Watch Out AJAX and Flash

Ok, now there is a legal reason to re-evaluate all of the AJAX and Flash cruft that you may be tempted to gratuitously stick on your web site to be the flavor of the moment. And double that for all of the ‘flash only’ sites out there.

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that a lawsuit filed against Minneapolis-based Target Corp. by the National Federation for the Blind (NFB) regarding the accessibility of the retailer’s Web site can move forward.

According to the NFB, the ruling sets a precedent establishing that retailers must make their Web sites accessible to the blind under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

So when you are out there fixing the (visual) accessibility issues with your site, how about enabling some of the semantic web technologies for your site at the same time. More ‘machine readable’ data on your site also translates into better (non-visual) accessibility.

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One Reply to “Watch Out AJAX and Flash”

  1. “And double that for all of the ‘flash only’ sites out there.”

    Amen. It’s about time we had a real-world consequence for inaccessible content. This should be a wake up call to everyone to use more semantic code and make their “special effects” degradable, all the way down to a screen-reader.

    Thanks for not using a capthca on your comment form, BTW. The web needs more accessible solutions than captcha utilities!

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