I am setting up this blog to address a number of technical and legal issues that, over the long run, can affect the freedom of media newbies like me to speak freely on the Internet and other low-cost media that have developed in the past ten years.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
Lawsuit against Beyonce and some others raised questions about website ADA compliance, which is a new and relatively little known concern
Near Frederick MD on I-270
Ian Corzine today tweeted a reminder to visitors that
some websites have been targeted for lack of ADA compliance, with a link to a
blog post about an ADA suit against Beyoncereported early in 2019.
I had not really heard about this, but there was a suit
against Beyonce in 2019 because her site could not be effectively read (by screenreaders) in order
to order tickets. The Impact Learning Center has a good summary of the complaint which did focus narrowly on the site's functionality for making purchases by a disabled (in this case blind) person.
There are numerous sites discussing ADA
compliance.Morepro has one of the most
complete lists on ADA compliance.
Hunton Laborhas a legal discussion, which focuses on
the idea that the ADA was largely legislated for the bricks and mortar world,
and courts have slowly come to the view that the Internet is included.This would be true particularly for websites
that sell products or services on credit cards or that are associated with a physical
store or a physical expression (for example, a website that broadcasts concerts
livestream).
What about personal blogs powered by Blogger or
Wordpress?
Some of the literature suggests that every image (or
uploaded video) should have analt-tag (which is now an expected HTML
standard).The blogger could fill in a
short description of the image.Wordpress seems to always provide this tag, but a brief check showed
that Blogger does not (unless I am missing a setting somewhere).
It is possible that free Wordpress or Blogger sites
within the service websites are perceived as personal and not normally subject
to the ADA.But Blogger encourages
people to get custom domain names, which makes them function somewhat like
hosted Wordpress sites (although the hosting from Google is free).
There are recommendations that YouTube creators use
captions.I find that some of them do,
and sometimes they are annoying (often in at least one foreign language).
A quick look at the literature suggests that there are
newer Wordpress themes purported to be completely ADA compliant. For example,
look at Dearblogger and at Completethemes.But existing sites (like mine) would need to take time to evaluate
plugins for security, stability, and reputation, and the like, as this seems to
be a new problem. Webhosts and Automattic would need to work with companies
offering more sophisticated plugins to certify and support them. As of now, I don't know whether the standard Wordpress themes offered by Automattic (Twenty--) which would be the safest are viewed as legally compliant by lawyers, but it would sound like keeping them updated when prompted would be a good idea.
This whole issue has gotten more attention since mid
2019 because of Beyonce’s lawsuit. It is not possible for a set up like mine to
be converted reliably when it is spread out across 20 blogs on both Blogger and
Wordpress.It will be much simpler to condense
everything to one site and deal with all issues like ADA, CCPA, COPPA, etc.
with restructuring that I have anticipated for 2022.
Most litigation seems to be related to lack of a
client to purchase a service or item.But an ideologically (“intersectional”) motivated suit sounds possible.
This whole issue then links back to my earlier
discussions of “commercial viability”.It would also relate to the way POD publishers encourage authors to
purchase large volumes of books and sell to the public directly rather than
depend on Amazon (which obviously is in a position to be ADA compliant
efficiently because of its large scale).
I don’t have any direct links on sites that sell anything.I have embedded Amazon ads and ad-sense on
some.I have the capability to use Payment
Sphere from one Wordpress site (to sell books and take credit cards directly) but
right now don’t use it, but will have to look very carefully at this “new” issue
if I do activate it.
This is a problem to watch, like so many others. It looks like mouse keys (another issue) can be enabled in Windows and Mac. But mobile use might also raise issues.
Art work picture: A natural brush maze at a park near Frederick, MD on I-270 (mine, 2020/03). Many of my own images are just redecoration, but some are more directly related to the text. I do identify them when I review movies to make sure that a visitor doesn't think the image could have come from making an illegal photo from the movie (copyright). I did have a cousin die of ALS, but in her last months she used a lot of accessibility software, but it never occurred to me to test my sites with her setup. Update: April 30, 2020
my music
If you copy an image (at least of sheet music, my own as handwritten by me and composed by me in my own case) into Microsoft word, the wordprocessor adds alt-text for people with visual disabilities. apparently as a compliance expectation. I had never seen this before. Look at the example above.
Update: Dec, 5, 2020
Blogger has added the ability to type a caption on uploaded images, apparently for ADA compliance. Note the example above. From today on, these will be uses of a go-forward basis.
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