Journal: Unbelievable double standards

Depressing reading /. this morning. A large number of posters complaing that SW airlines are being forced to comply with ADA standards and make their site accessible to the blind.

Blind user sues SW

The unpleasant trolls (depressingly getting modded up as insightful) cry. "Why should they be forced to let blind people use their site ? "

A few points spring to mind.

You only have to make the site W3C compliant, to achieve this.
This then means the site works in non IE browsers, and on PDAs and text browsers like Lynx. Which I thought was supposed to be a good thing.
Technology is about making life better for everyone, not just a few selfish geeks. I couldn't believe comments about blind people shouldn't use the web, presumably made by teenage boys who don't remember when the web was primarily a text only information source.
What we have is a sizable majority of the /. crowd, arguing for discrimination, arguing for non standard web designs, arguing for poor coding, arguing for information and services to be available for the priviledged few.

ADA does not sue for money, if they win, the company involved has to simply comply with federal law. No disabled person sues using ADA for financial gain, they sue for the right to be able to go about their lives as normally as possible.

All the guy is asking for is the webdesigners to fill in all the blank ALT tags, which if they were any good at their job would be filled in anyway. This comment from Golias sums it up perfectly.

"If your site can't be read by these text-to-voice tools the blind use, it should be pointed out that you are a shitty webmaster."

Oh, and as for the braille on ATM jokes, I guess some /.ers are stupid and slow and need to look at the screen when getting cash out. Me, and the majority of blind users have the screen sequence memorised, and simply need to find the keys in the dark - 3am post clubbing blind drunk, those braille keys come in very handy!