Websites are also for the disabled people
We have been saying how much we have benefitted from the Internet and Internet is a convenient and easy thing to us. However, it is untrue to people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities. “The National Federation of the Blind and the National Association of the Deaf have won legal victories against companies such as Target Corp. and Netflix Inc” (Joe ). Netflix provides closed captioning for its Internet video subscribers. And several companies collaborated with NFB to make their websites more accessible to people disabilities, including eBay Inc, Monster.com, Travelocity and Ticketmaster. The websites should include spoken descriptions of photos and text boxes for the blind, as well as captions and transcriptions of multimedia features for the deaf.
Making a website accessible can be costly and it depends on the complexity. According to some experts, it might be cheaper to build accessibility features into a new site than to retrofit an old one. Companies have to work on different features where people with motor disabilities can navigate websites without the use of a mouse, and to use plain language and a strong design to aid the disabled people.
I think most of the websites should consider building the accessibility features into the websites because the Internet is supposed to be user friendly to everyone, including the disability. If they are able to access the Internet like us, they can also benefit from the Internet. It is definitely difficult to have every websites to contain the accessibility features in a short time and it can be quite costly for smaller companies. However, I think we should at least have the important sites, like banks, tickets, and other newspaper sites that are used almost daily or regularly, to contain the features or improve the website accessibility. If electronics devices, like phones and tablets are able to provide a certain degree of features for the disabled, I think websites should also do the same.
Joe, Palazzolo. "Disabled Sue Over Web Shopping." Wall Street Journal 21 03 2013, n. pag. Web. 22 Mar. 2013. <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324373204578374483679498140.html>.
