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Congress looks at Internet and disabilities act WASHINGTON (February 9, 2000 8:25 p.m. EST) - The Internet's constantly evolving technology makes it difficult to develop regulations to apply the Americans with Disabilities Act to the World Wide Web, a top Internet industry official told Congress on Wednesday. But advocates for the disabled argued they were being denied access to the "window to the world." "The Internet is not just a window on the world. More and more the Internet is the world," Gary Wunder, a University of Missouri programming analyst who is blind, told the House Judiciary subcommittee. "It is where we shop and it is where we make our living." Dennis Hayes, chairman of the U.S. Internet Industry Association, said the industry has made progress but continued education is needed. He asked Congress for money to fund research on ways to bridge the gap. "The application of the ADA to the Internet in some kind of 'one-size-fits-all' mandate is not the right approach," Hayes said. "The answer to the problem of accessibility is not regulation, but rather education and participation." The hearing came as lawmakers begin to look at the impact the 1990 ADA law has on the Internet. The world has become more computer savvy since the law's enactment, and many Americans use the Internet daily to communicate and do business. Disabled groups complain that the technology has grown without them. In November, the National Federation of the Blind filed a federal lawsuit against America Online Inc., charging that the world's largest Internet service is incompatible with software programs that convert text to audio or Braille. Wunder told of how he had to give up his job as a manager because of the lack of compatible software. "What we need is achievable. What we're asking is reasonable," Wunder said. Some people have questioned whether applying the ADA to the Internet would stifle its growth and hinder free speech exhibited through the millions of existing Internet Web pages. Others questioned how to make ADA regulations apply when the Internet exists beyond the United States. Walter Olsen, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, expressed concern that regulations would result in "hundreds of millions" of Web pages being torn down. "It would be hard to find a better way to curb the currently explosive upsurge of this new publishing and commercial medium than to menace private actors with liability if they publish pages that fail to live up to some expert body's idea of accessibility in site design," Olsen said. By JANELLE CARTER Copyright 2000 Nando Media Copyright 2000 Associated Press <A HREF="http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,500165845-500210676-500977238-0,00.html"> http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,500165845-500210676-500977238-0,00.html</A> janet paterson 52 now / 41 dx / 37 onset a new voice: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/ 613 256 8340 PO Box 171 Almonte Ontario Canada K0A 1A0