I should have said that it’s complete inaccessible to people who are blind or visually impaired. BVI is the most common source of accessibility complaints but obviously there are others. I could test contrast ratios for example… but not bothering because failing the most basic keyboard test means that we can’t adopt the tool.
No, level AAA is the most stringent of the WCAG standards. The US section 508 (which applies only to federal agencies) is based on level AA. The level of stringency is really irrelevant as the courts have pretty much agreed that level AA is reasonable and they continue to hold institutions and organizations accountable to it under the ADA even though the ADA has no regulatory framework in the area of digital accessibility.
If a manufacturer could show me that they meet 2.0 AA and not 2.1 AA then I’m not going to be too concerned. Remember I said that we accept that nothing is 100% accessible. There’s other precedent in the ADA that encourages a case by case accommodation strategy. However, if you provide a public accommodation, it’s in your interest to reduce your risk to lawsuits, no? The courts have already said that the evolving nature of these standards is not an excuse to ignore them. SCOTUS just refused to hear Dominos Pizza’s appeal based on such a claim.
I did not claim that there are accessible alternatives to airtable. There are however many web-based applications (SaaS) that are accessible. Google Docs for example, are pretty good and getting better all the time. Microsoft is doing a good job with Office 365. I don’t have an accessible alternative to airtable but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. It is the responsibility of everyone who creates a public accommodation, under the ADA, to ensure that the technology is accessible… same as if you build a store, it needs an access ramp.
There aren’t exceptions in WCAG because WCAG itself is not a law. There are two exceptions built in to the ADA. “Fundamental Alteration” and “Undue Hardship”. Financial hardship rarely qualifies as undue hardship because the Feds look at the cost of accessibility against the entire organization’s expenditures. An undue hardship for example might be that there really is NO accessible alternative to airtable. That would be your burden to prove though and it’s a pretty high bar. However, even if you make the undue burden case successfully, you still have to provide an “Equally Effective Alternative”. I have a client that publishes 600 page inaccessible PDFs of their Board Materials. The PDFs are produced by an app. They spent a month trying to find an accessible board book app and couldn’t. So they publish the inaccessible PDFs, along with a note that they will make the source files available to anyone (qualified) who needs them.
“Fundamental alteration” is pretty straightforward. For example, you don’t need to make a driver’s eye exam accessible to a blind person because doing so fundamentally alters the purpose of the test, i.e., to determine whether someone can see well enough to drive safely. Similarly, flight schools don’t have to make flight simulators for student pilot use accessible. because someone with a disability that would affect their use of the simulator would not be qualified to earn a pilot license.
The distinction to keep in mind is whether you have created a public accommodation or not. The Dominos Pizza website is a public accommodation. The development environment that their web developers use is not a public accommodation. Hence a member of the public, who doesn’t have access to the Dominos development environment has no standing to make a claim of discrimination. However, an employee who needs to use the development environment could well make a claim that they suffered discrimination if that environment creates barriers to their job performance, advancement, etc.
Here’s an interesting question though… what about someone with a cognitive disability that prevents them from successfully developing DB queries using SQL? That would probably qualify as a fundamental alternation exception because the nature of the work is fundamentally complex and that’s reflected in SQL itself. It’s not the technology that’s creating the barrier, it is the job itself. The ADA requires Equal Opportunity, not Equal Outcomes.
The above is is no way legal advice. Consult your counsel if you have questions.
Michael Cyr
