The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guarantees equal liberties and opportunities to individuals with disabilities, and is divided into five separate titles.
The first title mandates that rights of individuals with disabilities in the workplace be protected. Reasonable accommodations must be made for employees. The second specifies that public services must be made available to all. Activities or programs that people without disabilities can participate in must be made accessible to persons with disabilities. In compliance with Title III, construction and modification of places accessible to the public must include accommodations for the disabled. Title IV requires that devices for the deaf must be provided by telecommunication companies. The Miscellaneous title includes a provision prohibiting retaliation against persons with disabilities who are asserting their ADA rights.
Technology has not escaped the influence of accessibility legislation, mainly due to an amendment to the ADA in 1998, Section 508, which details technological guidelines. It specifies provisions necessary for maintaining a minimum level of accessibility in Federal electronic and information technologies, as well as technical standards for other types of technologies.
The first standard, for software applications and operating systems, specifies that they must be made accessible to the visually impaired. Microsoft has actively implemented these standards in its Windows operating platform, and many other systems are following suit. Several outcomes of this include alternative keyboard navigation and color and contrast settings. (We will cover the second standard in more detail in the next paragraph.) The third standard, Telecommunication products, mandates that they be made accessible to the deaf or hearing impaired. The next specifies standards for making video and multimedia products accessible to the blind and to the deaf. Closed-captioning is an example of this. Self contained, closed products include technology that cannot accept assistive software or technology. The Americans with Disabilities Act guarantees equal liberties and opportunities to individuals with disabilities. Examples of these technologies would include copiers, information kiosks, printers and calculators. These products must be able to serve those with disabilities. Desktop and portable computers much have accessible input and output devices, such as keyboards, touch screens, and ports.
The Internet is a public service and in that sense it should provide the accommodations that would enable it to be accessible. The second title of Section 508 sets its Web-based standards accordingly. Web accessibility is mainly focused to those persons with visual impairments who arguably could benefit most from online information technologies; however, many sites fail to be accessible, even though, in many cases, making a Website accessible is very simple and straightforward. The Web portion of Section 508 lists 16 guidelines, many of which coincide directly with the standards developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative.
Although the guidelines specified by Section 508 are useful in making Websites more accessible to all, currently the guidelines apply only to government Websites, or to agencies which receive federal funding.