Originally Posted by
777Cat3b
DOT regulation Part 382 states that all airline websites offering services in English in the US must be WCAG 2.0 level AA compliant by December 12 2015.
All right, well I think I finally found the correct reference, which is
here for those curious. Specifically, it is dated Nov 12, 2013, and says
Web pages that provide core air travel services and information
(e.g., booking or changing a reservation) must be accessible by December 12,
2015. All remaining pages on a carrier’s Web site must be accessible by December 12, 2016
So assuming this is in fact the reason for the outage, JAL had over
two years advanced notice. (This btw is still not US law, it is the interpretation of law by a federal agency.) Beyond that, it seems there are various escape clauses in the regulation, eg allowing a customer to call for assistance with an operation of a non-compliant website as long as they are not charged for the assistance. Shutting down portions of the website seems like an overreaction, but of course I am not a compliance expert, just some armchair quarterback on teh internets.