This week, I have run across several U.S. government websites that claim they are optimized for Internet Explorer and that I "may lose some functionality" with other browsers.
Besides a possible violation of the ADA, what other equal access policies does this violate?
Ziggy? Lisa?
There might be some contracting law that requires that government IT systems adhere to "standards" whereever possible so as to level the playing field for competition, I dunno.
Re:I don't see the ADA angle...
brian_d_foy on 2003-11-29T00:41:31
I am not talking about leveling the playing field, just recognizing that not everyone wants to use Microsoft. I have to use Internet Explorer to do various things on certain government websites. I am not worried about anti-competitive stuff, but rather that the government is not supposed to target such information towards a particular software program.
The ADA angle comes in because Ineternet Explorer only runs on certain platforms. You should not be forced to buy those platforms because you have a disability.Re:I don't see the ADA angle...
jordan on 2003-11-29T16:39:57
I am not talking about leveling the playing field, just recognizing that not everyone wants to use Microsoft.
When you said:
Besides a possible violation of the ADA, what other equal access policies does this violate?
I thought that an "equal access policy" might include a fairness in contracting rule. It does seem that Gov. sites favor PDF over.DOC or other MS Office formats for downloadable documents that are intended for the public. Perhaps there is a rule somewhere that encourages this, but I don't know.
- You should not be forced to buy those platforms because you have a disability.
The ADA and Section 508 contemplate the disabled having to buy all kinds of things to access facilities, like wheelchairs and screen readers, etc. I doubt you have anything to hang your hat on here, especially when the platforms that run IE are among the cheapest and most easily accessable (pun intended) around.
Personally, I agree with you. I don't even like Javascript because it limits your browser choices, but I doubt that accessability rules will ourlaw IE-only sites.
Now courts have begun looking at suits filed under 508 and ADA with respect to web sites. The courts have differing opinions, but Southwest won an ADA suit with the judge ruling that a web site is not a place of public accomodation as specifically layed out by the ADA. But you gottta wonder why on Earth SWA doesn't want an accessible site. They were sued by visually impaired persons. Way to go - alienating customers.
Personally,I would *never* develop a site that required the user to have a particular browser. I would consider that a biased endorsement and fundamentally wrong, both as a fed and as a web designer. While I no longer support Netscape 4 in my development (can you blame me?), I certainly support later versions of NS, Mozilla, Safari, IE, and anything else I can test with.
Don't forget that the US Government is an interminably large place. Although there are regulations on the subject (c.f. Section 508), there are no standards in place on what to do (and what not to do) when performing some task, like, say, building a website. Doubly so when you look at the government as a set of independant departments and agencies each ostensibly reporting to the Office of the President of the United States (but act like independant corporations for much of their day-to-day affairs).This week, I have run across several U.S. government websites that claim they are optimized for Internet Explorer and that I "may lose some functionality" with other browsers.
If you were to look long enough, you would probably see every pattern an antipattern in web design on a public facing government website: pages edited by hand, "this site optimized for IE 3.0", database-driven content management, well-formed XHTML, malformed HTML 2.0, CSS floating layout, clunky table-driven layout, and everything else you can possibly imagine.
The government usually lets these low level implementation details be decided by a small staff of 5-10 people in some office somewhere (or a team of 20-30 consultants somewhere else), so it's pretty much luck-of-the-draw whether any random website is developed by cluebies or people who know what they're doing. Just like the private sector.
As far as section 508 goes, the letter of the law applies to new procurement. Some government websites are adhering to the letter of the law, even when it's an old site or not procured. But technically speaking, government websites in general do not need to adhere to accessability regulations (although the copiers and fax machines delivered from Office Depot do).
Re:Government Optimizations
delegatrix on 2003-11-29T15:42:18
It's a Cath-22. While Section 508 is enforced through the Federal Acquisitions Regulations, the law still requires that electronic information be accessible. Most agencies I've dealt with on this disregard the FAR when it comes to web sites, and adhere to 508 wether the site is procured or not.
It's not hard to produce a visually attractive web site, that is W3C compliant, works on most modern browsers*, and is accessible to a wide range of users. You can even produce a nice site that degrades gracefully on the older less standard compliant browsers too.
All too often people/companies/governments don't. There are many reasons for this: ignorance; obsession with visual impact; lazyness; legacy site/code; lack of usability testing. It can be expensive to convert large complex sites that have evolved over many years to modern efficient sites, and there can be internal politics that hold back sites, but all too often it's a combination of lazyness and ignorance that hold things back.
He of the Silly Hat, has produced a facinating book, which demonstrates that you can have visual impact, you can have ease of access, you can have good usability, you can make it work on most browsers, and best of all, it uses less bandwidth (=saves money), is easy to code (=saves money) and is easier to maintain (=saves money). Overall standard compliant design is a win, win situation....
* Browsers based on the most recent versions of Mozilla; khtml; Opera; and to the least extent IE.
Re:It's not hard to produce a good site
brian_d_foy on 2003-12-01T18:06:31
I agree:)
A lot of the stuff I have to access has no visual impact---it is HTML 0.9, but they want to use goofy IE javascript to put it in popups or whatever. Those are useless technology add-ons that just make life harder for the weirdos like me.
