[Promotion-technology] FW: Justice Department, Congress, Advance ADA and Web Accessibility

Tue Apr 20 13:41:57 UTC 2010

[image: AFB DirectConnect Letterhead]

ALERT!--With Milestone Justice Department and Congressional Action,
ADA and Web Accessibility to Proudly Take Center Stage

For further information, contact:

Mark Richert, Esq.
Director, Public Policy, AFB
(202) 822-0833
mrichert at afb.net

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Tom Parez, confirmed late last
week that the long-awaited refresh of the Justice Department’s Americans
with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations pertaining to state and local
government and public accommodations will, when published soon, include
provisions bringing greater clarity to the ADA’s applicability to
e-commerce. The new rules are expected to favorably resolve, among other
things, the question of whether retailers and other public accommodations
doing business exclusively online must ensure the accessibility of their
online premises to people with disabilities.

Advocates will recall that AFB coordinated the vision loss and disability
community’s response to the Justice Department’s proposed ADA rules to call
on the Department to address this critical issue and to promulgate rules
with more meaningful impact on the wider availability of accessible
electronic and information technologies used and offered by government and
public accommodations. The call for such modernization of federal rules was
most recently joined by the Federal Communications Commission’s own National
Broadband Plan which specifically urges the Justice Department and other
federal agencies to undertake these significant improvements.

The Assistant Attorney General’s announced commitment came simultaneously
with an announcement by the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the
Constitution, to hold a hearing this Thursday, April 22 entitled Achieving
the Promise of the Americans with Disabilities Act in the Digital Age:
Current Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities. The hearing is intended to
highlight the relevance of the ADA to technology and Internet accessibility
generally and to further build the record for the expected Justice
Department rulemaking.

Confirmed witnesses to testify at the hearing include Mark Richert, AFB
Policy Director, Judy Brewer, Web Accessibility Initiative, and Dan
Goldstein, Brown, Goldstein and Levy, counsel representing the National
Federation of the Blind in its litigation against Target for failure to make
Target.com accessible to people who are blind.

Advocates willing to share personal stories about the impact of Internet
accessibility or inaccessibility in daily life and who are willing to have
such short personal stories considered for inclusion in the official hearing
record of AFB’s testimony are encouraged to email such content, no more than
the equivalent of one-half printed page, to afbgov at afb.net.

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