Locking Out the Disabled

Every morning Marlaina Lieberg, who's been blind from birth, reads her local paper, the Seattle Times, on the Web, with her guide dog, Madeline, at her feet. Lieberg also taps into Web sites to research corporations she'll pitch her consulting company's services to and trades e-mail with clients. In her spare moments, she trades stocks online and shops for groceries. Last year she bought all her gifts on the Web.

Lieberg navigates cyberspace with a screen reader, a software utility that reads Web pages out loud, chattering like a robot as it recites links and text. Surfing the Web without seeing is time-consuming; Lieberg must orient herself on pages by listening carefully to words rather than scanning pictures and must navigate using her keyboard instead of a mouse.

Even so, Lieberg exults over the freedom that the Web has given her. "These shopping services are so important for people who are unable to drive, and for those of us who are unable to peruse the aisles," she says. "It is such a joy. I can even read package directions. I've never done this sort of thing before."

Lieberg can't navigate every Web site easily with her screen reader, though. The majority of Web pages are poorly designed for anyone who's not surfing with a standard copy of Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator: Buttons can be hard to identify, Java applets can be impenetrable, and forms tend to be indecipherable if they're not coded for a screen reader.

Making Web sites accessible to all potential customers seems like common sense. One in five Americans has some disability; as the country ages, that percentage is expected to increase. A Web site that's navigable by an assistive technology such as a screen reader is also accessible by phones and palmtops, not to mention by old, slow computers. In addition, suggests Mike Piper of PiperStudiosInc, designers of an accessible site for Easter Seals, every site wants to stand out, and the goodwill generated by maintaining an accessible online presence can be a powerful way to do that.

Accessibility also makes sense legally: The Justice Department has ruled that the Americans With Disabilities Act applies to the Web, not just to places that can be accessed physically. A retailer whose Web site doesn't meet ADA standards can be sued under the act, just as a brick-and-mortar store can.

But as the online world grows more graphical, it becomes less accessible to disabled users. For years Rose Combs, a blind medical transcriptionist in Scottsdale, Arizona, used the text-based GEnie service, which was easy to traverse with a screen reader. When GEnie shut its doors, Combs found that getting Web tasks accomplished could be a struggle. "I can't count the times I have had to call my husband to help me navigate a site," she says.

Web sites also hamper those with nonvisual disabilities. Jamie Berke, who is deaf, says she has "waged losing battles" trying to convince network-TV Web sites to provide closed captions for news Webcasts. Even President Clinton's recent Webcast about government and the Internet wasn't captioned, notes Berke, who runs a site called the Closed Captioning Web.

"It's hit-or-miss whether a site will be accessible," says Joseph Lazzaro, director of the adaptive technology program at the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind and author of Adapting PCs for Disabilities (Addison-Wesley, 1995). "If you're cut off from information, you're not going to go to school, you're not going to get a job. You're going to be left out of a lot that society has to offer."

Even being a good citizen may pose a challenge. Recently, Arizona became the first state to let its citizens vote online. But Rose Combs couldn't cast her cyberballot without assistance.

A Problem Ignored

In recent years, the physical world has adapted to the needs of the disabled: wheelchair ramps, Braille markings, closed captioning. But of more than 30 major shopping, search, auction, news, and financial Web sites that PC World contacted, only a handful admitted any interest in--much less any action taken toward--tailoring the sites for accessibility. A spokesperson for one electronics retailer that asked not to be named said, "That's not a market we've thought about pursuing." Many Web retailers declined to be interviewed for this article. Others did not return repeated calls.

Some sites expressed a vague interest in keeping all users happy; others were dismissive. Anna Lonergan, a spokesperson for The Gap, told us the company has no plans to make its site accessible. "We're aware of the technologies but have no plans to implement them," she said. Asked why not, she replied, "That touches in the realm of strategy, and we don't discuss strategy."

A spokesperson at one of the country's largest computer retailers said that the company's Web designers had not even considered the issue until PC World brought it to their attention. That retailer isn't alone: Until this article, this magazine hadn't examined the accessibility of its own site, PCWorld.com. Since then, we've made plans for modest immediate moves to improve access, such as using larger type and clearer directory descriptions, as well as for more-substantial long-term efforts.

Why don't more firms keep accessibility in mind? Mike Paciello, a Web accessibility consultant and technical director for WebAble, a resource for accessible Web design, says, "They don't see the market. The moment you tell a company how important it is to their business to make their Web site accessible, they come back with statistics that the market isn't big enough for them to spend the money."