As law, "Speed Limit 55 MPH" is enforceable. "Don’t drive too fast" is not. Although heeded by too few U.S. web teams, W3C accessibility standards are the law in many nations. That’s one reason the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group has been under pressure to increase the specificity and clarity—and thus the enforceability—of its guidelines.
Linky to full article.
Web standards is the law? Does that mean non-web-standards or non-accessible websites from Shoot From the Hip Web Design USA are now rebel outlaw websites? This stinks of the French and dirty communists, legislating how we write our code. But my reaction also scares me. Clearly as I get older and suck on the Microsoft-tainted corporate tit, I find myself being more and more in favor of industry regulating itself via market demands. That is all. The market demands that I work for my money. I realize that accessibility is important; that it is important to make the Information Age available to people using screen readers and other forms of assisted technology to access teh Intarwebs. It's why I pushed for the changes to my new employer's website that make it screen-reader-friendly, why I have researched 508 compliance and made sure whenever possible that sites I create are 508 compliant. But as someone who ran a small business, I also see these sorts of regulations as something more sinister. They don't just give larger companies with more resources a competitive advantage. They make it effectively impossible for companies on a shoestring to do business at all.
Which is why I have such mixed feelings about the Mass Health Care Reform Act. Everyone in Massachusetts is now required to have health insurance, one way or another. If you can't provide proof by July 1, 2008, they'll start fining you. This was one of the major reasons why I decided to lay down and take it when the recruiters started courting me for full-time positions. I was able to live comfortably self-employed, but mostly by delaying my tax payments. There was no way I could afford a $300+ a month health insurance bill on top of that. And why pay $100 a month for a plan that will hand you a kleenex when you get run over by a truck?
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Personally I think the legal burden should be on the government. They provide healthcare coverage for everyone, or we start firing THEM. Oh, wait, we do have that. It's called elections. And we need to start using 'em.
It brings to mind a story by Ursula LeGuin in _The Compass Rose_, where a dissident is removed to a government-run "hospital" because he refuses medical treatment, which is the right of every citizen in the USA.
Or just, you know, the entire Catch-22 novel.
The basic issue here is one I think about a lot and which is hard to put into words: do you allow for peaks and valleys of prosperity and resources, or do you force a sort of nobody-wins compromise solution? I'm a fan of diversity in all its forms, but also (like you) get really riled up when I see social injustice. So I don't know what the answer is. As with all things, it's probably moderation. And slow change. Which is why I'd more likely be a socialist than a communist. As long as the socialists don't totally stifle the free market.
What I can't figure is why there isn't some feasible way to expand the Medicare/Medicaid system to include EVERYONE, with a sliding scale of premiums/copays based on income levels or something. Meaning if your income level changes, so do your premiums and copays, which should cover part of the problems you mention.
I don't know. The whole thing is a mess, and I don't know who can fix it. I just know the administration we currently have sure as hell can't. As this election cycle gets further on, that is definitely an issue I will be paying a great deal of attention to, before the primaries especially.
As we both know, this really is a gordian knot of an issue. It's difficult to fix in a way that's useful to the majority of the American people, and on top of that, the folks who have the most pull with Congress (health insurers, healthcare providers, doctors' organizations, not to mention the malpractice industry) don't necessarily have the best interests of The American People at heart. I'd like to meet The American People someday. I have a feeling it would look like an amoeba and wouldn't be able to make up its mind on what to order in a restaurant. The steak! No, the salad! No, the tablecloth!