Priceline.com, Ramada.com agree to make sites friendlier to blind users
In a move that could serve as a harbinger to retail web sites, Priceline.com and Ramada.com have reached an agreement with the New York State Attorney General to make their sites more usable by blind and other visually impaired consumers.
N.Y. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer last week announced settlements with Priceline and Ramada, under which the two travel sites agreed to implement a series of site modifications that will let blind consumers more easily navigate their sites using screen-reader software and other tools that assist visually impaired people in navigating web sites. Spitzer’s office investigated the two sites to determine their adherence to the requirements of the American Disabilities Act, which requires commercial establishments to be accessible by people with disabilities. Although a Florida court had determined that the ADA did not pose such requirements on web sites in a case involving Southwest Airlines, Spitzer is basing his actions on a stricter interpretation of the law, said Jay Leventhal, editor of AccessWorld, a magazine for blind people published by the American Foundation for the Blind.
Priceline was contacted earlier this year by Spitzer’s office and immediately began taking steps to modify its site, a spokesman says. The work basically involved tagging each web page and using text to identify images and data-entry windows to allow screen-reader software to identify web content before the software transforms the text into a computer-generated voice, allowing blind users to listen to the content on web pages. Other software tools read text identifiers of data entry windows to cause a computer mouse to vibrate, letting the user know where to enter information.
Priceline is modifying its site with in-house IT staff, though it has received some outside help to better understand the requirements of screen-reader software, the spokesman says. According to Spitzer’s office, the ADA generally dictates that all "places of public accommodation" and all "goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations" of places of public accommodation, must be made accessible to disabled citizens, absent undue hardship. New York law provides similar civil rights protections, Spitzer`s office says.
Leventhal notes that there are about 2 million blind people in the U.S., plus about another 8 million who are also considered visually impaired and could benefit from technologies that assist web site navigation. He adds that many web sites, at best, are only partially usable by visually impaired people, who use word-of-mouth to spread information about the most usable web sites.
The biggest problems stem from sites that show a lot of graphics unidentified by text, making it impossible for screen-readers to capture their information. "I can pick a book on Amazon, but I can’t find the ‘buy this book,’ button," says Leventhal, who is blind but uses screen-reader software when editing his online magazine.
Leventhal says web site operators can find information on meeting screen-reader requirements, as set by the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative, at W3.org, and at the AccessWorld site at AFB.org/aw.
Ramada and Priceline have agreed to pay the State of New York $40,000 and $37,500, respectively, to cover the costs of the investigation, Spitzer’s office said, adding that the two companies cooperated with its Internet Bureau to correct their sites. A spokeswoman for Spitzer declined to say if other sites were still under investigation, but added: "This is an area we’re still very interested in."
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