"Accessibility" - Google News - Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 7:30 AM
For law firms on the web, online accessibility for the disabled is good
business - ABA Journal
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Law Scribbler
By Jason Tashea<http://www.abajournal.com/authors/64729/>
May 21, 2019, 6:30 am CDT
[Jason Tashea]
Jason Tashea. Photo by Saverio Truglia.
When it comes to making the law more accessible online, few can claim a longer
history than Cornell University Law School's Legal Information Institute.
Since its founding in 1992, the LII has undertaken many notable projects,
including republishing the Code of Federal
Regulations<https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text>, running a legal
encyclopedia<https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/wex_articles> for quick
definitions and understanding of legal topics, and conducting
research<https://ojs.law.cornell.edu/index.php/joal/article/view/34/54> into
the readability of the law.
Now, the organization is taking a step back and looking at its online
infrastructure to make sure its content can be accessed by all people,
including those with disabilities. They intend to have the project completed by
the end of the year.
“It’s ambitious,” says Sara Frug, associate director for technology at the LII.
To accomplish this, Frug and her team will implement the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines<https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/> (WCAG) 2.0 AA,
considered the “gold standard” in Europe and the U.S. for online accessibility.
Meeting these standards will help the blind, who use screen readers, understand
text and images on a screen, and assist those that can’t use a mouse by making
the site navigable by keyboard, for example.
Only a month into the project, it “has raised our own awareness about the ways
in which there are a lot of impediments,” says Frug, who hopes their experience
will help others think of web accessibility as a best practice that improves
innovative, online resources.
Bringing attention to the issue is desperately needed in the legal profession,
where online accessibility is far from the norm.
As legal services providers update their technology and grow their online
footprints, they should build and use technology that is accessible to the
broadest number of people. Doing so will increase office productivity, client
and employee retention and save firms money by not engaging in piecemeal
accommodation.
The importance of online accessibility is heightened for law firms due to
increased online interaction between lawyers and clients, says Robert Gonzales,
chair of the ABA’s Commission on Disability Rights.
Even so, the issue has not been on the front burner in the legal industry, in
part because of its lack of diversity. While the profession needs to capture
better data on disabilities and firms’ compliance with relevant laws, the best
numbers say that one-half of 1% of partners and associates have disabilities,
according to the National Association of Law Placement’s 2018 Report on
Diversity in U.S. Law
Firms<https://www.nalp.org/uploads/2018NALPReportonDiversityinUSLawFirms_FINAL.pdf>.
This number may be low, as the report indicates that about 2% of law school
graduates have a disability. Nationally, 1 in 5 people have a disability.
In this ecosystem, legal technology companies are—self-admittedly—missing the
mark. In 2016, the ABA Commission on Disability Rights
surveyed<https://www.lawpracticetoday.org/article/aba-house-delegates-resolution-116c-limitless-innovation-everyone/>
the 120 vendors at ABA Techshow. Of the 79 respondents, only eight indicated
their software was accessible to those with disabilities.
Law firms are not that much better, according to Gonzales. Even when firms do
take a step toward accessibility, it’s usually reacting to an individual
request, he says.
Another reason for slow adoption of web accessibility standards is that the law
is unclear. Legally, there’s a federal circuit court split over whether the
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which is used to decrease physical
barriers that impede the disabled, applies to internet technologies. At issue
is whether a website is a “public accommodation,” like a store or hotel.
[keyboard handicap_ sign] Image from Shutterstock.com<http://Shutterstock.com>.
The 1st, 2nd and 7th Circuit Courts of Appeals say that a website can be a
place of public accommodation regardless of any connection to a physical space,
according to a recent
article<https://www.huntonlaborblog.com/2019/01/articles/public-accommodations/muddy-waters-ada-website-compliance-may-become-less-murky-2019/>
by Jason Brown, an associate at Hunton Andrews Kurth in Washington, D.C. By
comparison, the 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 11th Circuit Courts of Appeals have held
that a website is not a public accommodation, unless it has a sufficient
connection to a physical public accommodation.
Without U.S. Department of Justice guidance on the issue, more suits are
likely. However, this did not stop the ABA House of Delegates from getting out
in front of the issue in 2018 with House Resolution
116C<https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/directories/policy/2018-annual/2018-am-116c.pdf>,
which called for parts of the ADA to apply to technology regardless of its
nexus to a physical space.
Not just the right thing to do, the House’s resolution makes smart business
sense. According to a 2018
report<https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-89/Accenture-Disability-Inclusion-Research-Report.pdf#zoom=50>
from Accenture, 45 companies they identified as standouts in disability
employment and inclusion, of which technology accessibility is included, had 28
percent higher revenue and a 30 percent better profit margin performance than
their competitors.
“If you’re not available—if you’re not accessible—you’re not reaching that
market,” Gonzales says. After Hispanics and African-Americans, disabled people
are the third-largest market segment in the country, according to a 2018
report<https://www.air.org/system/files/downloads/report/Hidden-Market-Spending-Power-of-People-with-Disabilities-April-2018.pdf>
from the American Institutes for Research.
Not just for those with disabilities, web accessibility is good from a
marketing perspective generally. As more people go online to find legal help, a
law firm needs to be high in search engine results to be found. Frug at Cornell
notes that to make its website WCAG compliant, her team will make the website
more machine readable and easier to index, two things that boost a website’s
search engine optimization, which helps it climb in search results.
Within a firm, it’s possible that employees that need accommodation aren’t
coming forward, Gonzales says, which means the firm is losing productivity and
otherwise strong workers may leave for a more accommodating workplace.
While the business case for web accessibility is strong, it can still be
overwhelming on where to start. Organizations like
UsableNet<https://usablenet.com/> and My Blind Spot<https://myblindspot.org/>
offer WCAG auditing services and other resources, according to Robert Furnier,
director of Lunsford Academy at the Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky
University and former chair of diversity and inclusion for the ABA Law Practice
Division. Frug at Cornell likes the University of Washington’s Accessible
Technology website<https://www.washington.edu/accessibility/> as a resource.
For Gonzales, he says that many technology vendors have accessibility options
but don’t often market them. He recommends that when a firm is considering new
technology that it ask the vendor to make the tool accessible to everyone at
the time of installation, saving money and time down the road.
Having worked with multiple firms to improve their online accessibility, he
says the updates have never been cost prohibitive and end up saving the firm
money through increased productivity, which echoes the Accenture report.
Adopting web accessibility standards helps law firms do right by their clients,
employees and profitability. In the same way that a firm wouldn’t forget to
install a ramp to its office’s front door, web accessibility is something the
profession can no longer turn a blind eye to.
Jason Tashea is the author of the Law Scribbler column and a legal affairs
writer for the ABA Journal. Follow him on Twitter
@LawScribbler<https://twitter.com/lawscribbler>.
http://www.abajournal.com/lawscribbler/article/making-a-firms-website-accessible-for-the-disabled-makes-good-business-sense
David Goldfield
Assistive Technology Specialist
Feel free to visit my Web site
WWW.DavidGoldfield.info<http://WWW.DavidGoldfield.info>
