Some great sessions at the CALI conference. Personally I didn't get to Tom's presentation but did see a couple today that are worth commenting on.

Logfiles 101: Lies, Dammed Lies, and Statistics was interesting and had some good new ideas. Overall one impression I came away with is a dislike for Google Analytics. Certainly there are plenty of things to be not terribly thrilled about with Analytics but it seems this point of view overlooks one of the most important elements of web analysis in general. If you don't do it, all the log files in the world aren't worth much. So many times the perfect becomes the enemy of the good and this is completely true of analytics. I've written elsewhere about the benefits I see in using Google Analytics.

CALI for Undergraduates and for Transition to Law School by professors Pollman, Shoben and Hays, all of UNLV, presents some excellent ideas for helping undergraduates in preparing for law school. Schools can license CALI for other departments (in this case Political Science) for very reasonable rates (i.e. $250).

On Thursday, Federal District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel refused to dismiss a disability discrimination lawsuit against retail store Target. (National Federation of the Blind v. Target, Northern District of California Case No. C 06-01802 MHP) The lawsuit claims that the retailer violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) because its website is not accessible by visually impaired users. In its motion for dismissal, Target argued that disability laws did not apply to its website.

In her ruling [PDF], Judge Patel stated:

The ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability “in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations of any place of public accommodation.” 42 U.S.C. § 12182(a) (emphasis added). The statute applies to the services of a place of public accommodation, not services in a place of public accommodation. Id. To limit the ADA to discrimination in the provision of services occurring on the premises of a public accommodation would contradict the plain language of the statute. [...]

The purpose of the statute is broader than mere physical access.

Judge Patel did not rule on whether Target's website is, in fact, inaccessible. The company maintains that even if the ADA applies to a retailer's online presence, its website still complies with the requirements of the law.

Disability advocates have long argued that websites fall within the ADA's definition of places of public accommodation and should therefore be held to the statute's requirements for accessibility. In fact, as early as 1996, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice has advised that the ADA does apply to the internet. The Civil Rights division even publishes a guide for creating accessible state and local government websites.

In a session at the 2005 CALI Conference (which included an excellent summary of the accessibility redesign project at the University of New Mexico School of Law Library), Steven Perkins of the University of Houston reported that only a small number of law library websites comply with accessibility guidelines provided by the World Wide Web Consortium. If Judge Patel's ruling is upheld on appeal, the implications will be significant for web developers, including those working in law libraries. With more and more library services moving to online formats, accessibility will continue to increase in importance.

Judging from the CS-SIS Roundtable I participated in at the AALL Annual Meeting, there are a lot of law librarians currently engaged in large-scale redesigns of their library websites. If, like me, you're constantly banging your head against a wall over the issue of page width, you'll probably want to check out Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox column, Screen Resolution and Page Layout.

Nielsen's summary:

Optimize Web pages for 1024x768, but use a liquid layout that stretches well for any resolution, from 800x600 to 1280x1024.

According to Nielsen, "60% of all monitors are set at 1024x768 pixels," while "only about 17% use 800x600." The best news of all? "Fewer than half a percent of users still have 640x480."

(Thanks to Roger Fenton for posting a link to Nielsen's column on the Web4Lib listserv.)