New US Accessibility Laws
Adrian Sutton
The legislation, called the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, covers things like captions on Internet video, Internet phone services that work with hearing aids, television menus that can be seen by people with vision loss and even touch screens that the blind can use. The bill, which passed by voice vote and will now go to President Obama for approval, updates existing regulations to bring them in line with the Internet age. I haven’t taken the time to decipher the details from the actual legislation text as yet, so it’s hard to say exactly what implications this will have. It is at least good to see improvements to US laws – to date it has really been civil threats, such as the suit against Target, which have been the main legal avenue to ensure accessibility. This is generally under the American’s with Disabilities Act which was written in terms of physical accessibility for public places, but has been deemed to also apply to the web. As I understand it, this new legislation will provide some more teeth on the criminal1{#footlink1:1285835355912.footnote} side.
1 – as in, Government-led as opposed to civil. I’m not sure I’m using the term right. ↩