Profile:
albertrizzi

This is albertrizzi's Profile page. Use it to view albertrizzi's comments, other users' replies to these comments, and comments albertrizzi has endorsed.

What's Happening Now

albertrizzi
December 1, 2011 9:14 am

using the w3c compliance regulations is a better standard then what we presently adhere to in the states. their guidelines are more current and appropriate given the global community that is the united states and all who will visit the sites presently under consideration for adherence to these standards as required by federal law.

albertrizzi
December 1, 2011 9:24 am

to not consider usability when attending to these violations of federal law, we in essence lock doors of access to nearly 20 million individuals if we look at who it is that makes up the print disabled community. as a blind end user, to be precluded from independently accessing critical information to plan and arrange my travel is insulting and a violation of my civil liberties. in instances where we cannot access web sites through our computers as everyone else throughout our nation, we are left to make calls to reservationists,outside the US and are all to often charged a fee for using the call in desk, having to argue about the laws governing this issue, argue about why we should not and cannot be charged this fee, only to find we have in fact been charged, thereby necessitating a call to… more »

…an american office rep. to ask them to reverse the charge. the simplicity and ease of making sites accessible would be cost effective and if marketed properly, open a whole market of individuals who use the computer for all aspects of their lives. « less
albertrizzi
December 2, 2011 7:26 am

my response is to ken, this is not as you say a stupid requirement. it is and has been a law on the books for nearly 20 years. the only issue is that is has not been effectively extended to include commercial sites. like i expressed we are talking about 20 million poeope who would be impacted in the states alone. we went through this same discussion decades ago when society introduced ramps and such for equal access to those in wheel chairs and other mobility devices. we discussed the costs outweighing the need, and the need prevailed. we found out that all to many people opted to use ramps such as parents with strollers and others. we are facing the same dilemma.we are discussing virtual access to a virtual world. if you consider this discussion along the same lines as the one previously mentioned… more »

…you may take a different view on the subject. i was personally refused service by a bank to invest a large sum of money because they argued that they were not requireed to provide my equal access to banking and investing because of some SEC regulation from 1933. in another instance i took another bank to court and won a nice settlement out of court and a sweet mortgage deal because they and the mediator saw that my civil liberties were being violated. this does not add to much cost for any commercial entity and if built into the IT teams mission and focus would add a minimal amount to their bottom lines. however, law suits and such could impose millions in fines for not adhereing to these simple access issues. all one needs do is investigate the law suit leveled against target for these same issues to see how effective, both from a cost perspective and a marketing perspective to appreciate the critical need to address this post haste. « less
Moderator
December 1, 2011 4:25 pm

Thank you for your comment albertrizzi. As you may know, w3c’s WCAG 2.0 standards that DOT is proposing here are only technical standards, not performance standards (you can read an explanation of the difference in section 3 of this post). Some other commenters have suggested that DOT should require performance standards for website accessibility as well (read these comments). Do you agree or are the w3c standards enough?


No comments