*********************** Bram Dov Abramson ************************ > New U.S. law requires Web sites to become 'handicapped accessible' > By Adam Clayton Powell III > World Center > > 4.30.99 > > Webmasters, Uncle Sam wants you to change your Web site to make it more > accessible to those who are blind, deaf and otherwise disabled. And for > some, it's not a suggestion: it's the law. Interesting how the article contradicts itself in several places. When governments make internal organizational policy (eg look and feel for their web sites), this often takes on the guise of law, cause that's just who they are. So, red flag (toro, not socialist) for cyberlibertarians everywhere (ok, mostly usa). The law described in the article's body (not the lead), otoh, appears to be the "model user" strand of the post-G7-GII (Brussels 1995) version of state media policy. nb: From: "Michael Sims" Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 10:57:50 -0400 With all due respect, there's a lot of confusion here. Maria Seminerio, Adam Powell and Declan McCullagh, the reporters who've been spreading this FUD, have willfully disregarded the actual law in question - this story is based solely on a single interview with two members of a government committee, who seem to be as confused as the reporters they were talking to. The actual law, available at: http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/508/508law.html makes no mention of any standards regarding the general public's websites, or even government suppliers. It says solely that Federal government agencies must ensure that their electronic services are equally available to disabled Federal employees and disabled citizens. The implementation date is two years from August 1998, so it's not exactly right around the corner, either. That's it; nothing else; there's no stealth plan to take over the internet and make people publish their websites in Braille. Here's a basic FAQ on section 508: http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/508/deptofed.html It's sad that some reporters are totally incapable of using outside sources to verify that their stories are correct and truthful. A simple reading of the actual government law would have shown any of the three reporters that the story is wildly inaccurate, and common sense would have told them that a law regulating the general public's websites in such a manner would also be wildly unconstitutional. -- Michael Sims The Censorware Project http://censorware.org The Supreme Court has stated that the public interest served by FOIA is the interest in letting citizens know 'what their government is up to.' 489 US. at 773. B --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl ******************************************************************************** ROLUX h0444wol@rz.hu-berlin.de http://www2.hu-berlin.de/~h0444wol/rolux/