Mail Archives: opendos/1997/03/20/08:46:56
On Tue, 18 Mar 1997, Ralph Wirthlin wrote:
> > >From an A.D.A. standpoint and that's operative for all federal
> > sales in the U.S.A. now and is applicable in the event of
> > litigation for private sector sales in the U.S.A. under the A.D.A.
> > licensing any software with interface accessibility problems
> > unmarketable.
>
> Cite? The ADA (Americans with Disablities Act) deals with disabled
> access for public places as well as private-sector work places with more
> than 15 employees. A careful reading of the 1990 act revealed nothing
> that *requires* a product to be ADA accessible - however much sense it
> might make from a financial standpoint. A disabled employee can request
> that certain software be made available to permit him to fulfill his job
> responsibilities, but there is nothing in the act which would force a
> company to produce a "disabled-friendly" software package.
>
> Just to make sure I wasn't misreading the act, I contacted the US
> Department of Justice ADA information line (1-800-514-0301 (voice)
> 1-800-514-0383 (TDD)). I was told unequivocably that computer software
> whether produced for the private sector or for the federal government
> does not come under scrutiny of the ADA. I think they've answered that
> before :).
We've had a discussion a month or so about this that became
fairly "heated". It had IMO a very negative feeling to it and
bothered me so I stated my two cents on the matter and dropped
it. I thought that all parties pretty much came into agreement
about it. Perhaps I was wrong. I called my lawyer and asked
about such a law in Canada. A few days later, he told me that
there is no such thing, also he (being an immigrant from the US)
just assured me that US law is basically as you've said above.
Now that we have the FACTS straight, we can only conlude one
inarguable thing IMO. Any company can release ANY software and
is NOT legally BOUND to provide ANY SPECIAL ACCESSIBILITY to
disabled users. I think that most companies nonetheless are
thoughtful enough to provide support anyways based on moral
judgement, and not on any laws forceing them to. Personally, my
position on providing accessibility is pretty moral IMO. It is:
If someone points out that a program I've written is difficult
to use due to their disability, and if I can EASILY change it
to make it more friendly with accessibility software, then I'm
100% willing to do so. In fact, I'd kind of feel honored to
hear that a disabled person was trying to use one of my
programs and would like me to improve it for them.
I would not however be willing to spend a tonne of time
redesigning an entire project to work though. I would only do
it if the changes were fairly simple to implement. Things
such as putting an option for DOS screen writes/direct screen
writes in for example. Regardless of what others have said,
adding direct screen write capability to a program that uses
DOS writes, or adding DOS writes to a program that uses direct
writes (in TEXT MODE that is), is VERY SIMPLE. I've changed
MANY of my own programs to work both ways. In almost all
cases it took me anywhere from 5 to 20 MINUTES to make my
programs use DOS writes instead of direct. The worst case was
a program that used Borland's gettext/puttext functions. I
had to write a replacement function for it that used DOS
services instead of directly. This took me a couple hours.
The only software that companies probably will shy away from
adding accessibility features to are programs that are heavily
graphical such as GUI stuff. Many gfx programs would be
difficult if not impossible to make "disabled-friendly" and would
be very expensive and time consuming to implement. The bottom
line on this topic is the age old adage: "You make more progress
with honey than guns." If someone came at me with both barrels
on a tech support line, and yelling false legal requirement
babble, I'd kindly tell them where to go. However if someone
politely requested that they'd like to see my software more
friendly for them, then I would VERY SERIOUSLY look at their
requests.
That's my $3.68 anyways. ($0.02 + GST, US exchange and a US
world money order. :o)
Mike A. Harris | http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris
Computer Consultant | Coming soon: dynamic-IP-freedom...
My dynamic address: http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris/ip-address.html
mailto:mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca
RHIDE: Current version 1.10
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