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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

#321

Post by hedora »

themitigating wrote: post #180
no_butterscotch wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a disabled guy in the Bay Area going around suing all sorts of restaurants and other places if they didn't have ramps. Small hole in the wall restaurants couldn't afford renovations and had to just close, resulting in more Mc-chain restaurants moving in that can afford to play ball. Disabled people need access, but I (perhaps controversially) don't think they need access to 100% of the things. I'm reminded…

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

In 48 states in the US, if you complain, the establishment has N days to fix it. Otherwise, you can sue.

In the other two states (California and New York) there are cottage industries where people look for subtle infractions (even at businesses that have made good faith efforts to comply with the ADA), then file shake down suits.

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

#322

Post by hedora »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #131
BitwiseFool wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There needs to be a system where accessibility issues can be raised and addressed without allowing attorneys to profiteer from the system.

Most countries do this through government enforcement of regulations through licensing, fees and fines. The US actively avoids this in favor of having private citizens enforce regulations through lawsuits.

The US gets this right (businesses can only be successfully sued if they ignore complaints). California and New York are the only states where you can sue for damages before giving the business a chance to fix it. Those are the states where the ADA is abused.

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

#323

Post by hedora »

carapace wrote: post #106
danny_taco wrote: post #45

People 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 b…

This. I cannot believe the amount of strident anti-accessibility sentiment in this thread, it has to be coming mostly from the young and able-bodied? This has already been discussed and the question is settled, to the point of being actual law: civilized societies make allowances for people with disabilities. We are not some "Lord of the Flies" barbarians to say "f*ck the deaf" are we? It's 2022, captioning is a solv…

Every library I’ve been to has braille and audio versions of books. They are almost always produced by third parties that specialize in such things.

It probably makes more sense to have professional third parties handle accessibility than to try to force it upon the industry that decided to add 25MB of JS animations to their non-legally-compliant cookie popups, etc.

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

#324

Post by ruined »

lamontcg wrote: post #288
drc500free wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

curb cuts on sidewalks are the classic example of an obvious, commonplace accessibility accommodation that is standard now, but was initially only gained via unauthorized direct action

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

#325

Post by ripdog »

mkr-hn wrote: post #224
knaekhoved wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about I should be able to do whatever I want with my content without some slimy lawyer or smarmy internet commenter giving me a hard time?

You might feel different when you're disabled.

Is it really better to create a world where said content cannot exist due to disabled people?

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

#326

Post by redox99 »

themitigating wrote: post #183
baggy_trough wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The disabled litigant is of course bottom feeding scum, but the real fault is with the law itself.

No, the fault is the person who abuses it. That's a choice. The law wasn't created with abuse in mind and while you could claim it should have been written better That's just a mistake. Only one party here is purposeful in their actions

What abuse in mind? I don't know what the law says, but based on what the other comment claims, the law requires ramps? I don't see why demanding that places have ramps as the law requires constitutes "abuse" to you.

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

#327

Post by RetpolineDrama »

twblalock wrote: post #26
josephcsible wrote: post #14

This 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...

It’s boneheaded stuff like this that turned me against most accessibility laws in general. They sound like a good idea, but the implementations tend to make the perfect the enemy of the good and raise the barrier to entry too high for anyone who doesn’t have their own legal team.

>and raise the barrier to entry too high for anyone who doesn’t have their own legal team

That's by design. Megacorps can hire an army of lawyers, mom and pop can't. They'll lobby for "standards" only they can meet to squeeze the competition.

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

#328

Post by drc500free »

hedora wrote: post #309
drc500free wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll recognize the same rage that there was against the mcdonald's coffee lady. These cases get stoked by tort-reform interests to show "what's wrong with the legal system." It took several decades and a documentary for people to understand they were misled about that personal injury case, it will take a while for them to understand disability law.

Those cases are completely different from each other. If McDonalds coffee lady was buying coffees everywhere, checking them with a thermometer, suing because she could have burnt herself, and then used the proceeds to hire more people to do the same in a profit sharing scheme then her case would be comparable to the current ADA abusers in California. Instead, the McDonald's in question had been repeatedly warned by h…

1. Refuse to fund enforcement of disability protections, and require citizens to crowdsource it via a bounty program.

2. Label anyone who tries to enforce it an “ADA abuser” and claim they are misusing the system to make money.

3. Disability protections are successfully ignored, corporations make more profit.

Usually there’s a “???” in the middle, but this one is pretty straightforward.

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

#329

Post by RetpolineDrama »

knaekhoved wrote: post #91
armchairhacker wrote: post #31

you should add subtitles to your videos. Either just auto-generate them with a service (can even use YouTube as someone mentioned), ask for the community to add subtitles, or hire transcribers if you’re willing to pay Can re-show the videos one at a time when subtitles are added rather than immediately doing it to the full batch. You could even just move the site to a Youtube channel, as youtube provides subtitles. B…

How about I should be able to do whatever I want with my content without some slimy lawyer or smarmy internet commenter giving me a hard time?

I mean I agree, but we're long past that. Freedom of association doesn't exist anymore, and the downstream effects of that are deeply rooted in what most people think is "normal".

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

#330

Post by cma »

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…

Why doesn't the government instead subsidize an auto-captioning device or software for deaf users, so every site, even foreign and outside jurisdiction would work?
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