Interactions - January/February 2010

FORUM INTERACTING WITH PUBLIC POLICY

EDITOR Jonathan Lazar JLazar@towson.edu

world today. For instance, when the guidelines
for the Section 508 law in the United States were
announced in December 2000, the guidelines
were primarily based on WCAG 1.0. The early
involvement of those in the research and design
communities helped drive the public policy.
The new WCAG 2.0 was approved in 2008 and
is starting to gain recognition from policy mak-
ers around the world as the new benchmark for
accessible Web content. With Web accessibility,
the research community was proactive; instead of
running and trying to catch up, we were actually
influencing the policy!

Interaction Design Policy Issues

What are some of the policy issues related to
interaction design occurring right now in the
U.S.? As a part of the stimulus bill (the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009), the
government is working toward having a digital
version of all medical records. Certainly, there
are issues related to the interface—what types of
interfaces doctors and nurses will use, whether
patients will be able to access their own medi-
cal records, and if so, how? There’s now a bill
in the U.S. Congress (the Twenty-First Century
Communications and Video Accessibility Act)
that would require full accessibility for people
with disabilities, for VoIP, text messaging, and
videoconferencing, among other things. Agencies
such as the Department of Defense are trying to
create policies on how agencies can use social
networking tools like Facebook, and what limita-
tions employees and military personnel have on
using those services. The guidelines for govern-
ment computer accessibility, known as Section
508, are currently undergoing revision (the “508
Refresh”). The Telecommunications and Electronic
and Information Technology Advisory Committee
(TEITAC) submitted its suggestions for how
Section 508 should be revised [3]. The U.S. Access
Board, a federal agency focused on accessible
design in general, is currently reviewing the report
and will decide on the new set of guidelines. The
suggestions from TEITAC, if adopted with only
minor changes, would align the 508 refresh with
the new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG 2.0) from the World Wide Web Consortium.
ment with HSBC Bank that, among other things,
requires the bank’s website to be accessible for
people with disabilities by May 31, 2010. This fol-
lows the big news of the 2008 settlement in the
long-running Target vs. National Federation of the
Blind class-action lawsuit. Target, a large chain of
stores, was sued by a group of blind individuals
because Target.com was not accessible for people
with impairments. The legal argument used was
that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
applies to websites. For those not familiar with
the ADA, it was signed into law in 1990, and it
requires access to any places of public accom-
modation and requires accommodations for any
private companies with 15 or more employees. Of
course, in 1990, the Web was not a consideration
to policy makers. So it has been unclear in the
law whether the ADA, which applies to private
companies, would also apply to websites. There
have been many previous lawsuits and attempts
to understand if ADA applies to the Web, with
little success. However, in the Target vs. NFB, there
were a number of preliminary court rulings that
stated that ADA did apply to the Web. Both sides
agreed to a settlement in 2008, which included
Target agreeing to make its website accessible and
creating a $6 million fund to pay claims to blind
individuals who suffered as a result of the inacces-
sible website.

[3] Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee. “Report to the Access Board: Refreshed Accessibility Standards and Guidelines in Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology.” 2008; http://www.access- board.gov/sec508/ refresh/report/

And there continues to be a lot of activity
related to Web accessibility. On Sept. 1, 2009, the
New York State attorney general reached an agree-
In other recent accessibility news, new regu-
lations went into effect for airline websites
and airport kiosks in May 2009 under the U.S.
Department of Transportation. While the new
regulations don’t require accessible websites
or kiosks, there’s an interesting wrinkle: If an
inaccessible airline website causes an impaired
customer to call or otherwise contact the airline
telephone call center, that individual may not be
charged extra for placing the call (as is often the
case). And they must be given, over the phone or
by other means, the lowest airfare available on
the website at that time [4]. Charging a higher fare
over the phone could be considered discriminatory
pricing based on impairment. It should be noted
that when contacting the call center, the indi-
vidual must immediately identify him or herself
as having an impairment. Is that fair? And is there
any way to validate that? We shall see how this
policy works out.

[4] U.S. Department of Transportation. “Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in Air Travel.” 2009; http:// airconsumer.ost.dot. gov/rules/Part%20382- 2008.pdf/