Withdrawn: 28 CFR Parts 35 and 36, Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Accessibility of Web Information and Services of State and Local Government Entities and Public Accommodations (ANPRM)

i. Barriers to Web accessibility

Millions of individuals in the United States have disabilities that affect their use of the Web. Many of these individuals use assistive technology to enable them to navigate websites or access information contained on those sites. For example, individuals who do not have use of their hands may use speech recognition software to navigate a website, while individuals who are blind may rely on a screen reader to convert the visual information on a website into speech. Many websites fail to incorporate or activate features that enable users with disabilities to access all the site´s information or elements. For instance, individuals who are deaf are unable to access information in Web videos and other multimedia presentations that do not have captions. Individuals with low vision may be unable to read websites that do not allow the font size or the color contrast of the site´s page to be modified. Individuals with limited manual dexterity who may use assistive technology that enables them to interact with websites cannot access sites that do not support keyboard alternatives for mouse commands. These same individuals, along with individuals with intellectual and vision disabilities, often encounter difficulty using portions of websites that require timed responses from users but do not give users the ability to indicate that they need more time to respond.

Individuals who are blind or have low vision often confront significant barriers to Web access. This is because many websites provide information visually without features that allow screen readers or other assistive technology to retrieve information on the site so it can be presented in an accessible manner. The most common barrier to website accessibility is an image or photograph without corresponding text describing the image. A screen reader or similar assistive technology cannot "read" an image, leaving individuals who are blind with no way of independently knowing what information the image conveys (e.g., a simple graphic or a link to another page). Similarly, complex websites often lack navigational headings or links that would facilitate navigation using a screen reader or may contain tables with header and row identifiers that display data, but fail to provide associated cells for each header and row so that the table information can be interpreted by a screen reader.

Online forms, which are an essential part of accessing goods and services on many websites, are often inaccessible to individuals with disabilities. For example, field elements on forms—the empty boxes that hold specific pieces of information, such as a last name or telephone number—that lack clear labels, and visual CAPTCHAs ("Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart")—distorted text that must be inputted by a website user to verify that a Web submission is being completed by a human rather than a computer—make it difficult for persons using screen readers to make purchases, submit donations, and otherwise interact with a website. These barriers greatly impede the ability of individuals with disabilities to fully enjoy the goods, services, and programs offered by covered entities on the Web.

In most instances, removing these and other website barriers is neither difficult nor especially costly, and in most cases providing accessibility will not result in changes to the format or appearance of a site. The addition of invisible attributes known as alt (alternate) text or tags to an image will help keep an individual using a screen reader oriented and allow him or her to gain access to the information on the website. Associating form labels to form input fields and locating form labels adjacent to form input fields will allow an individual using a screen reader to access the information and form elements necessary to complete and submit a form on the website. Moreover, Web designers can easily add headings, which facilitate page navigation using a screen reader, to their Web pages. They can also add cues to ensure the proper functioning of keyboard commands and set up their programs to respond to assistive technology, such as voice recognition technology.