Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

You Are Here: Home » Archives: October 2003

Daily Archives: October 24, 2003

New Survey Highlights Lack of Gov’t Website Accessibility

by on

Achieving E-Government for All: Highlights from a National Survey, published October 22, by Darrell M. West, Director, Taubman Center for Public Policy, Brown University.

  • More than 1,600 local, state and federal websites were reviewed using the free Bobby Accessibility Test.
  • Several key facts: government data is increasingly migrating to the web; more than 100 million Americans are not online, more than 50 million Americans have “some level of disability,” and 90 million adults are identified as “low literate.”
  • “Information on most government websites is skewed to the needs and abilities of highly educated English speakers.”
  • “…47 percent of federal sites satisfied the W3C standard of accessibility, 33 percent of state sites did and 20 percent of city government sites met the test. With the stricter Section 508 guidelines, 22 percent of federal sites were in compliance, compared to 24 percent of state sites and 13 percent of city websites.”

    • California Wins First Anti-Spam Lawsuit

    by on

    Today California Attorney General Bill Lockyer announced that the state won a judgment of $2 million against a spammer (The People of the State of California v. PW Marketing, Santa Clara County Superior Court) in what will be a model for future cases involving unsolicited email. As I posted previously, the state’s new anti-spam law… Continue Reading

    E-Government Funding Lacks Congressional Support

    by on

    Federal Computer Week reports on the continued lack of support for funding e-government initiatives, as the Senate approved a paltry $5 million of the $45 million requested by the President for Fiscal 2004. According to the OMB’s Statement of Administration Policy: “As has been demonstrated by successes from the modest $5 million invested in each… Continue Reading

    More On the New Amazon Inside the Book Service

    by on

    From the December 2003 issue of Wired Magazine, this article provides background and details about the development and implementation of Amazon’s new Search Inside the Book service comprised of more than 120,000 books that have been scanned into an electronic archive. “The archive is intentionally crippled. A search brings back not text, but pictures —… Continue Reading

    Google IPO in 2004?

    by on

    Google considers online auction of IPO shares: “Google is considering holding a massive online auction of shares early next year in an initial public offering that investment bankers predict could value the internet search-engine company at more than $15bn. An electronic auction would be designed to prevent a recurrence of the sort of financial scandals… Continue Reading