Unfortunately that's more what I was thinking was the MS motivation here.

I'm happy to see this too and also hope that FF and others follow this cue. But I don't think it's for the reasons others are mentioning here. To me, this is a case of MS hoping to head off Government intervention in this area. Even the folks on Capitol Hill have come to realize that tracking in its current form is a problem. There was a bureaucrat the other day talking about needing to address the "Flash cookie problem" and saying they're working with Adobe on it. This is just like the major sport bike makers all suddenly agreeing that 180mph is fast enough for anyone - right about the time congress started making noise about limiting the top speed of bikes (after the Hayabusa approached 200mph).

I'm glad for what they're doing, though I'm not ready to trust them to implement this honestly.

I think you're talking about Section 508 of the American with Disabilities Act. And yes, it can apply to more than US Government web sites. Target found that out the hard way after refusing to provide alt tags and other accessible changes to their web site. After getting slammed with a $6 million judgement, no one else is bothering to refute what has become established case law.

I might also add that Section 508 covers much more than screen readers and javascript.

In Soviet Russia friends make you.

Truer words have not been spoken in a long time. I wish I couldn't relate to pretty much that whole thing.

son of a!! 2997 is a bit far into the future isn't it? :)

Immah let you finish AC, but AC had one best posts ending in an ellipsis of all time.

"Microsoft: if you want to beat Google, find a way to develop a completely open search ranking system."

And this to me is the most delicious irony in this stinky stew. I think MS is perfectly capable of developing such a thing, but they will invariably find a way to shoot themselves in the foot. I remember hearing a while back that searching for Linux with the MS search engine produced thousands of results while searching the same term on Google produced tens of millions of hits.
 
Once you've demonstrated that you are willing to sacrifice results and accuracy for market share, it's hard to earn back that trust. MS has stepped into this mess over and over and doesn't seem to learn from their mistake.
 
So yeah, I agree. MS just has to build a superior product to succeed. Too bad that seems to be the path less taken.

It's not like 508 is something new. They're just revising the guidelines that have been out there for years. I would think by now all Government agencies have gotten clued in as to how to satisfy 508 requirements. (Or they know how to get waivers approved.)