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Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

lifemichael.com

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Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#281

Post by bombcar »

ceejayoz wrote: post #198
bombcar wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ADA is not the law of the land in Israel unless something changed drastically recently.

The article says "chase innocent businesses" and that their new venture has courses limited to 500 people, which seems to indicate similar exemptions in their version.

It seems the exemptions disappeared in 2020 for businesses, perhaps.

When it’s a business I don’t feel quite “as bad” even if they were offering “free contents” - business free content is ALWAYS marketing and they can just pay marketing expenses or not do it.

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#282

Post by dereg »

jtsuken wrote: post #270
roenxi wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's all ADA abuse... The HN gestalt confuses me on this one. The other week the EU had that charger standardisation law and the mood on HN was undeniably positive. Now we have a comment that Californian web accessibility laws are being enforced and the top voted comment is decidedly negative. These laws are remarkably similar in intent and likely outcome. What is different here? Is it the same people but you're al…

> you're all drawing a distinction that I don't see? The distinction you are not seeing is between actual harm and a pretext for lawyers to sue. Actual harm to the environment and real business profits result from manufacturers producing and selling proprietary charing devices (I bought at least 3 and disposed of at least 2 Apple magsafe2 chargers, while having perfectly working generic chargers around my home). An i…

> An indie developer hosting a free website is neither causing permanent and irreversible damage to the environment nor is he making any money as a result of his websites not being accessibility compliant.

Odd complaint seeing as how Apple no longer includes chargers with iPhones, on environmental grounds. There are many people who complained about that, as well.

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#283

Post by [deleted] »

mkr-hn wrote: post #233
xupybd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds expensive for something that he is giving away free.

They were lead generation for his paid services. Unless premium means something different in Israel. https://web.archive.org/web/20220603100412/http://javabook.c...

[deleted]

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#284

Post by pupppet »

angst_ridden wrote: post #65

There's a firm in Southern California that's suing restaurants / small theaters / community organizations / etc after bulk-scanning web sites for embedded video that lack links to caption files. It's all ADA abuse, lawsuits in the $5k-$7k range. A huge percentage of those sued don't have the means to fight back, and settle. The company that's suing people had some incompetent coder write their scanner, so it only par…

Would love to hear more about your defense, have a client in the same boat.

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#285

Post by lamontcg »

roenxi wrote: post #254
angst_ridden wrote: post #65

There's a firm in Southern California that's suing restaurants / small theaters / community organizations / etc after bulk-scanning web sites for embedded video that lack links to caption files. It's all ADA abuse, lawsuits in the $5k-$7k range. A huge percentage of those sued don't have the means to fight back, and settle. The company that's suing people had some incompetent coder write their scanner, so it only par…

> It's all ADA abuse... The HN gestalt confuses me on this one. The other week the EU had that charger standardisation law and the mood on HN was undeniably positive. Now we have a comment that Californian web accessibility laws are being enforced and the top voted comment is decidedly negative. These laws are remarkably similar in intent and likely outcome. What is different here? Is it the same people but you're al…

"Accessibility" is an overly broad topic so you shouldn't expect any consistency.

Charger standardization around USB-C really isn't that abusive or produces much if any regulatory capture, and it is pretty easy to understand what needs to be done.

These disability laws hit every business with a website and there's no easy standard to show that websites are compliant, they are an example of regulatory capture since larger corporations will be able to hire the staff to audit and implement the changes required, and they're vague enough that they produce an army of lawyers.

The principle and intentions behind the disabilities laws are fine, but they either need to solely target larger firms or they need to have clear guidelines for what gets audited and remediated. If the government ran a free service which would scan your website and give you either a clean bill of health or a list of remediation steps that would be better. Tossing it over the fence to let the lawyers have a field day is poor.

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#286

Post by roody15 »

The dark side of these ADA like laws regarding websites (IMO) is that they are often used as a way of controlling content. Big companies like traffic to hit their sites and services so they actively support legislation that limits the playing field.

If someone wants to throw up a website that has tips for wiring home electricity, or how to fix old arcade cabinets .. they want this info on their platform.

This is unfortunate because there is no need to use youtube and other sites if you don’t want to.

Just because I decide to publish for free a simple website that has info on old arcade units from the late 80’s and early 90’s I should have no legal requirement to make it “accessible”. This is just a hobby and I like to toss information out on the web.

Now the suggestion of just use google/youtube and let them make it accessible … is a dark corporate controlled future of the web.

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#287

Post by ThatPlayer »

tasuki wrote: post #247
themitigating wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're handicapped you don't expect to be able to go hiking. However you do expect to be able to go to restaurants

Each and every restaurant? I agree we want the world to be fair. I recently went through a difficult situation, during which my partner was unable to visit restaurants, even if they were wheelchair accessible. Was that fair? What about people who can't financially afford going to a restaurant? Is it more fair to exclude someone on the basis of their financial situation rather than based on their physical disability?…

Yes. Because if not each and every restaurant, who gets to pick and choose? If the restaurant owners, none. If the disabled, all. And there isn't really an in-between is there? So all is better than none.

Are you arguing we shouldn't have such laws because they don't reach 100% of people? That's letting perfect be the enemy of good.

> I recently went through a difficult situation, during which my partner was unable to visit restaurants, even if they were wheelchair accessible. Was that fair?

It is more fair than if restaurants weren't wheelchair accessible.

> Is it more fair to exclude someone on the basis of their financial situation rather than based on their physical disability?

It is more fair than if they were also excluded based on their physical disability.

>If I were to become disabled and not be able to go hiking, I'd miss it more than going to restaurants. Is that fair?

It is more fair than if you were also not able to go to restaurants.

You see? These are all still better. It is not perfect, but arguing that we should do away with these laws because they are not perfect doesn't help it become better, just worse.

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#288

Post by lamontcg »

drc500free wrote: post #165
Forgeties79 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely do not understand how they can sleep at night. Thanks for pushing back.

It's no different from not having curb cuts on your sidewalk. Culturally tech companies have gotten away with selling non-compliant products and websites, and feel like it's unacceptable to be required to follow regulations because everyone has level-set their expectations around not doing that. A competent regulatory scheme would have had the government enforcing this from the beginning, instead of depending on priv…

A curb cut on a sidewalk is a pretty well defined piece of civil engineering.

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#289

Post by BitwiseFool »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #246
BitwiseFool wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"they could even have done it over time as they were recording the videos, surely they put resources into that." If a professor is lecturing a class that has no disabled students in it, does it really make sense to hire someone to sign or transcribe the lecture on the off chance someone disabled in the future who isn't even enrolled will want to watch it for free online? I can totally understand requiring the univer…

Does it make sense to build a ramp in a building which has currently no wheelchair-bound residents? There is a reason access to higher-ed is so difficult for the disabled. You don't need to hire someone to transcribe a lecture, you can push it through a speech to text algorithm and ask one of your 300 students to volunteer to make the few corrections necessary with a minimum amount of work. And this is the forethough…

I don't believe the ramp comparison is appropriate because physical accommodations are concrete and long lasting whereas access accommodation on things like recordings and lectures require specialized work on every single instance.

As for your "There is a reason access to higher-ed is so difficult for the disabled" point, I fully endorse the requirement that the university has to accommodate disabled students. But my expectation is that they accommodate actively enrolled students and if any disabled student wants to access some archived content they provide resources to do so. But I don't expect them to make the entire archive accessible on-demand for people online.

Presumably the UC System considered text-to-speech transcription. I assume that for some reason it would have been deemed inadequate or unacceptable to the people who brought the suit against them. You've mentioned having interns and volunteers do this, which, yes, they could, but it also implies that this work is indeed expensive. I'm also unsure if there is a certain level of quality or detail that is expected in order for it to be considered sufficiently accessible. Even if we generously assume a 1:2 ratio on the length of content vs the time to transcribe, edit, and verify, they would still be looking at something like 40,000 person hours. (~20,000 lectures, assuming 2 hour classes).

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#290

Post by behringer »

ergonaught wrote: post #11
Guidii wrote: post #2

The 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?

There was at least one mentioned: "Given the Israeli accessibility law, the use of the courses on this new website will be limited (up to 500 students). According to the Israeli accessibility law, unless this requirement is met, there will be a need to add subtitles to all video clips in all of the courses that the website includes."

That is a lot of students. If he's got more than 500 students then he definitely needs to worry about accessibility.
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