I’m back, having got married, been on honeymoon, and perhaps inevitably, caught COVID. So, a little later than planned, please enjoy the latest issue of frequent11y!
Robles v. Domino’s Settles After Six Years of Litigation
This case concerns Guillermo Robles, a blind customer of Domino’s who was unable to order a custom pizza from their website or app, so sued them under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
I wrote about this case in my first ever issue of week11y, in October 2019. At the time, the US Supreme Court had just declined Domino’s appeal of a Ninth Circuit decision to overturn a district court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit. (American law is complicated. Also, disclaimer: I’m no law expert).
Since then, in June 2021, the district court ruled in Robles’ favour, concluding that the website was not fully accessible and that a 45 minute wait on a telephone line was not a reasonable substitute. There’s lots of interesting information in the ADA Title III analysis of that ruling, such as Domino’s own expert not being able to place an order using a screen reader. There is also some distinction between Domino’s website and their mobile app, which are treated differently in law – the case was only allowed to continue regarding the app, rather than the website.
In what is believed to be a final end to the case, the parties have now settled out of court. The terms of that resolution are not (and may never be) known.
Please Stop Using Grey Text
“W3 AGWG Invited Expert” and Readability and Color Science Researcher, Andrew Somers, argues that the WCAG 2 contrast specifications have been harmful to accessibility, as they don’t factor in how colours are perceived. Some colour combinations that shouldn’t pass, do, and some that should, don’t.
Since the introduction of WCAG 2, Andrew argues there’s been a shift to using grey text instead of black. This breaks a 1000 year precedent of printed texts worldwide. Andrew acknowledges the irony in making this point on his article, which is hosted on Medium.com and which uses grey text.
Andrew also highlights issues with dark mode, where WCAG 2 contrast math “is not capable of providing useful contrast values”. The screenshot he uses to demonstrate the issue is pretty scathing.
There is often a counter-argument to the use of black text: that it causes too much contrast and can be uncomfortable to read. Andrew’s counter-argument is that it is better to slightly darken the background behind the text, rather than lighten the text itself.
Over 96% of Government Websites Hide Disabled Men and Women on Their Site
This article raises an important point about how photos of people are sourced and used.
Sites such as Shutterstock are used to find stock photos of people to use on websites. Searching for “happy person”, “person smiling” or “happy face” rarely surfaces any pictures of visibly disabled individuals. However, “a quick search of ‘person in wheelchair’ revealed that plenty of images of happy disabled people do exist”.
The article investigates an example image and concludes that this happens due to the way the images are tagged. The image in question is tagged with keywords centred around the person’s disability and age. The image therefore won’t show up in general searches and is “unlikely to be used on non-medical web pages”.
According to the article, just 24 out of 502 government websites showed any photos of disabled people on non medical pages. However, this figure includes blog posts about a specific organisation or person, as well as articles about the Paralympics. It is extremely rare to see a stock photo including a visibly disabled person, for a general page.
A few reasons are cited for this trend. Most countries have a ‘social norm’; a “stereotyped idea of how the average citizen looks”. When creating content designed to resonate with a wide audience, photos of the social norm are used to cater for the majority. It is hypothesised that not using pictures of the social norm might lead to fewer ‘conversions’ (clicks), reducing the perceived success of the web page.
The article concludes with an appeal for government sites: to “normalise the use of diverse photographs, including individuals from all walks of life”. [This] is the only way to create an expectation for inclusion”.
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