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Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible

latimes.com

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Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible

#151

Post by DoreenMichele »

tibbon wrote: post #29
yostrovs wrote: post #12

Does the ADA really apply and enforced at all publicly available businesses? Does every Chinese restaurant in Chinatown have a Braille menu? If we really start enforcing this, only larger businesses will survive.

It’s a myth that reasonable accommodations are too much of a burden for a small business to handle. Having a menu made into Braille for example isn’t going to cost a ton. On the upside, they would also now have business available that they didn’t have in the past.

Most likely, a large part of it is the extra burden involved in trying to understand what you actually need to do in order to be in compliance -- what's actually required and what's not.

I'm handicapped and also a freelancer and I have six years of college and I worked for a Fortune 500 company at one time. I feel I'm better positioned than a lot of individuals to figure out what I need to do without an accountant and a legal team and yadda, but I have my moments when I would like to go hide under a bed and cry and try to figure out how to kill myself because our highly regulated world sometimes seems like it is actively designed to make it impossible for people to make their lives work (without being part of a megacorp -- and what if that doesn't work for you?).

Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible

#152

Post by kls »

Firerouge wrote: post #143
elliekelly wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this would even be possible but, since you're a programmer and all, it would be cool if you built a small webapp/task-based game for people who aren't vision-impaired to try to navigate and experience the frustrations you experience every day. A gallery full of mystery photos, random buttons that needed to be clicked a weirdly specific way or don't work at all.

Just install a screen reader and close your eyes.

Yep when I was doing accessibility dev, that was exactly how I tested. It's pretty effective and it also gives you a feel for how crappy the tools are for the blind.

Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible

#153

Post by mltony »

kls wrote: post #149

So somehow along my career I fell into accessibility dev for a while. Funny enough it was one of the most lucrative dev jobs I did and there was always plenty of work. It is easily outsourced to a remote developer because all you really need is a browser and a screen reader. In my opinion there really is no reason for even mom and pop sites to not provide even a base level of accessibility, it really is just setting…

I work in a big IT company and often times internal tools are not very accessible. Sometimes when I talk to their respective maintainers, they are willing to help me, but they don't know what is accessibility and what is screenreader. Is there a good document on how to make web sites accessible that I can show them?

Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible

#154

Post by gnicholas »

couchand wrote: post #77

Despite the somewhat misleading headline, the Supreme Court didn't really say anything new here. They declined to hear Domino's appeal of the Ninth Circuit's (unanimous and clearly correctly decided) reversal of the District Court's absurd dismissal. Domino's tried to claim that their due process rights were being violated since there is no federally-mandated standard for accessibility. But the ADA is clear: business…

> Despite the somewhat misleading headline, the Supreme Court didn't really say anything new here.

A unanimous denial of certiorari (declining to hear the case) sends a pretty strong message to lawyers and their clients. It only takes 4 votes (1 less than majority) to hear a case, so the fact that there were zero justices interested is a clear message. While it is technically possible that there could in the future be a circuit split, which could then be appealed to the SCOTUS, it is unlikely SCOTUS would hear that case.

And given what happened today, it is even less likely that a competent lawyer would counsel their client to appeal a similar case up to a federal appeals court (because it looks like it would be a loser of a case).

So while the SCOTUS did not affirmatively speak today, their unanimously declining to hear the case does actually say something new, and this is being hailed as a landmark-ish case in the legal accessibility community.

FWIW, IAAL, and I run an assistive technology startup.

Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible

#155

Post by differentView »

thomasedwards wrote: post #137
rgoldste wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, not trying to be a jerk. For something like ordering pizza (or even plane tickets), how much worse is calling to make the order as opposed to ordering online?

Obviously you should just be allowed to use the same services as everyone else. The web is accessible by design, so all sites that are not accessible are broken. The people that made them broke them. But, just for the sake of your curiosity, American Airlines charge $35 per ticket[1] when you call them to book. [1] https://www.aa.com/i18n/customer-service/support/optional-se...

There's no way they don't wave that fee for blind customers.

Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible

#156

Post by mltony »

eloff wrote: post #111
mltony wrote: post #74

Blind programmer here. Just a glimpse of my life. Blind people have to live in an environment where X% of web sites and programs are not accessible, where X varies somewhere from 20% (for web sites) to 50% (for desktop applications). That's just my approximation of the state of accessibility these days. Now imagine that you live in the world where you don't know which printer or wi-fi router to buy, since maybe half…

Pardon my curiosity, did you type this on a keyboard by touch typing? If so how do you recognize and correct typos? Or did you use speech recognition? Same question about handling errors. I'd like to make sites I build more accessible, but I must admit I'm only familiar with the bare minimal guidelines I've read in a couple articles. I don't even know if they're correct or up to date. Nobody I've worked for has ever…

Yes, touch-typing. I feel when my fingers hit two keys at the same time - that's the time to go back and check the previous word for spelling mistakes. And I use screenreader to read things for me.

Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible

#157

Post by kls »

dexwiz wrote: post #48

I see a lot of negativity in the comments. I imagine much of that is gut reactions of web developers hearing they need to do more work. As a web developer that has had to pass an accessibility review from a person who is actually blind each release for the last two years, I can tell you it’s not that hard. Make sure you have a sensible tab order and labels on forms and you are 80% there. The hard issues are creating…

It's also one of the most easily outsourced tasks for a dev shop that does not want to do it in house.

A accessibility dev, does not need to have a deep understanding of your business processes, you back end or your dev cycle. They really just need the front end assets in a manner that they can run and access to a source control repo to check in their changes for the mainline dev team to pull in.

Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible

#158

Post by sixstringtheory »

Firerouge wrote: post #143
elliekelly wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this would even be possible but, since you're a programmer and all, it would be cool if you built a small webapp/task-based game for people who aren't vision-impaired to try to navigate and experience the frustrations you experience every day. A gallery full of mystery photos, random buttons that needed to be clicked a weirdly specific way or don't work at all.

Just install a screen reader and close your eyes.

On iOS you can also enable the “Screen Curtain” to see how well voiceover will do: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201443

Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible

#159

Post by freeone3000 »

tyingq wrote: post #139
freeone3000 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, it's a lot LESS work. Fair or not, the people reviewing accessibility standards are likely not disabled, and the mere functioning of a website is enough to pass WCAG 2.0. It doesn't have to work well - all of the bits that make a website nice are at level AAA or are advisory, and the government's claim here is that Level A Sufficient would be enough, it just has to work.

The people filing civil lawsuits generally are disabled, since they would be the only ones that could. A civil suit doesn't just get thrown out because you passed WCAG.

It doesn't, but it's evidence in your favor, much like meeting the physical accessibility requirements would be. If there's still a legitimate problem, of course you'd have to address it.

Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible

#160

Post by DoreenMichele »

eloff wrote: post #111
mltony wrote: post #74

Blind programmer here. Just a glimpse of my life. Blind people have to live in an environment where X% of web sites and programs are not accessible, where X varies somewhere from 20% (for web sites) to 50% (for desktop applications). That's just my approximation of the state of accessibility these days. Now imagine that you live in the world where you don't know which printer or wi-fi router to buy, since maybe half…

Pardon my curiosity, did you type this on a keyboard by touch typing? If so how do you recognize and correct typos? Or did you use speech recognition? Same question about handling errors. I'd like to make sites I build more accessible, but I must admit I'm only familiar with the bare minimal guidelines I've read in a couple articles. I don't even know if they're correct or up to date. Nobody I've worked for has ever…

Typing class expected me to look at the sample I was typing, not at my own output. Being able to accurately type without looking at your output is a standard expectation for sighted people.
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