The History of Accessibility

            Web accessibility has been around for long time.  Accessible web design information has been available by IBM and others since the 1990s (Constructing, 15).  Despite that, a majority of web designers do not take web accessibility into account mainly because they do not know about web accessibility, or because they do not know what elements make up an accessible web page.  Many designers believe that if they make their pages accessible, they will be giving up creative, eye-popping designs.  Even today, most web sites do not follow web accessibility guidelines.

            In 1995, a city commissioner, who has a visual impairment, sued the City of San Jose, California under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) because she could not access PDF documents the city's website with her screen reader.  As a result of this law suit, the City of San Jose created the Web Disability Access Design Standard in 1996 (Waddell, Electronic Curb Cuts, 22).

            In 1996, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a statement saying that the ADA accessibility requirements also applied to the Internet (Constructing, 15).

            In 1997, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) established the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) which worked to create a set of guidelines for web design (Constructing, 15).

            In 1999, the W3C presented the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as a recommendation for accessible web design (Constructing, 15).

            Soon, web accessibility began to find its way into the mainstream press.  Magazines and newspapers began writing articles about the subject, and the subject became a common topic at technology conferences.

            The new focus on web accessibility has created a number of legal issues for companies who maintain websites, and the designers who create them.  A number of lawsuits have come out of the application of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act to the World Wide Web.

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