are rolling. We'll see.



"But if this judge's decision becomes du jour..."

It won't. Courts will assess what it is reasonable to expect a company to
do, given the resources at their disposal. They will also take into account
the number of people affected, which is why Target should be expected to
make a much greater effort than a corner store. Courts will use previous
judgements as guidance but will always consider the specifics of the case in
front of them.


Hehehe...okay. If you say so. Personally, I'm skeptical. But I'll hold 
out hope that at best they wont screw up too much.


"judges making half informed or emotionally skewed decisions"

No, you're confusing them with politicians. I have read the transcripts of
many of the proceedings to date (not just the press coverage) and the judges
seem to have a pretty good handle on it. There will be expert testimony from
both sides, and it won't be difficult to tell who's talking out their
backside.


I'm not confusing the two. Politicians lie. Judges are little dictators 
and don't need to lie ;-).


FWIW: I have not read the transcripts.  At this point though, all this 
judge has done is declare the class and moved the suit along. We'll see 
if the class wins.




In fact there won't be much argument about whether the website is accessible
to blind people or not. It isn't. The argument is primarily whether the law
actually applies to the website, and you don't need to know anything about
accessibility to make that judgement.


Then based on what I know I'd say no the law does not apply to a 
website. :-D.


I think a law applied to a building where a person may need to go (use 
the facilities/ get out of the rain/ what ever) and become trapped, 
disoriented, injured etc. does not necessarily *need* to apply to a 
website. If you can not use Target's site, you could chose another at 
the click of a mouse. Literally at the speed of light :-D.


It would be scary enough if Target wins this suit because a judge 
decides based on that logic. It could happen.


And so I come back to my original argument. I think that this lawsuit 
was a bad idea and premature. It could hurt as easily as help for many 
reasons.


But well see. I'll definitely be watching this and asking questions!

Thanks to whomever posted the blurb to the list!

Cheers
Chere

--
< Genesis One And One Studios


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joe Ortenzi]

No but you DO have an escalator at your local shopping mall because  
not everyone finds the climb up the stairs easy. Or should we remove  
the escalators and elevators from shopping malls too because they  
CHOSE to go to that shopping mall didn't they?


Can you please use logic and sense?

On Oct 3 2007, at 22:50, Chris Wilson wrote:



"Or do you think that your right to 'do what the hell you like'  
outweighs other people's right to be treated equally?"


Be treated equally? They have to CHOOSE to visit the site. So,  
because they want (want need)to do something, others should  
accommodate?


I want to visit the summit of mount everest... I suppose the people  
of tibet should install an escalator just so I can reach the top  
due to my less-then-perfect phisical status. Damn them for not  
allowing me to the summit, I'm going to sue.


Idiocy.

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Joe Ortenzi
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.joiz.com




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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Mike at Green-Beast.com]

I really have to wonder just how ignorant Target really is, or was the 
decision to implement or act based on a calculated risk. I believe many 
larger corporations will make some decisions based on the probability of the 
plan backfiring (or them getting caught) versus the plan's profitability.

An example could be a manufacturer faced with a flaw found in their 
production. They might weight the risks, even calculate settlement amounts 
in advance, then look at recall costs... ultimately taking the low road. Am 
I wary of large corporations? Yes, and government too. I founded a 
corporation 15 years ago, a small one, but I have had some exposure to some 
things that were, well, less than cool I'll say.

Target sort of proved they are in the latter category because they were 
informed of the problems and the specifics of how to address them, yet they 
chose not to act. Hindsight may tell them that this was foolish, or maybe 
they're a really stubborn company. But there may be another possibility. Who 
knows, maybe they are members of some business club/group/union whose 
members begged them to fight it so a precedent wouldn't be set and thus they 
wouldn't have to act themselves. Just speculation, right?

@Steve Olive:
> Some people have mentioned converting books into
> Braille and audio formats as too difficult. This is wrong
> and there are specific exemptions in copyright legislation
> that permit this, without the publishers' express permission.

I was the person stating that copies in Braille are made for copyrighted 
books in the US (for free, so easy), with the copyright holders permission. 
Two things you mentioned specifically prompted me to respond:

1) "Audio formats."
This is true. It's been a couple of years since I've filled out an 
application but if I recall seeing Braille and Phonographs Records (if I 
recall the terminology). Thanks for reminding me of this.

2) "Without the publishers' express permission"
I recall seeing a checkbox asking me if it was okay that copies in the 
above mentioned formats be made. Like I said, it's been a couple of years... 
is it an automatic conversion that's done with all applicable works 
nowadays?

Thanks. Again, sorry to all if this email strays off topic too much.

Respectfully,
Mike Cherim



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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Matthew Cruickshank]

Karl Lurman wrote:

Frankly, Target didn't break any *existing* law,
  


Well that's a matter of opinion (preferably a matter of legal opinion).


P.s A braille issue of Playboy - is it perverted that I think this is a cool 
idea??!
  


You know this exists right? 
http://www.banterist.com/archivefiles/000305.html  [link is safe for work]



.Matthew Cruickshank
http://docvert.org/


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Michael MD]

Speaking only of businesses int he United States, no government entity 
should be telling a private business what it must do and that includes 
telling a business
it must provide health coverage, or spend a certain percentage on it and 
what the covereage must include.  If that business accepts government 
monies, then
the ball game changes.  Of course the private businesses should do some 
things,  accessible websites may be one of them but it is not the 
governments job to

force it.


The Target website is probably a case of ignorance in management there
I think the best response to ignorance is education ... not lawsuits...

(yes it is probably different if there is government funding involved - but 
even then I think education should be attempted first and perhaps 
accessability could be made part of the conditions for getting the funding)





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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Karl Lurman]

Sure Target should make a website to some kind of accessibility
standard. They should, but that doesn't mean that if they don't, I
should be able to sue them - good ol American style. Instead, I should
just take my custom to a website that I CAN use with my copy of Jaws
(or whatever the "standard" is... Can you get Jaws for Linux yet?).
Target loses my dollar, which doesn't hurt me in the slightest. I
suspect a lot of blind surfers do this every day with countless
websites on the internet, without a thought.

Ask yourself: Does Target's website offer something that is *critical*
to the day-to-day living of the "victims"? And, in not providing
accessibility for the "victims" to this thing, were they physically
harmed?

Frankly, Target didn't break any *existing* law, so how this could
result in damages to a group of blind people in the first place is
beyond me. I guess thats the way things work over there...

Ok Ok, so perhaps I am ignoring the discrimination aspects of this
whole thing. And it is these kinds of cases that will hopefully set
the scene for quality future standards and, eventually, laws to be
written... Plus, we all agree that if Target weren't providing
wheelchair access to its stores, that would be wrong, even though if
they didn't, no one would probably be physically harmed... Ask Average
Joe the same question 10-15 years prior, perhaps it wouldn't be so
one-sided an affair.

I'm still not feeling it.

I would probably "feel" a lot more if the offending website was my
ONLY method of access to an essential service that was provided out of
tax payer dollars by a government, council or state.

I'm all for accessibility standards for the web - whatever they may be
in whatever country you live in...  Sorry, there I go again. But until
those standards are actually standards, enforceable by laws, I think
we shouldn't so quick to jump on our moral high horses just because we
know how websites SHOULD be built.

I think a little bit of sensibility is required. it's great this case
has highlighted the issue. But instead of lining the pockets of
lawyers, lets educate big business by continuing to build our websites
the RIGHT way. Heck, it's been catching on for a little while now.
Soon everyone will do it by default.

P.s A braille issue of Playboy - is it perverted that I think this is
a cool idea??!

On 10/4/07, Jermayn Parker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 1992
> that is 15 years ago :shock:
> surely its time for a new updated version that includes up to date web
> version of rules etc.
>
> If you want businesses and websites to follow these standards they need
> to be update
>
>
>
> In Australia, for example, web accessibility hinges on the Disability
> Act of
> 1992
> http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/dda1992264/
>
> 
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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Kepler Gelotte]

> Not every website or even company is run by a large corporation ... not 
> everyone has lots of cash to spend on lawyers...

You can be sued for lot's of reasons. Laws are in place to protect people.
You break them, you run the risk of getting sued. 

>From Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990:

Under Title III, no individual may be discriminated against on the basis of
disability with regards to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods,
services, facilities, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation
by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public
accommodation. "Public accommodations" include most places of lodging (such
as inns and hotels), recreation, transportation, education, and dining,
along with stores, care providers, and places of public displays, among
other things.


I suggest if you don't like the law write your congressman. 



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Re: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[William Donovan]

> Which idea of accessability should be imposed? Yours? Mine? Certainly 
> not a
> judge who likely has no concept of the situation or technology. Cases 
> like
> this lead to red blooded legislation that takes far too long to fix, and
> even longer to repeal.


Why didn't you just say this at the beginning Chris.

the argument gets lost too much in analogies that do not relate and the cause 
then gets diluted.

What can the judge do to help and for what benifit can examples like Target 
help us all out with.
Remember first people have to take notice of why is going on.

Gerry McGovern spreads a message of customer-centric design to web site 
information. making the site easier to access not just for the disable, can 
also enable a better customer experience for those that are able.

William


> Chris Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> I think my point is being missed entirely. I completely support 
> standards
> and accesability, but not at this cost. Should target improve their 
> site?
> Yes. Should the be required to by a court? No.
> 
> Which idea of accessability should be imposed? Yours? Mine? Certainly 
> not a
> judge who likely has no concept of the situation or technology. Cases 
> like
> this lead to red blooded legislation that takes far too long to fix, and
> even longer to repeal.
> 
> 
> On 10/3/07, Cat Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > Maybe I'm missing something here, but Mount Everest was not man-made. 
> The
> > Target site on the other hand ...
> >
> > Cat
> >
> > On 10/3/07, Chris Wilson < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > " Or do you think that your right to 'do what the hell you like'
> > > outweighs other people's right to be treated equally?"
> > >
> > > Be treated equally? They have to CHOOSE to visit the site. So, 
> because
> > > they want (want need)to do something, others should accommodate?
> > >
> > > I want to visit the summit of mount everest... I suppose the people 
> of
> > > tibet should install an escalator just so I can reach the top due to 
> my
> > > less-then-perfect phisical status. Damn them for not allowing me to 
> the
> > > summit, I'm going to sue.
> > >
> > > Idiocy.
> > >
> > > ***
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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Breton Slivka]

So you reckon that businesses should have all the rights of a person,
but none of the responsibilities?

On 10/4/07, Jim Davies <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>
> I'm with Chris on this one.
> Speaking only of businesses int he United States, no government entity
> should be telling a private business what it must do and that includes
> telling a business it must provide health coverage, or spend a certain
> percentage on it and what the covereage must include.  If that business
> accepts government monies, then the ball game changes.  Of course the
> private businesses should do some things,  accessible websites may be one of
> them but it is not the governments job to force it.  It has NOTHING to do
> with cost or anything else.  Those arguements do not even enter the picture.
>  Bottom line is the government has no business sticking its nose in a
> private business as long as health and safety issues are not the issue. It
> doesn't even need to know how much money a business makes except we are
> forced to report it for our out of control IRS requirements.  Oh how we need
> SR/HR 25  Too much said already.
> Not sure this is a Web Standards topic any longer
>
> Jim Davies
>
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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Nick Cowie]

One thing most people are missing is that with HTML1.0 the www was
accessible to a screenreader, there was no images, no tables etc. The only
way to make it inaccessible to any members of the community was badly
written or organised content.

Since that time a bunch of new features have been added and  since that time
these "features" have been implemented by "web designers" with out
understanding the implications.

Off my soapbox and look at the implications of the current court action.
1. The current argument before the court is does the Americans with
Disabilities Act cover websites. This is a fairly important precedent that
needs to be made/overturned (Southwest Airlines in 2002) because use of the
internet has become far more mainstream in the last few years.
2. Target made the decision to fight it on these grounds not the National
Federation for the Blind or it's member whose name is used because the way
the court system works in California
3. Like the SOCOG vs Maquire in Australia in 2000 are fighting it in court
because they think it is easier than to  fix their website. It cost SOCOG
and IBM roughly $500,000 in legal costs instead of less than $50,000 to fix
the site.
4. From what I have been told, the Target site is a bad implementation of
the Amazon e-commerce engine. If the result goes against Target, expect to
see an improved version all round.

If you Americans think the Disabilities Act is bad law then lobby your
congress/senate/big cheese to get it changed.

Me, I believe the internet is very liberating for people with disabilities
as the can interact just like everybody, until some lazy or ill-informed
"web designer/developer" stops them because the do not understand what they
are doing.




-- 
Nick Cowie
http://nickcowie.com


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Michael MD]

A private company should be able to do whatever the hell they like. Suit is 
without merit and frivolous. What's next, suing vehicle manufacturers for 
not >providing a braille manual? I'm all for accesability, but there is no 
reason it should be mandated, and lack of is in no was discriminatory.


Not every website or even company is run by a large corporation ... not 
everyone has lots of cash to spend on lawyers...


Opening the door to yet more lawsuits may be promoting another form or 
discrimination which is not often talked about but just as bad as any 
other - discrimation against people who can't afford lawyers!


What is actually needed here is education ... so that the people at Target 
understand that it is also in their own interest that everyone can use their 
site properly.

If people can't use their site they can't buy anything ...
Excluding people from being able to use the site means less customers
... could it be put in a simpler way than that?





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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Steve Olive]

On Thu, 4 Oct 2007 01:15:18 pm Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] wrote:
> ... to providing the ability to enter the store. Should every store
> in the world be forced to provide a ramp for wheelchair access? No.

Sorry, but this is wrong. This is the exact reason for disability legislation, 
every store should have wheelchair access.

It may be difficult and incur a cost but in our democratic countries we elect 
politicians to make sure that people with disabilities have access to 
infrastructure, public and private commercial places.

Some people have mentioned converting books into Braille and audio formats as 
too difficult. This is wrong and there are specific exemptions in copyright 
legislation that permit this, without the publishers' express permission.

As one other repondant noted, the Internet has opened up a whole new world to 
people with disabilities, not just people with visual impairments. The 
delivery method makes the Internet much more accessible and the protocols 
used for delivery allow for the delivery of content without discrimination.

Someone asked for a car analogy, so to me it is like anti-pollution 
legislation. Does it cost more to reduce harmful emissions from cars? Yes. 
Can a car manufacturer ignore this legislation because "it costs more"? No.
Anti-discrimination legislation is the same, it is about protecting sections 
of our community from being excluded because "it costs more".

-- 
Regards,

Steve
Bathurst Computer Solutions


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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]

[Dow, Gina]

I'm inclined to side with legally enforceable web accessibility - putting a 
regulatory burden on big business won't impact on their profits, and if they 
have any sense they will put the work to 'good corporate citizen image' use. 
They'll pass the costs on to the consumer in any case. It's probably a more 
efficient strategy for the society overall than taxing citizens harder and 
attempting to cater for the disabled through government channels. The 'hands 
off private business' approach is naïve and doesn't take account of the social 
good. A society whose values consist of self-interest at all levels will 
rapidly descend into dysfunction on many other fronts, and those very  
companies will be much worse off. There's a spinoff benefit to ensuring web 
accessibility in any case surely -if compulsory, it would inevitably contribute 
to a culture where a company's website needs are well-resourced and noticed by 
management. 

 



From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Davies
Sent: Thursday, 4 October 2007 1:33 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

 

I'm with Chris on this one. 

Speaking only of businesses int he United States, no government entity should 
be telling a private business what it must do and that includes telling a 
business it must provide health coverage, or spend a certain percentage on it 
and what the covereage must include.  If that business accepts government 
monies, then the ball game changes.  Of course the private businesses should do 
some things,  accessible websites may be one of them but it is not the 
governments job to force it.  It has NOTHING to do with cost or anything else.  
Those arguements do not even enter the picture.  Bottom line is the government 
has no business sticking its nose in a private business as long as health and 
safety issues are not the issue. It doesn't even need to know how much money a 
business makes except we are forced to report it for our out of control IRS 
requirements.  Oh how we need SR/HR 25  Too much said already.  

Not sure this is a Web Standards topic any longer

Jim Davies


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Christian Montoya]

On 10/3/07, Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Should every store in the world
> be forced to provide a ramp for wheelchair access? No. Is it logical to do
> so for the large stores that serve thousands of people every day? Yes. But
> just because it is a logical thing to do doesn't mean they should be forced
> to do it. If they don't do it, they lose money. End of story.

If companies were really regulated that way, most of them would not
have wheelchair access. Just look at other countries that don't have
similar laws. People have to be carried up the stairs.

> > > Would anybody go and sue the local grocery store for having an
> > inaccessible
> > > website? No. Because nobody would expect them to spend much time or
> > money or
> > > effort into building a website that works. So where do you draw the
> > line?
> >
> > You draw it at the company that you do reasonably expect to have a
> > website that works.
>
> You can't treat company's different before the law just because one is
> making more money than the other. Now THAT would be discrimination.

Companies (or, corporations) are not people. They are separate legal
entities and therefore are subject to different treatment. You cannot
compare one legal entity (a corporation) to another (a blind person).
Not even the letter of the law does so.

Companies get treated differently all the time. What might apply to
one company won't apply to the next because one is huge and bordering
on monopoly and the other is small and barely making a dent in its
market. There is no "bill of rights" for companies, just legal
precedents that influence what happens down the line based on what has
been decided in the courts before.

We always complain about people making peanut-gallery comments on the
business blogs when they know nothing about the technology behind
websites. Well, I'm complaining about the people making peanut-gallery
comments on this list who know nothing about business or law. Make the
arguments you want based on your opinions, but don't make things up.

-- 
--
Christian Montoya
christianmontoya.net


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Jim Davies]

I'm with Chris on this one. 
Speaking only of businesses int he United States, no government entity should 
be telling a private business what it must do and that includes telling a 
business it must provide health coverage, or spend a certain percentage on it 
and what the covereage must include.  If that business accepts government 
monies, then the ball game changes.  Of course the private businesses should do 
some things,  accessible websites may be one of them but it is not the 
governments job to force it.  It has NOTHING to do with cost or anything else.  
Those arguements do not even enter the picture.  Bottom line is the government 
has no business sticking its nose in a private business as long as health and 
safety issues are not the issue. It doesn't even need to know how much money a 
business makes except we are forced to report it for our out of control IRS 
requirements.  Oh how we need SR/HR 25  Too much said already.  
Not sure this is a Web Standards topic any longer
Jim Davies

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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media]]

> On 10/4/07, Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media]
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Whether their decisions were right or wrong in our eyes is not the
> point.
> > They have got the right to make those decisions because they are a
> private
> > company.
> >
> 
> Do they have that right? Are you sure? 
> If they had a sign out front
> their store that said "No short people allowed" would you argue for
> their right to make that decision? If a blind person showed up to
> their store, and the staff decided to not give that person the right
> change, would you argue that it's the blind person's fault for being
> stupid enough to try to buy from target in the first place?

Giving the incorrect change to somebody has got nothing to do with the whole
discussion. We are not talking about ripping people off, we are talking
about the kind of services they choose to provide to their customers and the
ones they don't. 

There is also a difference between discriminating people by telling a select
group of people that they are not allowed to enter the store in comparison
to providing the ability to enter the store. Should every store in the world
be forced to provide a ramp for wheelchair access? No. Is it logical to do
so for the large stores that serve thousands of people every day? Yes. But
just because it is a logical thing to do doesn't mean they should be forced
to do it. If they don't do it, they lose money. End of story.

> 
> > Would anybody go and sue the local grocery store for having an
> inaccessible
> > website? No. Because nobody would expect them to spend much time or
> money or
> > effort into building a website that works. So where do you draw the
> line?
> 
> You draw it at the company that you do reasonably expect to have a
> website that works. 

You can't treat company's different before the law just because one is
making more money than the other. Now THAT would be discrimination.
 




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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Jermayn Parker]

1992
that is 15 years ago :shock:
surely its time for a new updated version that includes up to date web
version of rules etc.

If you want businesses and websites to follow these standards they need
to be update



In Australia, for example, web accessibility hinges on the Disability
Act of
1992
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/dda1992264/ 


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Breton Slivka]

On 10/4/07, Chris Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Speaking of ' logical fallacy'
>
>

If you have an argument, make it. Don't assume that just because you
think you're clever and right, that everyone else automatically will
too.



On 10/4/07, Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Yes, they are a business. They are trying to make money. Like all of us. All
> of their decisions were conscious and based on the premise to make money:
> use flash for marketing purposes. Save money by getting in a crappy web
> development company. Save money by not targeting a select group of people.
>
> So what? Are you blaming them for running a business? We all have to make
> these kind of decisions: how do we save money, who are the customer groups
> we are trying to address... If you don't make those decisions you are a
> crappy business person and your business won't exist for very long.
>
> Whether their decisions were right or wrong in our eyes is not the point.
> They have got the right to make those decisions because they are a private
> company.
>

Do they have that right? Are you sure? If they had a sign out front
their store that said "No short people allowed" would you argue for
their right to make that decision? If a blind person showed up to
their store, and the staff decided to not give that person the right
change, would you argue that it's the blind person's fault for being
stupid enough to try to buy from target in the first place?


> Would anybody go and sue the local grocery store for having an inaccessible
> website? No. Because nobody would expect them to spend much time or money or
> effort into building a website that works. So where do you draw the line?

You draw it at the company that you do reasonably expect to have a
website that works. A company that obviously has the resources to make
their website accessable, but conciously decided to exclude a
particular segment of the population out of ignorance.


> a company earns millions of dollars then they should suddenly have to be
> liable for making their websites accessible? But if the company only earns a
> few thousands of dollars then it's all fine?

If you have enough resources that making your website accessable to
disabled is trivial, you should absolutely make that investment. To do
otherwise is simply discrimination. To compare it to a business that
obviously doesn't have those resources, and couldn't reasonably be
expected to do so, you are making a flawed argument, with a flawed
comparison.

>
>
>
>
>
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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Steve Green]

"I suspect that this lawsuit was premature"

The WCAG were published 8 years ago. How long should we wait? I don't know
when Section 508 came into law but the UK's DDA was passed in 1995. Seems
like long enough to me.

"But if this judge's decision becomes du jour..."

It won't. Courts will assess what it is reasonable to expect a company to
do, given the resources at their disposal. They will also take into account
the number of people affected, which is why Target should be expected to
make a much greater effort than a corner store. Courts will use previous
judgements as guidance but will always consider the specifics of the case in
front of them.

"judges making half informed or emotionally skewed decisions"

No, you're confusing them with politicians. I have read the transcripts of
many of the proceedings to date (not just the press coverage) and the judges
seem to have a pretty good handle on it. There will be expert testimony from
both sides, and it won't be difficult to tell who's talking out their
backside.

In fact there won't be much argument about whether the website is accessible
to blind people or not. It isn't. The argument is primarily whether the law
actually applies to the website, and you don't need to know anything about
accessibility to make that judgement.

Steve
 

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Genesis One And One
Sent: 04 October 2007 02:23
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard



Chris Wilson wrote:
> 
> I think my point is being missed entirely. I completely support 
> standards and accesability, but not at this cost. Should target 
> improve their site? Yes. Should the be required to by a court? No.

No you're point wasn't missed. I agree with you. In fact my first
thought/viseral reaction was this is a bad thing. Strong arming merchants
with the legal system only means a bunch of red tape and higher prices
across the board. It can get even worse if lobbyist get involved. Loop
holes, delays and stall tactics and even a potential to set progress back
further.

The legal system isn't the best arena for this battle. Education is the key.
And when that fails playing to the self serving nature of business often
works.

I suspect that this lawsuit was premature. As the market demand for
accessible sites grow so will the supply. That is the nature of business.
Technology is already catching up with better screen readers etc. which will
mean more opportunity for the blind/colour blind/mobility impaired/hearing
impaired to actually *BE ONLINE*. More users create more demand creating
more supply.

Instead, now we'll have less tech savvy judges making half informed or
emotionally skewed decisions. For example: If this judge just told Target
"to become accessible to all", Target has the resources to meet just about
every accessibility issue you can encounter. But if this judge's decision
becomes du jour, Mom and Pop sites which depend on so much open source or
free technologies may well find it difficult to meet the requirements of
law.

You cannot discount Mom and Pops nor the impact the law has on them and
their bottom lines. And the impact of their success on local economies.

Anyway...

I am new here :-D.

I came here to learn how to implement accessible guidelines so that I can in
turn get my clients (mostly small budget startups) to buy into the need for
*some* amount of accessibility in their sites.

I'm hoping greater knowledge on my part leads to efficient coding which will
equal lowered costs for implementing accessible code for my clients.

I'm glad I found this group!

Cheers
Chere

--
< Genesis One And One Studios


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Genesis One And One]

Chris Wilson wrote:


I think my point is being missed entirely. I completely support 
standards and accesability, but not at this cost. Should target improve 
their site? Yes. Should the be required to by a court? No.


No you're point wasn't missed. I agree with you. In fact my first 
thought/viseral reaction was this is a bad thing. Strong arming 
merchants with the legal system only means a bunch of red tape and 
higher prices across the board. It can get even worse if lobbyist get 
involved. Loop holes, delays and stall tactics and even a potential to 
set progress back further.


The legal system isn't the best arena for this battle. Education is the 
key. And when that fails playing to the self serving nature of business 
often works.


I suspect that this lawsuit was premature. As the market demand for 
accessible sites grow so will the supply. That is the nature of 
business. Technology is already catching up with better screen readers 
etc. which will mean more opportunity for the blind/colour 
blind/mobility impaired/hearing impaired to actually *BE ONLINE*. More 
users create more demand creating more supply.


Instead, now we'll have less tech savvy judges making half informed or 
emotionally skewed decisions. For example: If this judge just told 
Target "to become accessible to all", Target has the resources to meet 
just about every accessibility issue you can encounter. But if this 
judge's decision becomes du jour, Mom and Pop sites which depend on so 
much open source or free technologies may well find it difficult to meet 
the requirements of law.


You cannot discount Mom and Pops nor the impact the law has on them and 
their bottom lines. And the impact of their success on local economies.


Anyway...

I am new here :-D.

I came here to learn how to implement accessible guidelines so that I 
can in turn get my clients (mostly small budget startups) to buy into 
the need for *some* amount of accessibility in their sites.


I'm hoping greater knowledge on my part leads to efficient coding which 
will equal lowered costs for implementing accessible code for my clients.


I'm glad I found this group!

Cheers
Chere

--
< Genesis One And One Studios


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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media]]

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Behalf Of Breton Slivka
> Sent: Thursday, 4 October 2007 10:34 AM
> To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
> Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard
> 
> Target is a business, and they ain't in the business of
> making art.
> 
> We are talking about a business that, despite one of the comments on
> that blog, HAS made a concious decision to exclude a portion of the
> populace from using their website. I know this because I've seen the
> reasoning before. "Who cares about blind people? they're a small part
> of the population anyway. Let's just make the whole thing flash."

Yes, they are a business. They are trying to make money. Like all of us. All
of their decisions were conscious and based on the premise to make money:
use flash for marketing purposes. Save money by getting in a crappy web
development company. Save money by not targeting a select group of people. 

So what? Are you blaming them for running a business? We all have to make
these kind of decisions: how do we save money, who are the customer groups
we are trying to address... If you don't make those decisions you are a
crappy business person and your business won't exist for very long.

Whether their decisions were right or wrong in our eyes is not the point.
They have got the right to make those decisions because they are a private
company.

Would anybody go and sue the local grocery store for having an inaccessible
website? No. Because nobody would expect them to spend much time or money or
effort into building a website that works. So where do you draw the line? If
a company earns millions of dollars then they should suddenly have to be
liable for making their websites accessible? But if the company only earns a
few thousands of dollars then it's all fine?





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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Chris Wilson]

Speaking of ' logical fallacy'

On 10/3/07, Breton Slivka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> These are some of the worst analogies I've ever seen. The target
> website is not a work of art, it's not a mountain, it's not a car,
> it's not a drive up ATM, it's not a building.
>
> Not to mention the slippery slopes, like "Well if they force Target to
> fix their website, next they'll be forcing it on ALL websites
> everywhere!" and "Well if they force target to make their site
> accessable to blind people, what's next? People who can't speak
> english?"
>
> It's amazing how much these things sound like arguments, and seem to
> make sense, but every one of them is a logical fallacy of some kind.
>
> What we are talking about here, is a Catalog of products, using a
> technology which is inherently easy to make accessable. It does not
> require a huge investment of material. The catalog in this case, is
> used for online purchasing, or making purchasing decisions before
> entering a physical store. We're not talking about a grand visual
> experience, or a masterpeice of literature here, or any other such
> thing which would allow arguments about freedom of speach, or
> expression. Target is a business, and they ain't in the business of
> making art.
>
> We are talking about a business that, despite one of the comments on
> that blog, HAS made a concious decision to exclude a portion of the
> populace from using their website. I know this because I've seen the
> reasoning before. "Who cares about blind people? they're a small part
> of the population anyway. Let's just make the whole thing flash."
>
> So we're talking about target conciously discriminating against a
> portion of the populace from purchasing goods from their store, or
> finding information about their products, so they could have the
> perception of saving money, by not having to hire competant web
> developers. This is not a freedom of choice issue. It's an issue of
> choosing the illusion of money, over people. And as we can see now, it
> was a bad choice, not only because the money they could have spent on
> accessiblity will now be spent on lawyers, but they also lost the
> potential money from those lost customers. The money they choose truly
> was illusory.
>
>
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>


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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Steve Green]

"can anybody help me understand where the idea that accessibility costs
money comes from?"

It certainly can do depending on the content of your site and the target
audience. I would concede that it probably doesn't cost more to produce a
standards-compliant static website (i.e. has semantic structure and is valid
HTML and CSS) but that is only the first step in making a website
accessible.

We've discussed many examples here, and I encounter them every day in our
work. Obvious ones are the provision of captions, transcripts and audio
descriptions for multimedia; that does not come cheap.

It is not trivial to accommodate text resizing and screen widths ranging
from less than 800px wide to upwards of 1600px while maintaining an
acceptable layout. Especially so if someone else told you what the layout
has to be.

Converting artwork into accessible code takes more time than slicing and
dicing a PhotoShop image. Making interactive content accessible (such as
discovery-based e-learning applications) can be seriously challenging.

And then there's the cost of maintaining the accessibility of a site on an
ongoing basis when most CMSs don't enforce the creation of accessible
content. Big sites might have many dozens of content authors, none of whom
gives a monkeys about accessibility so you need periodic or ongoing testing
and repair to prevent the accessibility from degrading.

So yes, it often does cost more. These costs may well be offset to some
extent by savings and other kinds of benefits but we need to be able to
quantify this before we can make sweeping statements that it doesn't cost
any more.

Steve



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Ian Chamberlain
Sent: 04 October 2007 00:18
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

I must be having a stupid attack as I can't find anywhere on the site where
I can register and then comment.

As for the left / right -  Accessibility/ Freedom agrument (it doesn't
deserve to be called a debate) it leaves me with the feeling that I would
not wish to be trapped in a lift (elevator) or even a medium sized country
with most of these people.

All that said; can anybody help me understand where the idea that
accessibility costs money comes from?

Agreed, updating an existing site may cost money, however creating a clean
semantic and accessibile site can be done at the same price as a nasty old
site and if we all take the semantic thing to heart who knows they should be
less expensive than todays sites.

The final puzzle is quite why Target are happy to spend more than they
should simply to discriminate against a significant proportion of their
potential market.

Seems plain dumb to me.



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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Breton Slivka]

These are some of the worst analogies I've ever seen. The target
website is not a work of art, it's not a mountain, it's not a car,
it's not a drive up ATM, it's not a building.

Not to mention the slippery slopes, like "Well if they force Target to
fix their website, next they'll be forcing it on ALL websites
everywhere!" and "Well if they force target to make their site
accessable to blind people, what's next? People who can't speak
english?"

It's amazing how much these things sound like arguments, and seem to
make sense, but every one of them is a logical fallacy of some kind.

What we are talking about here, is a Catalog of products, using a
technology which is inherently easy to make accessable. It does not
require a huge investment of material. The catalog in this case, is
used for online purchasing, or making purchasing decisions before
entering a physical store. We're not talking about a grand visual
experience, or a masterpeice of literature here, or any other such
thing which would allow arguments about freedom of speach, or
expression. Target is a business, and they ain't in the business of
making art.

We are talking about a business that, despite one of the comments on
that blog, HAS made a concious decision to exclude a portion of the
populace from using their website. I know this because I've seen the
reasoning before. "Who cares about blind people? they're a small part
of the population anyway. Let's just make the whole thing flash."

So we're talking about target conciously discriminating against a
portion of the populace from purchasing goods from their store, or
finding information about their products, so they could have the
perception of saving money, by not having to hire competant web
developers. This is not a freedom of choice issue. It's an issue of
choosing the illusion of money, over people. And as we can see now, it
was a bad choice, not only because the money they could have spent on
accessiblity will now be spent on lawyers, but they also lost the
potential money from those lost customers. The money they choose truly
was illusory.


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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media]]

What Target offer is an additional service to their clients. They don't have
to offer a website, they just do it to make it easier for their customers
(and of course to sell more products).
 
If they are being sued for having an inaccessible website, they might as
well turn around and take the site down. That doesn't help anybody. 
 
It's like suing your local gym for not turning on the volume of the TVs
they've got hanging of their walls. They could do it, it's easy to do, it
would make a small group of people happy, but they chose not to. 
 
That's the right of every private company: they can choose what services
they offer and they can choose in what format those services come. If you do
not like it, then you go and shop somewhere else.
 
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Steve Green
Sent: Thursday, 4 October 2007 8:11 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard
 
I think you'll find the people of Tibet didn't build Mount Everest and
weren't even able to influence its design.
 
Target chose to design their site the way they did, and a professional
designer would have known that they were excluding some people from using
the website. In the face of such wilful or ignorant behaviour I believe it
is necessary to legislate. Sure it's inconvenient to have to worry about
people with disabilities and incur additional costs to support them, but
it's a mark of a civilised country that we do. At least where I live.
 
Steve
 
 
  _  

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Chris Wilson
Sent: 03 October 2007 22:51
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

"Or do you think that your right to 'do what the hell you like' outweighs
other people's right to be treated equally?"

Be treated equally? They have to CHOOSE to visit the site. So, because they
want (want need)to do something, others should accommodate?

I want to visit the summit of mount everest... I suppose the people of tibet
should install an escalator just so I can reach the top due to my
less-then-perfect phisical status. Damn them for not allowing me to the
summit, I'm going to sue. 

Idiocy.

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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Chris Williams]

Perhaps the most amazing thing in all of this is Target¹s willingness to
continue this fight into court.  Aside from all the stunningly bad publicity
of a major company standing up to fight a group of seemingly defenseless
blind people, and the ridiculously poor example they set for all
corporations by worrying more about form over function, is the sheer
economic stupidity

As almost anyone here in this group would tell you, the work required to
make their site simply "not offensive" to the blind (e.g. just adding alt
tags) would probably cost them a tiny fraction of the legal bills.  I'm
quite sure any of a number of people here would gladly help them accomplish
that at their legal team's hourly rate :)

Chris



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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Ted Drake]

There are a couple important points about the Target law suit.

1. Blind people were blocked from accessing online-only coupons and sale
items. They couldn't get these discounts at their local stores.
2. Target was notified of the problems and given suggestions on how to fix
them. Many of them were simply based on lack of alt attributes in images and
image maps.
3. Target ignored these suggestions and 6 months later the law suit was
filed.

There are lots of sites that are not fully accessible. I'd go further and
say 95% of the sites are not "fully accessible". However, the law requires
some effort to making your site accessible and if you are providing a
service exclusively online, you are responsible to make that available to
everyone.

It's surprising that Target allowed itself to get in this position. They are
a company with a strong visual brand and design ethos. They should have
taken this more seriously. I only hope that they grow from this experience
and develop a much better site that is an example of great design with great
accessibility built in.
 

Ted Drake
http://last-child.com





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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Joseph Taylor]

To add to the colorful discussion...

There is certainly merit behind being able to design a site the way you 
want.  I've written private web applications where javascript was 
required - cookies too.


In the public sphere, its a whole different story.  Yes, you can choose 
to visit a website, just like you can choose to visit the local library.


The library is required to offer some level of accessibility to disabled 
visitors.  A website should do the same, especially in an instance where 
it is designed for the general public seeking public information.


On the target suit, at a glance it does seem frivolous. Blind people 
shopping online does seem crazy since we tend to think of the web in 
such visual terms.


In reality, the suit is a result of target's basic refusal to change the 
checkout process on the site so a screenreader or other device can 
checkout using the shopping system.  If I remember correctly there were 
given a year if not more to do so and still didn't with the suit being 
the consequence.


We all know that this would not be difficult to do.

Joseph R. B. Taylor
-
Sites by Joe, LLC
"Clean, Simple and Elegant Web Design"
Phone: (609) 335-3076
Web: http://sitesbyjoe.com
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


Steve Green wrote:
I think you'll find the people of Tibet didn't build Mount Everest and 
weren't even able to influence its design.
 
Target chose to design their site the way they did, and a professional 
designer would have known that they were excluding some people from 
using the website. In the face of such wilful or ignorant behaviour I 
believe it is necessary to legislate. Sure it's inconvenient to have 
to worry about people with disabilities and incur additional costs to 
support them, but it's a mark of a civilised country that we do. At 
least where I live.
 
Steve
 



*From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Chris Wilson

*Sent:* 03 October 2007 22:51
*To:* wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
*Subject:* Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard


"Or do you think that your right to 'do what the hell you like' 
outweighs other people's right to be treated equally?"


Be treated equally? They have to CHOOSE to visit the site. So, because 
they want (want need)to do something, others should accommodate?


I want to visit the summit of mount everest... I suppose the people of 
tibet should install an escalator just so I can reach the top due to 
my less-then-perfect phisical status. Damn them for not allowing me to 
the summit, I'm going to sue.


Idiocy.

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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Julie Romanowski]

Darn it! Sorry, people, it looks like comment registration is now closed
(http://michellemalkin.com/terms-of-use/). 

Here's her contact email - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Please be
civil, ladies and gentlemen. We want to educate this woman, not heckle
her.


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Ian Chamberlain
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2007 6:18 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

I must be having a stupid attack as I can't find anywhere on the site
where I can register and then comment.



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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Chris Wilson]

Those are all well and good, but utterly useless in a global marketplace.
Should I be under your countries guidelines? Mine? What if I'm
international? All of them? What if country As guidelines are incompatible
with country Bs... Or should legislation hinge on guidelines proposed,
created, and managed by a non government body (WSG)?

You are all so quick to support legislation, but do you have any concept of
how that would change the web, a concept not just of the accesability impact
but the real impact?




On 10/3/07, russ - maxdesign <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Which idea of accessability should be imposed? Yours? Mine?
>
> There are clearly defined "ideas" of accessibility for most countries -
> such
> as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/
>
> Or Section 508 in the case of America:
> http://www.section508.gov/
>
> In Australia, for example, web accessibility hinges on the Disability Act
> of
> 1992
> http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/dda1992264/
>
> And is backed up by HEREOC's "World Wide Web Access: Disability
> Discrimination Act Advisory Notes":
> http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/www_3/www_3.html#s3_3
>
> "In June 2000, the Online Council, representing the Commonwealth and all
> State and Territory governments, agreed that the Worldwide Web
> Consortium's
> Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 will be the common best practice
> standard for all Australian government websites."
>
> All this will change soon when WCAG2 hits the stands  :)
>
> Thanks
> Russ
>
>
>
>
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>


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Dennis Lapcewich]

> A private company should be able to do whatever the hell they like.
> Suit is without merit and frivolous. What's next, suing vehicle
> manufacturers for not providing a braille manual? I'm all for
> accesability, but there is no reason it should be mandated, and lack
> of is in no was discriminatory.

Your analogy makes no sense, unless you think the state should be required
to grant a drivers license to Ray Charles.  OTOH, vehicle manufacturers are
required to follow various safety regulations, the purpose of which is not
so much to protect the idiot driver from his own incompetence and
stupidity, but to protect innocent people from the occasional incompetent
and stupid driver.

The Target lawsuit is based on the Americans with Disabilities Act.
According to Wikipedia, Title III of ADA says, "no individual may be
discriminated against on the basis of disability with regards to the full
and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, or accommodations
of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or
leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation. "Public
accommodations" include most places of lodging (such as inns and hotels),
recreation, transportation, education, and dining, along with stores, care
providers, and places of public displays, among other things."

In other words, it's illegal to discriminate against 20 percent of the US
population (that's 60 million people) who have some sort of disability
preventing them from enjoying public accommodation as anyone else.  The
lawsuit is arguing that public accommodation also applies to private
(commercial) web sites, in addition to brick and mortar operations.

If you truly are for accessibility, I'm sure you don't complain about the
wheelchair ramps at crosswalks, the disability buttons at building
entrances, and the extra-large private toilet blocks everywhere else, to
name just a few.  None of these features negatively impact the able-bodied
person one bit.  On the contrary, wheelchair ramps at crosswalks are seen
to have hidden benefits for non-disabled people as well.  All require
considerable sums of money to install and maintain.  Yet applying that same
standard to web sites is not applicable here?  Disability does not mean
seclusion.  In fact, disabled people wield considerable consumer buying
power on their own, let alone influence others and their consumer spending.

Or, put it this way.  Considering Mac users account for a single digit
percentage of all computers connected to the Internet, why even cater to
them, let alone acknowledge their existence? If you believe that then
here's hoping your life insurance is fully paid up.  Mac influence with
respect to the Internet, if not the greater world, is greatly
disproportionate to their numbers, practically all of it for the better of
all of us.  Or do you firmly believe Zune beats iPod hands down? :)

Web accessibility is not an addon issue.  Web accessibility is not an
additional expense.  Web accessibility makes good business sense.  Most
importantly, web accessibility is the right thing to do.  And the final
twist is that everyone, *everyone,* who uses the Internet for whatever
reason, will someday require accessible assistance when it comes to using
the Internet.



Dennis Lapcewich
USDA Forest Service Webmaster
Pacific Northwest Region - Vancouver, WA
360-891-5024 - Voice | 360-891-5045 - Fax
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

"People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing
it." -- Anonymous





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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Ian Chamberlain]

I must be having a stupid attack as I can't find anywhere on the site where 
I can register and then comment.

As for the left / right -  Accessibility/ Freedom agrument (it doesn't 
deserve to be called a debate) it leaves me with the feeling that I would 
not wish to be trapped in a lift (elevator) or even a medium sized country 
with most of these people.

All that said; can anybody help me understand where the idea that 
accessibility costs money comes from?

Agreed, updating an existing site may cost money, however creating a clean 
semantic and accessibile site can be done at the same price as a nasty old 
site and if we all take the semantic thing to heart who knows they should be 
less expensive than todays sites.

The final puzzle is quite why Target are happy to spend more than they 
should simply to discriminate against a significant proportion of their 
potential market.

Seems plain dumb to me.


- Original Message - 
From: "Mark Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2007 11:47 PM
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard


Julie Romanowski wrote:
> I don't know how many of you are familiar with Michelle Malkin. She
> posted about the Target lawsuit today, and although she is an
> intelligent woman, she doesn't have a clue when it comes to web
> accessibility.
>

Malkin doesn't have much of a clue, full stop. She is an American
right-wing nut-bar, slightly less offensive than Ann Coulter. So are the
people who regularly comment on her blog.

> There also seems to be a lot of ignorance among the commenters and I
> would appreciate it if some our WSG members can help to set these people
> straight.

Pearls before swine, They don't WANT to see, because it might require
them to do something that doesn't immediately put dollars in their pockets.

>
> Please visit Michelle Malkin's site and post your comments -
> http://michellemalkin.com/2007/10/03/blind-shoppers-get-green-light-to-s
> ue-target-over-website/.

hmmm... I can't help wondering if this is a troll in itself to get more
people to visit the site and raise a controversy ("sensible patriotic
'Merkins versus hippie scumbags!! Film at 11!). Probably not but that's
the level of suspicion the left/right battle in the US draws from either
side.

mark


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Stuart Foulstone]

http://26bits.com/

An accessible site shouldn't make everyone think they've gone blind.

On Wed, October 3, 2007 11:56 pm, Chris Wilson wrote:
> bigeasyweb.co.uk ?
>
> There is no reason why an accessible site should cause blindness.
>
> On 10/3/07, Stuart Foulstone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, October 3, 2007 11:18 pm, Chris Wilson wrote:
>> > I think my point is being missed entirely. I completely support
>> standards
>> > and accesability...
>>
>> This is patently untrue.  You have no concept of accessibility and the
>> standards and why they exist.
>>
>> >Should target improve their site?
>> > Yes. Should the be required to by a court? No.
>> >
>>
>> It's not required by the court - it's required by law.  The court is
>> just
>> administering the legislation which has been enacted by national
>> government to help bring about a fully democratic society.
>>
>> >
>> > Which idea of accessability should be imposed?
>>
>> Don't you even know this?  See http://www.w3.org/WAI/ for a clue.
>>
>> (aside) Regardless of accessibility issues, target.com is very bad site
>> and full of coding errors.  I wouldn't advise anyone to carry out
>> financial transactions through it.
>>
>>
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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Casey Farrell]

Something which is very important to consider when thinking about 
Malkin's comments and this court case, is that Target stores (an most 
other physical stores) are near completely inaccessible to the blind. 
These comments are from Neil Jarvis, a spokesperson on accessibility and 
a completely blind user of the web:


"To some people it was a life-changing event when the internet really 
started to break through mid-nineties. I could go to a site like 
Woolies and Tescos in the UK and browse the shelves for the first 
time. I can't describe to you what that meant to me. I could never 
browse the shelves before. I turned up with my bag and got help from 
the staff who had no time, really. You'd whiz round and forget half 
the things. I had no idea there were so many 
brands of corn-flakes. I had no idea there were so many kinds of 
milk. I knew there was low fat milk but other brands too? All sorts 
of things really. Not to use a pun but it was really an eye-opener. I 
guess I knew about it but didn't really understand it where it 
counts, in the heart. I was faced with all these choices I never knew 
I had. It was incredibly liberating but I could make some decisions 
about what *do* I want."


(Thanks Raena Jackson Armitage for transcripting)


Julie Romanowski wrote:

I don't know how many of you are familiar with Michelle Malkin. She
posted about the Target lawsuit today, and although she is an
intelligent woman, she doesn't have a clue when it comes to web
accessibility.

There also seems to be a lot of ignorance among the commenters and I
would appreciate it if some our WSG members can help to set these people
straight.

Please visit Michelle Malkin's site and post your comments -
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/10/03/blind-shoppers-get-green-light-to-s
ue-target-over-website/.


Julie Romanowski
Software Engineering - J2EE Engagement Team
State Farm Insurance Company
office: 309-735-5248
mobile: 309-532-4027



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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Chris Wilson]

Oh, this mailing list has been stagnant for quite some time, needs a good
argument if you ask me. :)


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard -ADMIN

[russ - maxdesign]

ADMIN

OK, lets keep this discussion civil and productive, people!

Russ
Admin





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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Chris Wilson]

"As it happens, a Braille version of a publication is one of the least
useful things you can do. In the UK only 2% of registered blind people read
Braille."

How many web users are disabled to the point of using screen readers (anyone
using it by choice not by necessity doesn't count, that's their own issue)?
Probably not much more than that. But you don't advocate publishers being
required to aid them do you? Doesn't sound like it.

Because it was explicitly designed to be accessible. And because it is
relatively easy and the incremental cost is small.

As it happens, a Braille version of a publication is one of the least useful
things you can do. In the UK only 2% of registered blind people read
Braille. However, many have a scanner that allows them to read printed
material using OCR and a text-to-speech converter. The most useful
alternatives are large-print versions and audio recordings, and many
organisations will make their publications available in these formats on
request.

Have you actually looked at the coding on the Target website? I have, many
times. The accessibility (and standards-compliance) could be improved
dramatically at virtually no cost. One of the biggest problems is that
nearly all the links are graphical but no 'alt' attributes have been
provided. You try to navigate when JAWS reads "link graphic six hundred
twenty five million three hundred forty two thousand seven hundred ninety
one". Where does that link point to? Damned if I know. And each page
contains several hundred links like it.

The secondary navigation might look like text but it isn't - it's a honking
great image map. Want to resize the text? Sorry, can't do that. Semantic
structure? Ha ha ha...

You could understand if they just came out and said "screw disabled people -
we don't care", but instead they give us this garbage about how it's as
accessible as possible and it meets all the guidelines and they really do
care ever so much. They are not claiming the right to 'do whatever the hell
they want' - they are trying to kid people that this is as good as it gets
and that it can't be any better. And that is just so far from the truth.

Steve


//*


And here we have the overly emotional response that is exactly why we get
such useless red blooded legislation. I know about being handicapped, but it
doesn't color my logic as I can put the two aside, try it sometime.

On 10/3/07, Mike at Green-Beast.com <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Better yet, since not everyone can see, lets require
> > all publications to include a braille copy
>
> Copyrighted publications in the US are copied to Braille for the most part
> (with copyright holder's permission) by the Library of Congress.
>
> > I want to visit the summit of mount everest... I suppose
> > the people of tibet should install an escalator just so I
> > can reach the top due to my less-then-perfect phisical
> > status.
>
> Mount Everest?! Please, get serious. If you're going to provide a
> comparison, use something logical. Your comparison is akin to comparing an
> apple to a hippopotamus. Not even close.
>
> Let's instead compare the brick-n-mortar Target stores with the web site.
> Are you against the law that requires access to their stores, ramps,
> parking
> spots, wider doors, restroom aids, etc. Where is the line drawn? Why did
> that law come to be? It is the result of the courts because businesses
> didn't do it on their own and had to be pushed. The ADA spoke for a
> minority.
>
> Businesses are notorious for doing the very least that they can until the
> law tells them otherwise. Notorious! It's all about numbers, money, and
> risk
> management. I despise lawsuits, but this one is for the greater good, and
> as
> has been proven in the past, necessary.
>
> It's hard enough living with a disability without the ignorant, the
> selfish,
> or the greedy making life harder. Target spent millions making their
> stores
> accessible. To make the site accessible is so much less. So much easier
> for
> them. And yet, left to command themselves, they did nothing. In fact, once
> asked to correct the issues the first time all they did was complain, try
> to
> justify their crappy site, and took little to no action.
>
> Choice? Cut off your legs and see how limited choice gets. The web is easy
> access for lots of people who have certain difficulties, even with full
> ADA
> compliance in a physical location. My cousin was a quadriplegic and she
> hardly went anywhere because it was a huge hassle doing anything. Give her
> a
> pointed stick, put it in her mouth, and place a computer in front of her,
> though, and she was free to roam and happy as a lark. She literally
> drooled
> over the experience! I can't see how any business or site can justify the
> failure to remove the barriers that would have blocked her access.
>
> I better stop now.
>
> Mike Cherim
>
>
>
> ***
> List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.

RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Julie Romanowski]

No, not a troll. Someone sent me this link and the comments I read were
disheartening. I don't know if it would make a difference, but I wanted
to see if we could actually get some of these people to start thinking.
Maybe it's a lost cause... 

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Mark Harris
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2007 5:47 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

Julie Romanowski wrote:
> I don't know how many of you are familiar with Michelle Malkin. She 
> posted about the Target lawsuit today, and although she is an 
> intelligent woman, she doesn't have a clue when it comes to web 
> accessibility.
> 

Malkin doesn't have much of a clue, full stop. She is an American
right-wing nut-bar, slightly less offensive than Ann Coulter. So are the
people who regularly comment on her blog.

> There also seems to be a lot of ignorance among the commenters and I 
> would appreciate it if some our WSG members can help to set these 
> people straight.

Pearls before swine, They don't WANT to see, because it might require
them to do something that doesn't immediately put dollars in their
pockets.

> 
> Please visit Michelle Malkin's site and post your comments - 
> http://michellemalkin.com/2007/10/03/blind-shoppers-get-green-light-to
> -s
> ue-target-over-website/.

hmmm... I can't help wondering if this is a troll in itself to get more
people to visit the site and raise a controversy ("sensible patriotic
'Merkins versus hippie scumbags!! Film at 11!). Probably not but that's
the level of suspicion the left/right battle in the US draws from either
side.

mark


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Mike at Green-Beast.com]

> Better yet, since not everyone can see, lets require
> all publications to include a braille copy

Copyrighted publications in the US are copied to Braille for the most part 
(with copyright holder's permission) by the Library of Congress.

> I want to visit the summit of mount everest... I suppose
> the people of tibet should install an escalator just so I
> can reach the top due to my less-then-perfect phisical
> status.

Mount Everest?! Please, get serious. If you're going to provide a 
comparison, use something logical. Your comparison is akin to comparing an 
apple to a hippopotamus. Not even close.

Let's instead compare the brick-n-mortar Target stores with the web site. 
Are you against the law that requires access to their stores, ramps, parking 
spots, wider doors, restroom aids, etc. Where is the line drawn? Why did 
that law come to be? It is the result of the courts because businesses 
didn't do it on their own and had to be pushed. The ADA spoke for a 
minority.

Businesses are notorious for doing the very least that they can until the 
law tells them otherwise. Notorious! It's all about numbers, money, and risk 
management. I despise lawsuits, but this one is for the greater good, and as 
has been proven in the past, necessary.

It's hard enough living with a disability without the ignorant, the selfish, 
or the greedy making life harder. Target spent millions making their stores 
accessible. To make the site accessible is so much less. So much easier for 
them. And yet, left to command themselves, they did nothing. In fact, once 
asked to correct the issues the first time all they did was complain, try to 
justify their crappy site, and took little to no action.

Choice? Cut off your legs and see how limited choice gets. The web is easy 
access for lots of people who have certain difficulties, even with full ADA 
compliance in a physical location. My cousin was a quadriplegic and she 
hardly went anywhere because it was a huge hassle doing anything. Give her a 
pointed stick, put it in her mouth, and place a computer in front of her, 
though, and she was free to roam and happy as a lark. She literally drooled 
over the experience! I can't see how any business or site can justify the 
failure to remove the barriers that would have blocked her access.

I better stop now.

Mike Cherim



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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Steve Green]

Because it was explicitly designed to be accessible. And because it is
relatively easy and the incremental cost is small.
 
As it happens, a Braille version of a publication is one of the least useful
things you can do. In the UK only 2% of registered blind people read
Braille. However, many have a scanner that allows them to read printed
material using OCR and a text-to-speech converter. The most useful
alternatives are large-print versions and audio recordings, and many
organisations will make their publications available in these formats on
request.
 
Have you actually looked at the coding on the Target website? I have, many
times. The accessibility (and standards-compliance) could be improved
dramatically at virtually no cost. One of the biggest problems is that
nearly all the links are graphical but no 'alt' attributes have been
provided. You try to navigate when JAWS reads "link graphic six hundred
twenty five million three hundred forty two thousand seven hundred ninety
one". Where does that link point to? Damned if I know. And each page
contains several hundred links like it.
 
The secondary navigation might look like text but it isn't - it's a honking
great image map. Want to resize the text? Sorry, can't do that. Semantic
structure? Ha ha ha...
 
You could understand if they just came out and said "screw disabled people -
we don't care", but instead they give us this garbage about how it's as
accessible as possible and it meets all the guidelines and they really do
care ever so much. They are not claiming the right to 'do whatever the hell
they want' - they are trying to kid people that this is as good as it gets
and that it can't be any better. And that is just so far from the truth.
 
Steve

  _  

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Chris Wilson
Sent: 03 October 2007 23:01
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard



Better yet, since not everyone can see, lets require all publications to
include a braille copy, all musical artists to provide a written transcript
of ever performance. That would of course be madness...

Why should a different standard be applied to the web? 



On 10/3/07, russ - maxdesign <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 

I can only assume this is an attempt at trolling...

Either that or phrases like "the web is for everyone" has fallen on deaf
ears. Luckily, there are laws in many countries to stop companies and
agencies "doing whatever the hell the like" when it comes to website and 
accessibility.

Russ

>
> A private company should be able to do whatever the hell they like. Suit
is
> without merit and frivolous. What's next, suing vehicle manufacturers for
not
> providing a braille manual? I'm all for accesability, but there is no
reason 
> it should be mandated, and lack of is in no was discriminatory.




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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Chris Wilson]

"No, not madness. Instead, it would be a good way to bring art to
audiences that might not otherwise know it."

Yes, but once you start applying that logic inside legislated rules of
presentation and usage (which is the issue here, or will be), a site can no
longer be the art the artist desires.

"However, if it _is_ different, then we should apply it because we can,
because it's the right thing to do and because a commercial site open to
more users will generate more sales, just by the law of averages."

Yes, we should, laws shouldn't mandate it. When you take away the ability to
choose the right path and instead force it on a person, that person looses
the ability to be good as they never choose to do good, it's forced on them
- yes?


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Chris Wilson]

bigeasyweb.co.uk ?

There is no reason why an accessible site should cause blindness.

On 10/3/07, Stuart Foulstone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, October 3, 2007 11:18 pm, Chris Wilson wrote:
> > I think my point is being missed entirely. I completely support
> standards
> > and accesability...
>
> This is patently untrue.  You have no concept of accessibility and the
> standards and why they exist.
>
> >Should target improve their site?
> > Yes. Should the be required to by a court? No.
> >
>
> It's not required by the court - it's required by law.  The court is just
> administering the legislation which has been enacted by national
> government to help bring about a fully democratic society.
>
> >
> > Which idea of accessability should be imposed?
>
> Don't you even know this?  See http://www.w3.org/WAI/ for a clue.
>
> (aside) Regardless of accessibility issues, target.com is very bad site
> and full of coding errors.  I wouldn't advise anyone to carry out
> financial transactions through it.
>
>
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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Mark Harris]

Andrew Boyd wrote:

My suggestion is that rather than cars it should have something to do with cats saying 
"Can I haz agsessibillitee?"

:)


I'm in ur CMS, changing ur links


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Mike Brown]

If you are going to argue for standards and accesability, follow your 
own advice first. Captain table layout over here. You don't even have 
alt tags on your images. Hypocritical aren't ya?


Taking bets as to how long before Goodwin's law 
 kicks in. I figure Russ will 
shut things down before then, but otherwise, an hour at most?


:)

Mike


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Mark Harris]

Julie Romanowski wrote:

I don't know how many of you are familiar with Michelle Malkin. She
posted about the Target lawsuit today, and although she is an
intelligent woman, she doesn't have a clue when it comes to web
accessibility.



Malkin doesn't have much of a clue, full stop. She is an American 
right-wing nut-bar, slightly less offensive than Ann Coulter. So are the 
people who regularly comment on her blog.



There also seems to be a lot of ignorance among the commenters and I
would appreciate it if some our WSG members can help to set these people
straight.


Pearls before swine, They don't WANT to see, because it might require 
them to do something that doesn't immediately put dollars in their pockets.




Please visit Michelle Malkin's site and post your comments -
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/10/03/blind-shoppers-get-green-light-to-s
ue-target-over-website/.


hmmm... I can't help wondering if this is a troll in itself to get more 
people to visit the site and raise a controversy ("sensible patriotic 
'Merkins versus hippie scumbags!! Film at 11!). Probably not but that's 
the level of suspicion the left/right battle in the US draws from either 
side.


mark


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Stuart Foulstone]

On Wed, October 3, 2007 11:18 pm, Chris Wilson wrote:
> I think my point is being missed entirely. I completely support standards
> and accesability...

This is patently untrue.  You have no concept of accessibility and the
standards and why they exist.

>Should target improve their site?
> Yes. Should the be required to by a court? No.
>

It's not required by the court - it's required by law.  The court is just
administering the legislation which has been enacted by national
government to help bring about a fully democratic society.

>
> Which idea of accessability should be imposed?

Don't you even know this?  See http://www.w3.org/WAI/ for a clue.

(aside) Regardless of accessibility issues, target.com is very bad site
and full of coding errors.  I wouldn't advise anyone to carry out
financial transactions through it.


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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[russ - maxdesign]

> Which idea of accessability should be imposed? Yours? Mine?
 
There are clearly defined "ideas" of accessibility for most countries - such
as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

Or Section 508 in the case of America:
http://www.section508.gov/

In Australia, for example, web accessibility hinges on the Disability Act of
1992
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/dda1992264/

And is backed up by HEREOC's "World Wide Web Access: Disability
Discrimination Act Advisory Notes":
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/www_3/www_3.html#s3_3

"In June 2000, the Online Council, representing the Commonwealth and all
State and Territory governments, agreed that the Worldwide Web Consortium's
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 will be the common best practice
standard for all Australian government websites."

All this will change soon when WCAG2 hits the stands  :)

Thanks
Russ




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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Mike Brown]

Chris Wilson wrote:


A private company should be able to do whatever the hell they like. Suit 
is without merit and frivolous. What's next, suing vehicle manufacturers 
for not providing a braille manual? I'm all for accesability, but there 
is no reason it should be mandated, and lack of is in no was 
discriminatory.


Thoughts like this really belong in the comments section of the article. 
They could join such pearls of wisdom as:



"With all the companies selling their wares on the web, why don't the
blind just "move on" (no pun intended) to an organization that caters to
their needs?"


"I'm waiting for a blind man to sue Playboy or Hustler magazine for
'equal access'"


"I wondered if an Iraqi war veteran who lost his sight in combat joins
the class action suit would that cause the judge to reverse herself (she
might implode if she had to rule in favor of a soldier)? But then I
realized that the hypothetical wasn't realistic because no one brave
enough to serve America in war could ever be so stupid as to associate
with this moron class action."
[Mike - yup, not only disabled, but stupid *and* unpatriotic.]


"As a part-time website developer I need to point out a couple of things
that need to be understood on this matter.

First of all ... Although I can fully understand the problems of
accessing websites for those with eyesight problems this type of need is 
normally taken care of with software the individual purchases and 
installs on their own computer ... not by the website itself ...


Secondly ... to carry this a step further ... to be fully compliant the
software at the website end would be required to be able to translate
and verbalize the text into every spoken language on the face of the
earth ... not just the language in which the text was written bty the
website owners ... fail to do that and you would face never-ending
lawsuits from people that didn't speak English or whatever the native
language of the website ..."
[Mike - see, the problem is this guy is only a part-time web developer. 
If he was full-time, he'd totally have time and be able to solve the 
"verbalise the text into every spoken language" problem.]



"The fall of Rome was accomplished largely by similar politically
correct social miscreants."
[Mike - this last one is my favourite. Maybe Al Qaeda is behind the 
lawsuit?]



This article has totally made my day in the "it's so bad all you can do 
is laugh" mode.


Mike



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Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Mark Harris]

Chris Wilson wrote:
> Better yet, since not everyone can see, lets require
> all publications to include a braille copy, all musical
> artists to provide a written transcript
> of ever performance. That would of course be madness...
>
No, not madness. Instead, it would be a good way to bring art to 
audiences that might not otherwise know it.


> Why should a different standard be applied to the web?
>

It's not different, anymore than wheelchair ramps outside buildings are 
different. I'm not in a wheelchair, but I often use the ramp in 
preference to the steps as my left knee is pretty screwed and sometimes 
doesn't bend like it should.


As the internet (which is more than the web, remember) becomes not only 
ubiquitous but required to function in the modern world, barriers such 
as inaccessible websites do truly pose a problem for those who operate 
differently. They can't choose to use a different website if the company 
at issue is the only purveyor of the product or service that they need.


However, if it _is_ different, then we should apply it because we can, 
because it's the right thing to do and because a commercial site open to 
more users will generate more sales, just by the law of averages.


mark


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