I will not comment on the cost effectiveness of upgrading to MS Office 2010 except to say that if you are still using MS Office 2003, this is probably a worthwhile investment. But if you are responsible for ensuring that the documents coming from your organization meet accessibility requirements, MS Office 2010 might be an excellent investment.

Accessibility Checker

For the new version of MS Office (MSO), Microsoft has made accessibility a priority since one of the new features is the Accessibility Checker (MSO-AC) built into three of the core applications: Word 2010, Excel 2010, and PowerPoint 2010. According to the MS promo, the MSO-AC helps users create more accessible content “by identifying areas that might be challenging for users with disabilities to view or use, and providing a task pane to review those areas, users can fix potential problems with their content.” So far, my limited experience with the MSO-AC has been favorable and here is what I have learned so far:

1. To use MSO-AC, click on the File tab [or Alt-F], tab to, or click on Prepare for Sharing and then tab to or click on to Check Accessibility. The MSO-AC dialog panel will appear along the right side of your screen and show you Warnings, Errors or Inspection Results. The MSO-AC works dynamically (see 3 below) and will continue to run as you create or edit your document. To find the location of the error in your document, click or tab to the Warning statement and your screen will refresh showing the error location highlighted.

In the lower panel of the MSO-AC, there is Additional Information which explains the reason for the Warning/Error and step-by-step instructions on how to fix it.

In developing this tool, Microsoft apparently differentiated between accessibility issues that are minor and those considered critical. For example, including extra characters (Warning: Repeated Blank Characters) is considered minor – issuing a “Warning,” whereas the absence of ALT text for an inserted image is considered critical – issuing an “Error”

2. When creating new documents using the default version settings (not documents saved in pre-2007 versions of MSO), the MSO-AC seems to run smoothly as advertised. Documents created in older versions of Office, or saved in the pre-2007 format, may or may not work as expected. For example, testing some 2003 version Excel spreadsheets yielded an error statement: “Unable to run the Accessibility Checker – Cannot check the current file type for accessibility issues.” Attempts at saving the file in the current (2010) version had no effect on this. However, if the data is copied and pasted into a new Excel 2010 spreadsheet, the MSO-AC worked fine.

When using Word and PowerPoint, the MSO-AC worked essentially the same way (error when trying to check documents made by older versions), but sometimes simply saving the document in the new 2010 version allowed MSO-AC to work. Note to Microsoft: I found this to work inconsistently.

3. One of the best features of the MSO-AC is that once activated in the application it will run dynamically and continue to alert you to accessibility issues via the Accessibility Checker task pane (see image on this page) as you continue to create or edit your document. In other words, in PowerPoint, as you add features to a slide such as an image or chart, the MSO-AC immediately notes that the new object is lacking an ALT text description and provides directions and rationale on how to fix the accessibility error. And if you accidently – or purposely – remove an accessibility feature, MSO-AC will note this and provide a description of the issue, how to fix it and why it needs to be fixed. This dynamic feature allows the author to add the accessibility on the fly, as the document is being created. This feature alone has the potential of making the process of adding accessibility features faster and easier. The feature should be very helpful in enterprise settings, ultimately reducing the cost of training and accessibility auditing.

4. When adding ALT description text in MS-Office 2010, the procedure has been thankfully standardized across all applications. Right clicking with your mouse (Note: there are a series steps to accomplish this task using keystroke alternatives) brings up the Format Picture dialog box. Choose the “ALT Text” option at the bottom of the list and add the alternative text. Unfortunately, Microsoft has chosen to add an input box for adding a “Title” and/or a “Description” to this option. Even though the MSO-AC will “approve” an inserted image that has only a Title and not a Description, if you convert this document into another format (PDF or HTML) the Title will not pass as a valid description for accessibility purposes. In other words, for conversion purposes, the Description is more important than the Title. At this point, it is recommended that users add BOTH a Title and Description to their inserted image and make the content of the Title and Description the same.

Final Thoughts

One can only hope that the next version of MS Office will expand the Accessibility Checker to MS Publisher and all of the products within the suite. Hopefully MS will also include this feature in updates to its version of MS Office for the Mac OS.

As I continue to play with MSO-AC, I will no doubt find new and interesting features. I will post them as additions to this blog article or as separate entries. See the Resources below for links to what others have said about MS Office and accessibility.

Resources

MS Tutorial on how to use the MSO-AC

A blog article from MSO2010 Engineering (January 2010) describing the how the MSO-AC was developed and more about what it checks for.

WebAIM article about how to build accessible documents. Includes information about the new MSO-AC.

Another blog article from Microsoft on Office Web Applications accessibility

Media Access Australia blog about the new MSO-AC

YouTube Video on MS-Office 2010 Accessibility features

I just finished writing a Privacy Policy for the jebswebs site and will be adding a link on the blog to point to it.

Personally, I am not overly concerned about privacy on the web, but many people are, and I can certainly understand this. I am concerned about some of the “biggest offenders” who have made the press lately. It’s one thing to have an online service that gather’s information, it is something else when you don’t let people/visitors know about it – or if you constantly change the requirements to keep your information private. The “biggest offenders” are also guilty of creating a false sense of security by creating the illusion of a “gated community” when all the while, their patrons’ personal information is available to those beyond the “gate.”

So, I am a bit ashamed that I didn’t catch this a few weeks ago when I stated adding GA to several of my sites. Rest assured I’ll be remedying that in the next few days.

For those who don’t know about GA and wonder, why all the fuss, let me explain.

Google Analytics is a neat and free service provided by Google to website owners and developers. The developer inserts a small amount of JavaScript code on the pages of their website, and every time someone visits that page, the script grabs some information about the visitor and adds it to the owner’s GA account database. The website owner and/or developer can access this database information by logging into their GA account and seeing charts and graphs which aggregate the data collected. The information collected ranges from what pages are being visit, what browser is being used, and how long they stayed on the site. It should be noted that no personally identifiable information (i.e., names and addresses) are gathered through this interaction. There may be some debate about the use of IP addresses. GA’s policies say they are not harvested, but GA does give you location data – at least in terms of country of origin – and that would have to come from IP data.

It is important to note – and this is where the Privacy Policy comes in – that nearly all of this information is rather innocuous and completely anonymous. But, because the information is also sent to Google, and in the theme of complete disclosure, it is important that visitors know this. I guess you could make the case that by virtue of visiting your site, the visitor’s data is already collected, but let’s not go there…

BTW, just to play it safe, Google offers a free browser plug-in called the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on which, when installed in a browser [at this point available for Internet Explorer (versions 7 and 8), Google Chrome (4.x and higher), and Mozilla Firefox (3.5 and higher)], the information gathered by GA will be shared with the site owner, but not Google. So, if you are concerned about your privacy, you may want to install this.

Note: In researching for this blog entry, I came across an Australian news article on just this topic. Reading it next.

From the Access Board

DOJ’s new rules will update its ADA regulations for state and local governments under title II and those for public accommodations and commercial entities covered by title III. The pending regulations will implement with effective dates new ADA standards for title II and title III facilities that are closely based on updated guidelines previously issued by the Board. In addition, the final rules, which DOJ made available for public comment in 2008, will revise or supplement other sections of DOJ’s regulations, including those covering existing facilities, service animals, policies and programs, maintenance of accessible features, auxiliary aids and services, and effective communication. DOJ had planned to issue the regulations in early 2009 but delayed publication in order to give officials of the incoming Obama Administration an opportunity to review them. For more information, visit DOJ’s website at www.ada.gov. Visitors to the site can subscribe to email updates from DOJ on this and other Department activities.

DOJ’s standards apply to all facilities covered by the ADA except transportation facilities, which are subject to standards issued by the Department of Transportation (DOT). DOT has already implemented updated ADA standards for transportation facilities. Similar standards are also in place under the Architectural Barriers Act (ABA) for most federally funded facilities. Housing facilities covered by the ABA currently remain subject to earlier standards pending the adoption of new standards by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Further information on the status of ADA and ABA standards is available on the Board’s website.

I think I may have also discovered a bug in v3.0, and am search for others who are experiencing this…it is minor, but annoying. The “bug” is in how the Dashboard displays content. To the uninitiated, the Dashboard is the administrative “back end” of the WordPress  application where you make settings adjustments, install stuff and where you post your blog entries.

Using the “screen options” tab (upper right) you are allowed to choose having a number of different elements to be visible on the Dashboard. The elements include messages from WP, plus quick links to some of the things you use regularly. Most important is that you have the ability to put this information in 1, 2, 3, or 4 columns to make it easier to read.

Well, the first thing I noticed after the upgrade was that all of the information on my Dashboard was being squeezed into two columns even though I had the settings set for three columns. When I tried changing the settings, I apparently made it worse since now everything is squished into one LONG column and the 2-3 columns to the right are empty save what appears to be an empty php/div block. Hmm.

A search of WP forums turned up nothing so far…I may try posting a bug report. I will also post this observation to Twitter and see if it is just me…always a possibility.

End of test…

Whoever perfects S-t-T stands to make billions in the first year, so it stands to reason Google would be interested in tapping into that treasure chest. But perfecting S-t-T has always been an elusive goal and anyone worth their salt in the captioning or transcription business knows the human beings still make the best captionists.

That said, at the recent Accessibility Unconference a few weeks ago, the issue of S-t-T came up and there was lots of interest in YouTube’s “automatic captioning” service. I should note here that YouTube currently calls this a “machine transcription” service and offered it with some caveats. They also seem, in some ways, to be more interested in the language translation tool that was also delivered on YouTube at the same time. Perhaps there is more money to be made in the translation of Chinese to English than in S-t-T.

At the Unconference, there was one gentleman who represented a transcription service company in Massachusetts that used a system based upon a combination of automated S-t-T and human power. He claimed that his system was much faster than regular human-only transcription because machines  take the first cut at the translation and humans completed the final edits. He also claimed it was flawless. Lastly, he noted that the fee for this service ranged on a scale based upon the quality of the audio. Apparently, the poorer the quality of the speech, the more interactions with humans is necessary, and the more expensive is the price tag.

So all this got me thinking about the experimental YouTube video I created and posted back in early March. The “automatic captioning,” eh, machine translation, of my video was indeed a bit hilarious. Sharing it with friends, we all howled at the bizarre transcripts that were produced by the system. It was a bit like playing that children’s game, “Telephone,” where you whisper something into someone’s ear and they whisper it into the next person and so on down the line until the last person says it out loud. The final product never comes out correctly and is usually quite funny. And indeed, the YouTube “machine transcription” was much the same.

For my test video, I purposely read a printed text -  as opposed to spontaneous speech – so I would have an exact copy of the content from which to compare the transcript. The results were marginal at best and honestly, the transcript really made no logical sense. It was also amazing what YouTube’s machine translation failed to recognize. The machine translation had a particular difficult time with the words “accessibility” and “web design.” Go figure.

I recently learned that you could download the YouTube machine translation, edit it, and then re-post it to the original YouTube video. So, today I finally got around to trying this and though successful, the process was not without pain.

First, the machine transcript is saved in some unique YouTubian format (.SBV). The content is readable using a simple text editor and looks like this:

 0:00:02.179,0:00:07.740
   okay so am I- of doing it tested video here
   it and I'm going to read this to see if the
   0:00:07.740,0:00:09.959
 captioning system works well

Fortunately, my MovCaptioner software could import the file and provide an easy way for editing the content. But after editing the text, I could not export the transcript without first merging it with a video. I had to grab the original video from YouTube (which I downloaded in .MP4 format) and then load that into MovCaptioner. Once the editing was finished (see note below about time), I was able to save and export the file in another format (.SUB for Subtitle format) and then upload that transcript file to YouTube.

The final edited .SUB file looks like this:

 00:00:02.17,00:00:07.72
   Okay so I am doing a test
   video here and I'm going to
   read this to see if the
   00:00:07.74,00:00:09.94
 captioning system works well

As predicted, the most strenuous part of the process is the actual editing of the transcript. Even though the machine transcript had gotten about 50% of the content correct, it still took close to 45 minutes for me to edit the three minutes of video. It is clear that I talk pretty fast, as there was 75 lines of text that had to be edited. I can’t imagine doing this for anything longer.

So, I’ve learned a few things here:

First, YouTube’s “automatic captioning/machine translation” is far from perfect and must not be used, at this point, for anything other than amusement. I am not sure if Google has a timeline on when this will get better, but until it produces accuracy at a 85% or higher basis, I would not rely on it as a usable transcription.

Second, while machine translation, followed by human editing is clearly more accurate than machine translation alone, the time savings may not be all that one might imagine. I’m guessing that a professional transcriptionist using state of the art equipment would have been able to transcribe the three minutes of video a lot faster than I was able to edit the machined version.

Last, we are still a long way from fully accurate S-t-T and if you are going to use videos on your websites, and want them to be accessible, you are probably still going to have to pay someone to create a transcript/caption file for you.

Note: jeremykemp has posted a YouTube video comparing human vs. machine translation on several video clips. You can see the errors produced by the machine transcription.

Originally published 5/14/10; revised 5/24/10

Just starting to read a report of this week’s Access Board hearing on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Standards and Guidelines. Here is the beginning of that report:

On May 12 the Board held a public hearing on its refresh of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Standards and Guidelines. Through this event, which attracted a sizable audience, the Board sought feedback from the public on its draft update of standards for Federal technologies covered by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and guidelines for telecommunications products subject to Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act.

Read the complete report of the hearing here.

UPDATE: I attended the EASI webinar (5-24-10) on the 255/508 Refresh. TRACE Center has a new resource that may be “easier” to understand. Here is the TRACE Center resource.

So here is my answer to the question: Why should my website be accessible? Feel free to comment as a way of adding to the list of reasons. The more (reasons) the merrier.

To begin, not everyone knows that a certain number of people with disabilities must use specialized hardware and software (called Assistive Technology or A.T.) to use computers and technology. For example, most people who are blind (and many people with visual impairments) use a application called a screen-reader which “translates” content on a computer (or other technology) into speech or Braille. The screen-reader software also provides a easy way for the blind person to use the various controls on a computer or device by providing audio feedback which tells the user what is being typed on the screen or what controls are being used. There are also “tools” built into the screen-reader application that allow the user to “scan” the information on the screen and navigate quickly through the content in a way that is purposeful and meaningful. Without screen-reading technology many blind people and those with visual impairments would not be able to use these technologies.  Here is a link to more information about Braille and how screen-readers works.

Consider for a moment all the people in the United States who have some form of visual disabilities – that is, all the blind and visually impaired folks. Recent estimates are that there are about 15 million people in the United States who have these disabilities (source Braille Institute). Can you afford to have your website not be available to 15 million people in the US alone?

If we also consider other people with disabilities, the numbers grow even larger. People with hearing disabilities frequently need to have video content captioned or audio files transcribed in order to be accessible. People with mobility impairments, that may not be able to use a mouse to navigate around a computer screen, need to have accessible websites that work with the various Assistive Technologies they use.

So the first reason your website should be accessible is because only accessible websites will work correctly and completely with Assistive Technologies. Those websites that are partially accessible or not accessible at all, will be partially usable or completely unusable by people who have disabilities. So, if you want everyone to have access to the content on your website, you should make sure your website is accessible.

The next reason for having an accessible website is because accessible websites meet the international standards for web design and for this reason will work in every “user agent,” that is, every browser, on every operating system, and in every mobile and handheld devices (e.g., mobile phones and small WiFi devices like iPods and iPads). There are literally thousands of different devices and configurations with new technologies being developed every day.  So, if you want your website to work with virtually all devices that connect to the internet, you should make sure your website is accessible.

The next reason to make your website accessible is because Google will love you for doing so. Well, not really, but if you want people to find and use your website, then you should be concerned about how search engines like Google “feel” about your site. The science behind this is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which is based upon a set of methodologies that search engine services use to rank websites.

The corporate world spends lots of money tweaking their websites in order to improve their SEO. They understand that the difference of 1% in traffic flowing to a website could mean millions of dollars of profit for their company. Simply put, accessible web sites rank higher on SEO because they are built better than non-accessible sites and Google likes that. So, if you want to improve your SEO, you should make sure your website is accessible.

The last reason I will give here is one that is not exactly universal – yet. However, the trends suggest that it is just a matter of time before it becomes universal. What I am talking about is the legal requirement to make your website accessible.

Currently in the United Kingdom, it is the law that websites be accessible to people with disabilities (here is a summary about the law from Royal National Institute for Blind People). While not everyone is yet in compliance, there has been a steady increase in the number of websites in the United Kingdom that meet accessibilty standards.

In the United States, there is no universal law requiring all websites to meet accessibility standards. However, there are laws on the books that require websites for all federal and state government programs to be accessible. Currently, there are several groups reviewing two federal laws that deal with accessibility and websites, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, with an eye on expanding these laws to cover more websites. In recent years, various advocacy organizations for disabled Americans have also brought numerous civil rights complaints against businesses for not having accessible websites. And, while there has not been a definitive legal ruling, it is clearly just a matter of time before website accessibility becomes the law of the land in the United States. So, if you want to get ahead of this and be ready when the laws and rules change, you should make sure your website is accessible.

Here are some links to some other folks who have addressed this issue:

• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) – Web Accessibility
• WAI’s “Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization” (thank you Andrew Arch @w3.org)
• WebAIM
• Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWD)
• Disabled World
• Admixweb
• Hipertext.net

And if you think of more reasons, please pass them along by commenting.

This thought hit me as I was signing up to attend the Boston Accessibility “Unconference” a few weeks ago. After reading the introduction and description on their website, I found it strangely reminiscent of the “happenings” we engaged in when I was a youth in high school and college. Very avant-garde, I thought; I’m in.

So with open expectations and my colleague Steve Sawczyn (a.k.a. @steveofmaine) riding shotgun, I ventured the three hours down to Waltham, MA this Saturday to see what would “happen.” I will admit that I was surprised by some things and not others. There were good things and disappointments. The experience reminded me vaguely of the first Tweetup I attended about a year ago; meeting a bunch of people whom I knew only through digital correspondences, blog posts and Tweets. I was quickly putting faces with “avatars” and changing my impressions at a steady pace.

There will be a formal evaluation process for the Boston Accessibility Unconference and when that comes out, I will take the opportunity to provide my full opinions there. But I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect upon the experience and post that information here while it was relatively fresh in my mind. I’ve organized my thoughts into three statements. Feel free to respond or generate your own ideas. Here are the three statements:

• What it was
• What it wasn’t
• What I would like it to be in the future

What it was

The Boston Accessibility Unconference was a gathering of about 80 fairly diverse folks who were interested in the accessibility of information technology. Like me, most seemed interested in the vicissitudes of accessible web design, but there were a number of folks whose interests appeared to branch into other areas of technology. There were a fair number of people with disabilities among the gathering.

The setting was the beautifully modern Waltham facilities of the Adobe Corporation provided by host Andrew Kirkpatrick, Adobe’s product manager for accessibility. The building featured all the latest gizmos and the most high tech restrooms on the planet. If you haven’t had a chance to hear Steve Sawczyn’s report of the skin-removing hand dryers in the men’s room, you are missing a rewarding experience. I will think of this place when I sent a hunk of cash to Adobe in a few weeks to purchase CS5 (again Warning: I don’t know if this link leads to an accessible website)

The agenda for the day was pretty free-flowing: an initial warm-up-welcome activity to create an “agenda,” four breakout periods where topics were assigned through a groupthink process, and various breaks for social interaction.

Several of the sessions that I attended were rather free-flowing with no one really taking charge and a general open exchange of ideas and opinions (some included with “hand grenades”; sorry Andrew). On the contrary, several of the sessions I attended were somewhat controlled by one or two individuals who had brought a PowerPoint presentation and seemed determined to give it whether people wanted to hear it or not.

What it wasn’t

I have to be careful here. I don’t want to sound critical or petulant because overall, the experience was very positive. But I didn’t get everything I wanted. So, if I frame this as what I was hoping for – and didn’t get – may be no one will be offended.

I was hoping for a larger picture (big picture) perspective and understanding of accessibility. I spend a lot of time in my head thinking about this topic in very global terms and I wanted to meet like-creatures and compare notes. I think they were in the room, but I didn’t have an opportunity to find many of them.

I was hoping to learn new things about areas I was interested in. I sensed a general backward reflection process or “this is what I do” attitude and was hoping for more of a what do we need to do differently attitude.

Like Guy Noir, I was hoping to find answers to life’s most persistent questions.

What I would like it to be in the future

I would like there to be a professional facilitator or facilitators who are not knowledgeable or interested in the topic of accessibility who can keep things on target.

I would like there to be more in the way of preparation beforehand so everyone can hit the ground running.

I would like for there to be more time to socialize. I would like there to be more time.

I would like to narrow down the focus to a couple of topics (may be three) and deal with them – I would like this to have been done before I got there. In essence, I want a little less “un” in the unconference.

I would like folks to leave the PowerPoints at home and just talk about the topics.

I would like everyone to be an expert and no one to be an expert. Yeah, you can tell I’m a child of the ’60s on that one!

I would like (and am still hoping for) a continued conversation. Perhaps that’s why I wrote this.

Final Thoughts

I’d like to truly thank all those who organized this. It was a risky activity and I think it came off wonderfully. I would like to particularly thank the sponsors for their financial and in-kind contributions. I promise to do whatever I can to make this happen again.

I don’t think it is unreasonable to “pass the hat” or pay a few bucks to be there.

I hope we do not wait a year for another Boston Accessibility Unconference. The topic and the work is too important. I would like almost a monthly (daily, hourly) opportunity to converse – there has to be a technology that we can use to do this. We should make that the first priority.

How can I help?

What do you think?

Feel free to comment!

In my first blog on this testimony, I described Mr. Bagenstos’ commentary on e-books and the rights of people with disabilities. In his testimony, he also briefly discussed the issue of website accessibility. But in this section, the message was less clear. He notes that the federal courts “have reached different conclusions” with regard to the issue of web accessibility for “private places of public accommodation.”

Mr. Bagenstos’ does make it clear that the websites of federal, state and local governments must be fully accessible to people with disabilities. However, he notes technical differences under Title I, Title II and Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which lead to some of the confusion, particularly with “private places of public accommodations covered by Title III.” So, at this point, it is not clear as to where we are with regard to all websites needing to be accessible. It seems definitive case law is not quite there yet.

Here is Mr. Bagenstos’ testimony regarding website accessibility:

The Department of Justice Positions Regarding Website Accessibility

The Disability Rights Section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division began to provide technical assistance to a host of public and private entities that were in the process of assisting federal agencies with Section 508 compliance, and much of its guidance on making Internet sites accessible developed from there. There are several sets of standards describing how to make websites accessible to individuals with disabilities. Government standards for website accessibility were developed pursuant to Section 508. Many entities elect to use the standards that were developed and are maintained by the Web Accessibility Initiative, a subgroup of the World Wide Web Consortium (“W3C7″).

Ensuring that people with disabilities have a full and equal opportunity to access the benefits of emerging technologies is an essential part of our disability rights enforcement at the Department of Justice. Because the Internet was not in general public use when Congress enacted the ADA and the Attorney General promulgated regulations to implement it, neither the statute nor the regulations expressly mention it. But the statute and regulations create general rules designed to guarantee people with disabilities equal access to all of the important areas of American civic and economic life. And the Department made clear, in the preamble to the original 1992 ADA regulations, that the regulations should be interpreted to keep pace with developing technologies. 28 C.F.R. pt. 36, App. B.

The Department of Justice has long taken the position that both state and local government websites and the websites of private entities that are public accommodations are covered by the ADA. In other words, the websites of entities covered by both Title II and Title III of the statute are required by law to ensure that their sites are fully accessible to individuals with disabilities. The Department is considering issuing guidance on the range of issues that arise with regard to the Internet sites of private businesses that are public accommodations covered by Title III of the ADA. In so doing, the Department will solicit public comment from the broad range of parties interested in this issue.

There is no doubt that the Internet sites of state and local government entities are covered by Title II of the ADA. Similarly, there is no doubt that the websites of recipients of federal financial assistance are covered by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. The Department of Justice has affirmed the application of these statutes to Internet sites in a technical assistance publication, Accessibility of State and Local Government Websites to People with Disabilities ( http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/websites2.htm ), and in numerous agreements with state and local governments and recipients of federal financial assistance. Our technical assistance publication also provides guidance with simple steps to ensure that government websites have accessible features for individuals with disabilities.

As to private places of public accommodation, only two cases – both in federal district courts – have specifically addressed the application of ADA Title III to their websites, and those cases have reached different conclusions. But the position of the Department of Justice has been clear: Title III applies to the Internet sites and services of private entities that meet the definition of “public accommodations” set forth in the statute and implementing regulations. The Department first made this position public in a 1996 letter from Assistant Attorney General Deval Patrick responding to an inquiry by Senator Harkin regarding the accessibility of websites to individuals with visual impairments. The letter has been widely cited as illustration of the Department’s position. The letter does not state whether entities doing business exclusively on the Internet are covered by the ADA. In 2000, however, the Department filed an amicus brief in the Fifth Circuit in Hooks v. OKbridge, which involved a web-only business; the Department’s brief explained that a business providing services solely over the Internet is subject to the ADA’s prohibitions on discrimination on the basis of disability. And in a 2002 amicus brief in the Eleventh Circuit in Rendon v. Valleycrest Productions, the Department argued against a requirement, imposed outside of the Internet context by some federal courts of appeals, that there be a nexus between the challenged activity and a private entity’s brick-and-mortar facility to obtain coverage under Title III. Although Rendon did not involve the Internet, our brief argued that Title III applies to any activity or service offered by a public accommodation either on or off the premises.

I am choosing to look at the the issue of “electronic books,” (i.e., e-books) first since it comes up that way in the chronology of  testimony.

First, let me say that I think the testimony is very articulate and accurate in summing up the topic and providing both a historic reference and a clear and precise justification for why we need to focus on the topic. Mr. Bagenstos begins by speaking in general terms discussing the importance and the ubiquity of this technology and how it has the potential for greatly leveling the playing field for persons with disabilities. He then describes the controversy over the Kindle DX and how the Department of Justice (DoJ) took action when it realized the devices were not completely accessible to students with disabilities.

Here is the excerpt from his testimony:

Accessibility issues arise outside of the Internet as well. Most significantly, as schools increasingly use electronic texts, the inaccessibility of many electronic book readers has become more and more salient. At the same time, however, the use of electronic texts holds great promise for people with disabilities. Students who are blind or have low vision have long used a form of electronic text as an accommodation that enables them to access the course materials their classmates use. These electronic texts, which are converted from standard print texts, are read on a computer, using a screen reader or a refreshable Braille display. In order for these electronic texts to be truly usable by someone who is blind or who has low vision, however, the texts must be coded with structural data so that the assistive technology can properly identify where to begin reading or where a sentence or paragraph begins and ends.

This system disadvantages blind students in colleges and universities as compared with sighted students, because it can take considerable time for a university to locate texts from publishers, and convert the text to a format usable by a screen reader or similar assistive technology. As a result, all too often course materials are not available to blind students until well after classes have begun. If you ask just about any disability student services center at a major university, you will learn how significant this problem really is. Imagine as a student being unable – on a routine basis – to obtain your course materials for the first four months of the semester. As an alternative to obtaining converted texts from the publisher, universities may scan printed texts in order to provide them in electronic form. But this method can result in a “text dump,” which lacks structural data to ensure proper reading by assistive technologies. Conversion errors, too, are common. So, the choice available to blind students prior to use of the new, electronic book readers was to receive accurate materials months into the semester or inaccurate materials in a more timely manner.

The emergence of dedicated electronic book readers thus holds great potential to place students with disabilities on equal footing with other students. But that happy result will occur only if the electronic book reader is equipped with text-to-speech capabilities, so that it may read the electronic text aloud. In a few moments, I will discuss the Department of Justice’s settlements in investigations of colleges and universities that used the Kindle DX, an inaccessible electronic book reader, as part of a pilot project. At the time the Kindle DX was used in this pilot project, it contained text-to-speech capabilities B meaning that it could read the electronic text aloud, rendering the text audible and therefore accessible to blind persons. Unfortunately, the device did not include a similar audio option for the menus or navigational controls. Without text-to-speech for the menu or navigational controls, blind students could not operate the electronic book reader independently, because they had no way of knowing which book they selected or how to access the search, note taking or bookmark functions of the device. Electronic book readers developed by companies other than Amazon also pose barriers to use by individuals who are blind or have low vision, typically because they entirely lack a text-to-speech function.

But a dedicated electronic book reader can be made accessible. From the user perspective, an accessible electronic book reader might speak each option on a menu aloud, as the cursor moves over it, and then speak the selected choice aloud once made by the user. Special key strokes might be programmed specifically for blind users. For example, the user would press the alt-A key any time something related to accessibility is needed, at which point a menu with additional choices would come up allowing the user to scroll over the menu as described above. Appropriate coding would mean that the text, even mathematical formulas, or poetry in which line lengths vary, would be read aloud coherently. In this way, the user with the disability would gain access to all the information on the printed page.

Apart from the issue of the accessibility of e-books,  Mr. Bagenstos’ testimony also, more briefly, details the issue of general web accessibility. In this section, to be described in a separate blog entry, he notes that there have been some inconsistent responses on the part of the DoJ over the years.

The testimony ends with more details about the specifics regarding the Kindle DX case and the settlement with the several universities who had employed these devices.

My impression is that the testimony doesn’t really do much in terms of changing any position that the DoJ has held, but rather reaffirms the position and perhaps sets some baselines. It may also provide us with a sense of where the DoJ will be focusing their attention when it comes to investigations regarding the rights of people with disabilities and “emerging technologies.”