4 Hartford Business Journal • July 18, 2016 www.HartfordBusiness.com
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ADA Compliance
An investment in efficiency can
help you reinvest in your business.
Paid for by a charge on customer energy bills. *Interest rates vary by eligibility.
Call 877-WISE-USE (877-947-3873) or visit EnergizeCT.com/businesses
to find the latest energy-efficient solutions for businesses big or small.
Eversource, in partnership with Energize Connecticut, provides a wide range
of energy-efficient solutions for your business. Solutions that create energy
cost savings you can then reinvest, like Sean Mulligan from EB Manufacturing
in Middletown, CT. He utilized our energy solutions to decrease the cost
of his energy bill while increasing the quality of light on the manufacturing
floors, improving the company's ability to machine high-precision parts.
Our energy experts will identify the right electric and natural gas energy
strategies, including LED lighting, heating and cooling equipment, control
systems, process measures, and more. We'll also connect you to low-interest
financing* options and incentives, along with qualified contractors to get you
on the road to saving money and reinvesting it back into your business.
We're a job shop, we do a lot of high-
precision machining of parts. We're always
trying to reinvest in the business, whether
it be new equipment or new tooling for
the equipment—it's always about trying to
improve to be competitive. You've got to
keep up with technology or else you'll be left
behind. The program that Eversource offered
is estimated to save us thousands on energy
costs, so it's kind of a no-brainer.
—Sean Mulligan, General Manager
of EB Manufacturing
PUBLICATION Full Page LIVE 7.187 x 9.375 TRIM 7.437 x 9.625 BLEED 7.687 x 9.875
Hartford Business Journal
customer's difficulty paying for his Lucky
Jeans using his debit card to intermittent
call-center service for Wells Fargo's blind and
deaf customers.
Evolving guidelines
The original Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines, or WCAG 1.0, were crafted in
1995, just as the Internet was gaining promi-
nence as a premier information, goods-and-
services distribution pipeline. That version is
largely the reason you find Braille on auto-
mated teller machine and elevator keypads,
and on street-crossing signals.
But just as societal mores made it a legal
imperative for people with physical disabilities
or infirmities to be able to access all public build-
ings and spaces, that same sense of equality and
fairness has enveloped the web, said Gregg C.
Vanderheiden, co-founder of the Trace Research
& Development Center, which focuses on making
computer, telecommunications and information
technologies more accessible to the disabled.
Many WCAG opponents, Vanderheiden said,
often argue that the ADA originally didn't specif-
ically designate which commercial businesses
must comply and what they must provide to the
disabled on their Internet sites. That posture, he
says, minimizes the inherent role of WCAG to
ensure unfettered web access.
"You just can't bother not to make things
accessible if you could have,'' Vanderheiden said.
Even Conquest's Leifert points out the
extent to which the Justice Department is
vague on the question of which sections of a
commercial homepage must be more acces-
sible to the disabled.
Getting bankers on board
Glastonbury's ZAG Interactive is a marketing
consultancy that designs and tests websites for
ADA compliance. Principal William Creedle says
his clients early on struggle to understand why
they must invest time and money updating their
online sites for ADA.
Not long ago, most bankers worried about
ensuring their brick-and-mortar facilities were
up to ADA standards to accommodate cus-
tomers who are blind, deaf, in wheelchairs, or
accompanied by service animals.
The web, Creedle says, offers banks the
ability to provide customers with the con-
venience of a virtual branch, and what, they
ask, can be so bad about that? So, Creedle
says he has them don blindfolds and try log-
ging onto the web. Unable to see the screen or
properly manipulate the mouse, they invari-
ably struggle, he said.
"When clients see that, they understand …
and it begins to allay their fears,'' Creedle said. n
