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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

#371

Post by drc500free »

knewter wrote: post #331
ivan_gammel wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, we could have accessibility by design and accesstech industry enabling it at low cost. Every business deterred by the effort required to make interfaces accessible would inevitably be replaced by those who think they can still earn a lot of money (we are talking about trillion dollar industry here, people are ready to kill for much less).

Ahh yes, the ol' "only wealthy people may start a business" plan

It's the ol' "only people willing to be members of society and follow the rules that protect people may start a business" plan. You don't get to flush toxic waste down the drain, put poison in your pills, and ignore disability accommodations.

It sounds like you think there should be no disability accommodations. Is that the root of the disagreement?

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

#372

Post by ivan_gammel »

knewter wrote: post #331
ivan_gammel wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, we could have accessibility by design and accesstech industry enabling it at low cost. Every business deterred by the effort required to make interfaces accessible would inevitably be replaced by those who think they can still earn a lot of money (we are talking about trillion dollar industry here, people are ready to kill for much less).

Ahh yes, the ol' "only wealthy people may start a business" plan

Accessibility is effort, not money. It’s not rocket science, it’s not building pyramids, every hard working and intellectually capable person should be able to do it.

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

#373

Post by subroutine »

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.

Source?

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

#374

Post by iancmceachern »

hedora wrote: post #298
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…

See also, Scott Johnson. He files bogus shakedown suits over wheelchair accessibility throughout the state. Happily, the first hit is this article: https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/attorney-scott-johns... It's nice to see karma at work.

If I could invest in any abstract concept, it would be karma. We need more of it.

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

#375

Post by thiht »

behringer wrote: post #290
ergonaught wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honest questions: if some students have a disability that makes it they can’t view a video of a lecture, how do they attend an actual lecture? Lectures aren’t more accessible than videos of a lecture, are they?

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

#376

Post by hedora »

drc500free wrote: post #328
hedora wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think this a good summary of why civil suits usually can only be brought by a party that actually suffered some sort of harm. (The ADA works that way in 48 states, avoiding abusive suits.)

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

#377

Post by hyperman1 »

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…

Enforcement should start with a warning shot. A business should first get a warning and, say, a month to fix things.

My car light was broken once without me knowing. The police stopped us, gave an official notice. I should go to theur building in a week and show a working car light, or I would get a fine.

Here we have random people standing at the side of the street, demanding money from everyone with a minor spec of dust on their taillight.

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

#378

Post by kylehotchkiss »

cush wrote: post #241

Any sort of regulation around web accessibility is so much more nuanced than building a ramp up to a restaurant, having the right clearance under a sink, or offering braille menus. It's orders of magnitude more complex in scale and requirements. I'm positive that, in general, the web needs to do so much better when it comes to web accessibility, but we might not be ready for regulation without a lot of guardrail arou…

I was surprised to find how easily https://accessibe.com/ can add some accessibility options to an existing site this week. I was half expecting it to break the site styles when toggling through the options but it did a really fine job while keeping the character of the site intact. It was a one-line script include. Sure, it’s complex to build that all from scratch but thankfully we have services coming in to help.

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

#379

Post by Linosaurus »

hedora wrote: post #298
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…

See also, Scott Johnson. He files bogus shakedown suits over wheelchair accessibility throughout the state. Happily, the first hit is this article: https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/attorney-scott-johns... It's nice to see karma at work.

Article from 2019, I wonder what came of it.

Seems trial date is January 2023. He’s still doing it, but possibly some pushback from the legal system regarding standing (do you really intend to come back there)

https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/__trashed/

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

#380

Post by bell-cot »

tssva wrote: post #347
JCharante wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda agree. If the restaurant rents then the landlord renting out their space as restaurant space should be liable

The restaurant owners chose to rent a property with knowledge that they were going to operate a restaurant on the property, and they also knew or should have known the accessibility requirements for restaurants. Why shouldn't they be liable.

As a generality, both the economy and the legal system work far better when the seller of a good (or landlord of a rental property) bears the burden of making sure that his goods/properties are in compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, etc. And "fit for purpose", etc.

If you wanted to rent an office, an apartment, or even a '5 x 10' self-storage unit, would you find it reasonable for Step 1 to be "hire a team of property lawyers and inspectors, to find out if the place I want to rent is in compliance with all current Federal, State, County, City, and Historical District laws, standards, rules, regulations..."? I'm thinking "no". "Accessibility" is one of many legal requirements for a restaurant, and very few of the people who might want to open a restaurant are property lawyers.

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