This sounds like a scary precident. If the judge says that all handicapped people have a right to access public websites, does that mean all websites? Will I have to spend hours adding handicapped access to my personal website?

In the real world, buildings are expensive to build. Only people or corporations with lots of money can build buildings, and the added expense is not a large fraction of what they are spending to build a building. However, on a personal website, I am contributing my free time (and I rarely have enough of that). What will happen if there are a whole set of legal requirements that I have to satisfy before creating a website? Will that be another barrier to entry for sharing information on the Internet?

I think even the slowest now realize that interoperability and ease of access means more customers. The way to achieve this is through standards.

As I see it the web is a system of information and communication, just as the telephone is the same to a lesser degree. I didn't see anything in the ADA witch applied to systems of communication or information systems. If your going to change the laws for the internet in this respect, then don't forget the telephone network, the mail network, the road network, and possibly many others.

If you can't use the catalog, then call the company. If you can't use the stairs, then try the ramp. If you can't use the web, then try the phone, or mail, or other means of commuincation. I can see requiring places to offer mor than one means of access, but I can't understand why you would restrict the internet in such a way.

Hello, I'm your mind. Sorry I havent' been around much, but I'm easily distracted by shiny objects.

The really sad thing is that any company large enough to have marketing and PR departments is run by people stupid enough to allow this to get to the point of an ADA suit.

But this is the same kind of problem which is causing so many other problems in the US presently. Because we are not taking digital technology as just an extension of what we already have been using - we are writing numerous new laws based not upon pre-existing, well thought out, balanced laws but by whatever anyone thinks up and has the money to try to get pushed through. The sad part is - there are so many attacks being carried out that it is hard to deal with all of them. Will we have won our freedom from the British only to lose it to corporations and special interest groups? Just how far should our laws be allowed to go before we stop making new laws and start fixing those which are broken?