Subject: Accessibility watershed?
From: [email-masked] Mon Oct 7 12:04:59 2002
To: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 07 Oct 2002 08:00:13 -0000

URL: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/10/06.html#accessibility_watershed
Date: 2002-10-06T23:41:43-05:00

_Law.com_: Suit Over Airlines' Web Sites Tests Bounds of ADA[1]. [via Slashdot: 
Blind User Sues Southwest Over Web Site, Cites ADA[2]] 

    Gumson and a Miami Beach, Fla.- based disability rights group, Access Now, 
    filed lawsuits in U.S. District Court in Miami in June and July against 
    Dallas- based Southwest and Dallas-based American Airlines under the 
    Americans with Disabilities Act. They are doing so under an untested legal 
    theory. Namely, that ADA provisions on the accessibility of public 
    accommodations to the disabled apply to Internet Web sites just as they do 
    to brick-and-mortar facilities like movie theaters and department stores. 

Five months ago, I said[3] &#8220;within the next 12 months, all web authoring 
tools will fully embrace CSS, accessibility, and web standards. And I mean 
fully, inside and out, as Macromedia appears to have done here [with 
Dreamweaver MX]. Those tools that do not will simply fall by the wayside. This 
is the new baseline.&#8221; Seven months to go on that prediction. Tick tock, 
tick tock...

[1] http://www.law.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/View&c=LawArticle&cid=1032128683422&t=LawArticleTech
[2] http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/06/2340204
[3] http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/05/02.html#the_new_baseline
    dive into mark, May 2, 2002: