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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

#361

Post by tluyben2 »

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…

Can you give me a French audio file of your comment here; my uncle had a stroke and lost his ability to understand english? He lived in France but is native english and somehow his stroke killed his english comprehension a few years ago.

This is a fact and he is disabled as such; you might be young and able bodied but he wants to listen to your comment in French otherwise he cannot understand it.

Nothing is solved in 2022 unless you are native english and don’t have a disability like some form of speech aphasia.

Even captioning is hard in other languages, like OP has to do it in Hebrew which is so much harder than english as you cannot really do auto caption and then change it around a bit like you can do with english.

Not saying that we shouldn’t do it, but it is not solved at all for many cases; you would basically want to pick the language and if you want subtitles or transcript in that language. We can do english (almost) auto, the rest (at least as far as I can read) is pretty crap.

And sure, you can hire a specialised company for it; we are talking about people providing free content and often making nothing or a few cents from that. Most won’t be companies, but private persons filming their hobbies. There is nothing to spend. Companies should put this in their budget, but there should be a startup/grace period: we don’t all have 100m$ investment (and many of these are violators; Airtable was(is?) a good example).

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

#362

Post by [deleted] »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #344
BoorishBears wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy lives in Israel, and is making classes in a language he speaks, he's not going to get hoodwinked into paying $3000 an hour captions. Just because there are offers for $3000 an hour subtitles to businesses with more money than sense doesn't mean he couldn't post this job on one of hundreds of translation markets that would this at thousandths of the cost you quoted. - And twitch streamer does not have to submi…

> The guy lives in Israel, and is making classes in a language he speaks, he's not going to get hoodwinked into paying $3000 an hour captions. What do you think is a reasonable price? Why is every company I find wrong? It's not like you can hire an assistant that can work on it for many hours for a quarter of $30k/year. And yeah I'm assuming he won't do it himself, which I think is reasonable. Service prices are fair…

[deleted]

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

#363

Post by Nexxxeh »

ekianjo wrote: post #336
roenxi wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that would be treating the value of an individual as dependent on the power of the entity they are interacting with, which is a bit weird. It isn't really a defensible position to say that you have an interaction with someone and to work out how they ought behave you need to go and do a tally of their assets and mull over their balance sheets. It'd be tantamount to saying we'd need to know what Haim Michael's…

>The issue here under the law is whether disabled people can access his website or not. Soon you will apply the same standard for video games too? After all, why can't people without arms enjoy the same video games as you do? This kind of line of thinking has no end in sight, and is purely aimed at killing smaller companies and reinforcing the centralization of a few actors.

I disagree with your rhetorical question, as people without arms absolutely can enjoy the same video games I do.

I don't know about Sony and Nintendo, but Microsoft and 3rd parties on PC have absolutely ploughed resources into making sure that's the case.

Notable examples include the Xbox Adaptive Controller [1] which greatly simplifies making custom setups for the specific needs of gamers with limited motor control or limb difference etc.

Features like Co-pilot [2] which allow cooperative controller use.

And that's JUST from Microsoft, there's plenty more from third parties and hackers.

Hell, one absolute lunatic [3] has been playing COD and SF4 with a recorder (the musical instrument). You can absolutely build custom controllers, be that for limb difference or just to make ridiculous Twitch streams as you headshot someone with a C Sharp.

Most games now include the obvious traditional stuff like subtitles. Useful for me personally.

Plus stuff like visual changes for the visually impaired (inc specific palettes for colour blindness) are common.

And we're starting to see many more with newer "cognitive accessibility" options like motion sickness reduction presets for graphical options, objective assists and difficulty reduction, etc.

[1] https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/accessories/controllers/xbox-adap... [2] https://support.xbox.com/en-GB/help/account-profile/accessib... [3] https://www.twitch.tv/DeanoBeano

I think you're completely wrong on this. Gaming should be accessible and there's no excuse for it not to be in future.

It's not aimed at killing any companies. It's about enabling us all to kill each other, race each other, build stupid forts with each other, and hunt demons together. Armless or not.

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

#364

Post by roenxi »

yucky wrote: post #346
roenxi wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what basis do you say that? You seem to be in conflict with Israeli law on this one, and I think on a moral level that is a bit shaky. If your art could be appreciated by disabled people, it seems a bit questionable to assert that there is a 'right' to exclude them. I want to be clear - I think all this regulatory interference is doing more harm than good. But I don't see why this case is different because it is w…

A blind person can't see a painting, therefore we shouldn't paint. A deaf person can't hear music, therefore we shouldn't make music. This argument is absurd. Nobody has a right to prevent someone form expressing themselves just because they can't enjoy it.

> A blind person can't see a painting, therefore we shouldn't paint. A deaf person can't hear music, therefore we shouldn't make music.

That is a bit of a strawman argument though, is there anyone saying that? The actual situation is likely more like if a blind person can't see your painting you have to describe it to them. And I don't see how this is going to fit in with your original point on multi-billion dollar corporations.

If we want to keep to the idea of absurd outcomes, why is it so much more absurd that Mr Michael has to make accessible videos but world's best phone design company isn't considered competent to design a phone? These are both pretty absurd.

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

#365

Post by weatherlight »

tluyben2 wrote: post #357
weatherlight wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* The law has existed since 1998 - https://www.boia.org/blog/israels-digital-accessibility-laws... . * Israeli companies were given 22 years to comply. * Small businesses were required to comply as of 2020. It's a ridiculous argument.

It doesn’t sound like OP is a business though. Small or otherwise.

Just click on the link, OP isn't being honest. He has a services tab, in which he sells his services via the site that his videos are on and the entire right side of the site is ads!

His about section: My name is Haim Michael, I am an eternal student and a lecturer. I chose to start running this web site to serve as my professional personal blog. Through this blog, I plan to provide more information about the services my company provides, publish my professional articles over the web and maintain my professional relationships both with my students and clients.

As per the regulations:

"Here are a few important points regarding IS 5568 compliance:

The law applies to public entities and every private organization that offers services to the general public. Private contractors with an average revenue of 100,000 New Shekels (NS) (Approximately $30,000 USD) or less are exempt from IS 5568. IS 5568 immediately applied to medium and large businesses with an average annual revenue of 300,000 NS or more. Small businesses must also comply with the law as of October 2020."

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

#366

Post by infamia »

tablespoon wrote: post #348
infamia wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is objectively bad, and scummy lawyers are able to abuse the system in part because in the U.S., exactly what is accessible isn't actually written in the law. What's accessible is magically reinterpreted every eight years or so and are jotted down in a vague, sometimes shoddily written document. Such circumstances enables lawyers to take advantage of an ever-changing, poorly defined spec. I'm all for accessibility…

> It is objectively bad, and scummy lawyers are able to abuse the system in part because in the U.S., exactly what is accessible isn't actually written in the law. No it isn't. It's just evidence that the world isn't perfect. Those "scummy" lawyers are performing an important function, and if not for them things probably wouldn't be anywhere near as accessible for disabled people as they are now. It's kind of ironic…

> Those "scummy" lawyers are performing an important function, and if not for them things probably wouldn't be anywhere near as accessible for disabled people as they are now.

I've read court transcripts of attorneys who march into court wanting to measure the incline of a ramp with a 3 inch ruler (because a 6 inch ruler doesn't prove what they're after). Furthermore, they also want to measure a part of the ramp right under the railing where a handicapped person isn't even able to walk, because that's the only place they could find a violation. This is the type of behavior you get from some of these folks. The way the ADA is written encourages this type of behavior (which doesn't serve anyone but the attorney), because the laws are written so very poorly.

> It's kind of ironic that the libertarian-types who are often the loudest ones condemning stuff like this are also the first to defend people similarly motivated by greed as performing important functions, such as price gougers and the like.

There is no irony. There is a world of difference in acknowledging that someone has the right to do something as opposed to deciding whether that act is morale. For example, just because someone (e.g. the attorney) has the right to do something (e.g. practice law), I can also at the same time think their behavior (e.g. in the courtroom) is unethical. Furthermore like someone might sell a very poorly made product, they're allowed to do such things, but one could also still find that behavior terribly unethical. With these sorts of attorneys, any small good they may incidentally create, is drowned out by the splash damage they create. The pursuit of you and your family's interests is a moral ideal, that can be corrupted by people who do so without ethics nor regard for the damage they create.

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

#367

Post by treeman79 »

gigel82 wrote: post #305
camillomiller wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently in Germany there’s a wave of lawyers letters making the rounds. They claim a website violates the privacy of some dummy client when they accessed the website and their IP was transmitted to Google’s servers to download Google Fonts from the cloud. I’ve been putting in some extra hours this week to help scared clients localize their Google Fonts. The wave started after an half-assed sentence from a court in…

I mean... it is, isn't it? Google is specifically known to be using their fonts for tracking users across the web.

Never thought about that. And now my weekend plans have changed…

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

#369

Post by Arainach »

tasuki wrote: post #302
TheNorthman wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is being vegan a disability? Regarding nuts, I don't know about the rest of the world but in my country, restaurants are required to disclose allergens in their foods, if asked.

Disclosing allergens is a different thing though: that's akin to "disclosing" that the restaurant isn't wheelchair accessible. Should all restaurants also be required to serve food for whatever combination of allergies one might have? My mother has several food allergies, there are restaurants where she can't eat any meal. Would you welcome a law mandating each and every restaurant to start serving meals she can eat?

Again, allergies aren't a protected class.

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

#370

Post by jen20 »

incone123 wrote: post #103
5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the question is obvious — is this going to pass on a technicality or does the law stipulate that text is required to exactly follow the speech in audio? I'm asking because in my country that's how you usually pass various government audits — by following the letter of the law and ignoring its spirit. I've had to do it a few times at $DAYJOB because of budget constraints and other reasons.

Don't know how Israel's courts work but in England and Wales judges will seek to implement the will of Parliament. That's done by, among other things, interpreting words as they are ordinarily used. Do you know anyone who would expect 'subtitles' to mean text unrelated to the video?

> Do you know anyone who would expect 'subtitles' to mean text unrelated to the video?

By this measure, I'd expect SUBtitles to be under the damn video, not overlaid on it.

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