Actually Canada has to accessibility requirements under any law. The Canadian Government has the Common Look and Feel Guidelines and in there they require WAI AA for all Federal Government sites (government workers in Canada correct me please).
http://www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/clf-nsi/index_e.asp Ontario (where I am) has the Ontarian with Disabilities Act (2001) but it lacks any real teeth and doesn't suggest anything specific - for uni's we have to come up with a 'plan' and the community is to keep us to it. For UW I have just been promoting the idea of standard code and accessible design and worked with many students with disabilities to determine what features they would like to see. Luckily our pages are mountains of text and static pages... Students use Google to get around and are relatively happy with our pages even though we have done little to make them accessible in the past. It is more a responsibility to the community that is motivating our move to accessible design. I think (not entirely sure) in Canada there is the wild card - Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I have heard a few discussions about how inaccessible websites violate people's rights in Canada, but to my knowledge no court cases yet. It would only take one court case though, and the tide would shift in Canada. Accessible design consultants are just waiting for that I imagine ;) So how does Section 508 effect us? It doesn't. But it is of particular interest since I have seen a couple of the people that worked on it present at conferences. I am not a huge fan of the WCAG, nor am I a fan of those who preach strict adherence without first providing a guide for those who don't understand. The other problem of validators is annoying as well. I was sitting in Tim Hortons in Toronto with Joe Clark listening to him go on how validators can't tell you want you have done right, only what you have done wrong, but even then they are inaccurate - when I thought, this is madness (and no it wasn't just because Joe was ranting) and I haven't seen anything in the past year or so to make me think otherwise. Jesse On 6/30/04 8:47 AM, "Lee Roberts" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Jesse, please tell me how Canada falls under Section 508. I realize Canada > falls under our telecommunications acts, but I wasn't aware that Canada had > to comply with Section 508. As I understood it, Canada's rules, although > not totally accepted, required bi-lingual sites and even more accessibility > than Section 508 requires. Please correct me if I'm wrong; I like to keep > up with how other countries are handling the issues. ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
