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Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites
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Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites
#42Wouldn’t an easy fix be to switch to a domain managed by a more sane organization? Like .com? And of course not use an Israeli hosting providers.
Looking at the sites on wayback[1], and it appears that they are all Hebrew language tutorials, so I suspect the '.il' TLD is an important signal to potential victors in this regard. And since this means the audience is almost entirely Israeli, it doesn't make much sense from a web performance perspective to host elsewhere. Just my $0.02.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220513045030/http://www.python...
Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites
#43This already happens in the US with ADA laws, and it will happen with California's new privacy and wage transparency laws. Unfortunately every time you create a new law with a private right of action, lawyers will monetize it at industrial scale. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/magazine/americans-with-d...
Well, a lot of corporate compliance in the US is, by design, set up to be private action instigated. Unless you're running directly afoul of the EPA or some other government organization then the enforcement instigation is meant to be triggered by harm to an individual that seeks redress.
This is one of many choices around enforcement that's available - and it seems to be much more generally palatable to Americans than increased government enforcement resources (like the government employing accessibility agents to review websites for compliance).
If you're small and everybody likes you this system often lets you get away with lots of violations - but when you grow in size or if someone is purposefully targeting you it does mean that they can shine an "unfair" amount of light on the particulars of your practice to make sure you're compliant. At the end of the day the good news is that judges have a very central role in mediating these disputes and if complaints are clearly irrational and made in bad faith they'll usually be thrown out - the bad news is that it takes a fair amount of money to get the gears on this process turning and there's no guarantee you'll ever get any of it back.
Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites
#44My phone can autocaption audio from any website, I assume there are services that would do this for videos. Is this worth considering?
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Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites
#45People with disabilities often struggle to find content they can consume because it's not a11y friendly. Unfortunately in this case lawyers are capitalizing on this law that was made to help people with disabilities to go after websites that are not a11y friendly.
Maybe before shutting down you should consider making your content a11y friendly by adding captions to your videos. It is extra work but consider you may be helping a portion of the population that is often underserved.
Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites
#46Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites
#47Not much of a description of the new accessibility requirements, so I don't think people can have much insight about what exactly broke down here. I'm guessing if a website has more than 500 viewers/visitors a month, it's required that the videos must be captioned? Couldn't this guy just hire a professional captioning service or offer transcripts to users that may need it? This all seems a bit dramatic from the guy,…
There's no way of knowing from the information provided if this is really "I can't do that" or "I just don't want to do that." What effort did he make? What cost was he facing? This is just a little foot-stomping rant. It might feel good, but provides little illumination.
Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites
#48The linked article doesn't give a lot of detail on the specific complaints or what you would need to do to make those sites accessible. Do you have any information on that?
His videos aren't subtitled, and are required to include subtitles.
What if you used excerpts from Shakespeare for subtitles, regardless of the video's actual content?
Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites
#49The linked article doesn't give a lot of detail on the specific complaints or what you would need to do to make those sites accessible. Do you have any information on that?
I think the issue is less about the changes they need to make, and more of the spectre of a potential lawsuit. Lawyers have a distinct upper-hand here because they are doing this in bulk and are probably using this as more of a "side-gig" to fill in extra work hours that they can't otherwise bill to clients. So the opportunity costs for them are pretty low, basically court fees, but the potential earnings are pretty…
Most importantly, plaintiffs do not need to prove damages in these accessibility lawsuits in israel, which is an awful desig,. So, these lawyers are likely not even impacted by the websites they are suing.
Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites
#50This is a problem with accessibility laws in general, not with Israel in particular. Remember when UC Berkeley was a victim of the same kind of attack? https://reason.com/2017/03/07/berkeley-deletes-200000-free-o...
A friend refurbishes residential buildings in France. They had to seal off the basement because it wasn't wheelchair accessible.