The Federal Communications Commission is seeking to enact legislation intended to promote better access to telecommunications services and equipment for Americans with disabilities. Specifically, the FCC wants to implement Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. If enacted, this would represent the most notable governmental action on behalf of the disabled since the passing of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. But the rules changes would also have a major impact on Webmasters, who would be required to reformat their sites to fit the needs of disabled users.
At the behest of the FCC, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), in compliance with the Architectural and Transportation Board, has outlined what they believe to be "readily achievable" with the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Guideline 1.0. The WAI is a twenty-nine page manuscript containing fourteen guidelines for Webmasters; each with 1-10 compliance checkpoints. Each checkpoint is given a priority level from 1-3; a Web content developer must satisfy a priority level 1 checkpoint, should satisfy a level 2, and may satisfy a level 3.
Some of the mandates are:
* Web designers must provide a text equivalent for every non-text element, i.e. images, graphics, symbols, animations, frames, sounds and videos (guideline 1);
* All information conveyed with color should also be available without color (guideline 2);
* Users must have the option of pausing or stopping any moving, blinking, scrolling or auto-updating objects (guideline 7);
* Site design must provide features that will enable activation of page elements via a variety of input devices (guideline 9);
* Authors must use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site's content (guideline 14)
The effect on government Websites is expected to be a great benefit to those who are hearing and sight-impaired. The WAI guidelines have been endorsed and approved by everyone from President Bill Clinton to organizations such as the World Institute of Disability and big businesses such as IBM, Bell Atlantic and Microsoft.
"Microsoft is firmly committed to making computer technology and the Web accessible to everyone," said Greg Lowney, Director of Accessibility for Microsoft. "We're proud to be a founding supporter of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, and a contributor to these guidelines, which will be instrumental in insuring individuals with disabilities have full access to the Web.
"It is essential," Lowney continued, "that every company and organization developing Web content move toward supporting these guidelines and incorporate them into their design process."
But the guidelines are eliciting mixed reactions from many Webmasters who run smaller, private sites. "It wouldn't be as difficult [for us] to reformat with those guidelines in mind because our cartoon Websites are only still images; there's very minimal animation at this point," said the Webmaster at Angry Clown Comics, www.angryclown.com. "As things like 'Flash' and some of the current technologies become more accessible to everyone, it's going to be harder with more dynamic media to follow these older standards. There's just no way to give people a running commentary of streaming video.
"The thing that makes it difficult is once you start using an alt text to explain every single image on the page, and to have a certain amount of functionality without JavaScript or other means, it hurts your competitive edge," he continued. "As far as being able to search a site on a search engine and depending on how people are going to index you, you're going be at a certain level of disadvantage. It would definitely change how we did things and overall it would hurt our ability to market our sites," he concluded.
"I'm sure that there are some people who will feel inconvenienced, but on the other hand there are all kinds of adjustments that you have to constantly keep up with at the technology end of it," said Heather Corinna, Webmistress and designer for Scarlet Letters www.scarletletters.com, a 'femmerotica' Webzine that features adult fiction. "I think there are a lot of people out there who still have [slower] computers. We don't run audio and we don't run any streaming video at all, so the more complex stuff doesn't really come into play [for us]."
Given the general nature of content-visuals in particular-on most adult sites, many Webmasters are asking what use, if any, a surfer who is sight-impaired could gain from being able to access their sites.
"We consider our site a private membership site and it's not open to the public and it's not meant to be accessible to everyone on Earth simply because of the nature of the content," said the Webmaster at BoyZone www.boyzone.com; a Flash-intensive site aimed primarily at gay adult audiences. "If one of the members said to me, 'I'm deaf and I would love to be able to find out what they are saying on this video,' I'd be more than happy to provide that for them. A lot of what we do is driven by our members, both the content and the design. It's driven by common sense and what our members want more than by an arbitrary standard that doesn't apply to this site."
In a 1995 transcript of the National Federation of the Blind's Annual Computer Science meeting, David Andrews, then the Director of the International Braille and Technology Center, described the Internet as "geeks gone mad." Mike Freeman , a computer systems programmer for Bonneville Power Administration, referred to the Web as "controlled anarchy." The nature of these comments, coming as they do from an institute with a seemingly altruistic interest in the enactment of the WAI guidelines, leads one to believe that there may be more to Section 255 than the growth and accessibility of the disabled. The common belief among Webmasters seems to be that the WAI guidelines are an outlet for the Federal government to supervise communications on the Web. "I think that there are several interested groups who would like to find a way to reign in on what's happening with adult entertainment on the Internet," said Angry Clown's Webmaster. "Any conservative or religious-based groups that have already been campaigning against access to this material on the Internet [are] pursuing just about every possible avenue. I'm sure that there is a lot of legitimacy in this cause, but there are several people in it because they would like to see [adult] material go away, and [for those people], the harder that it actually is to provide [adult] services, the better."
"A government agency or official who doesn't like the content of your site can say, 'You aren't in compliance with these guidelines so we're going to shut you down,'" said BoyZone's Webmaster. "I think that's the climate they are trying to create, which is that they can regulate the Internet. I don't see the logic of providing pornography in a non-photographic format."
Many members of the adult online industry are left wondering what, if any, consequences they will face if they are unable or unwilling to restructure their Web pages. Thus far, the FCC has only stated that a company should "assess whether it is readily achievable to make their products accessible to the full range of disabilities, and if not, why." They are also proposing that "more traditional" enforcement processes will be used in cases where companies do not comply with Section 255. The W3C also remains elusive in stating any "real" consequences, and suggests contacting "a relevant legal authority" for more details on obligations and/or enforcement. In response, some Webmasters are contemplating creating alternate sites as links to their home pages. "I think it definitely would drive costs higher," commented Angry Clown's Webmaster, "but then we could actually function. The Website could be placed on search engines, and it could be marketed the way we want to, but also fulfill [the WAI] requirements."
To find out if your Website is in compliance, visit www.w3.org and click on the "WAI Guidelines" link.
