FYI for those interested, there is a Google Group called blind dev works:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!forum/blind-...
It's a small, low traffic group. I'm one of the admins.
Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible
211–220 of 620 posts
Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible
#212Despite 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…
> full and equal enjoyment
I know there is a snarky comment about enjoying Dominoe's pizza...
But it is comical that Dominoes championed ordering pizza by tweeting an pizza emoji, but failed to address helping the bling order online.
Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible
#213Blind 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…
Is there a lint-like tool that you would recommend to developers to scan their web application for accessibility issues (and ideally suggest alternative best-practices)?
EDIT: found this Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List with 132 items listed! Anyone have advice on which ones are best?
Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible
#214Some clarity on the matter: The Supreme Court didn't say anything. All they did was decline to hear the appeal. From skimming the petition and responses, it looks like the situation is that the 9th Circuit is allowing the case to go ahead to determine whether or not Domino's website is violating accessibility requirements, which means that there's not a lot of facts and administrative record for SCOTUS to attempt to…
This is actually a big deal because what was ruled on was the legal matter of whether a business could be sued based on their website . The facts of what constitutes a sufficiently-accessible website necessarily have not been discussed, because Dominos was trying to boot the case before any factual determinations were made. Their argument was that, as a matter of law, they could not be sued under the ADA based on the…
It’s a little more tightly scoped than that. From what I’m seeing, no parties are arguing that websites are themselves Title III “public accommodations”. Rather, the 9th circuit held that the Domino’s websites were part of the Domino’s services at their brick & mortar restaurants.
In other words, this case only directly applies to physical businesses with an online component (buy-online-pick-up-in-store or similar).
I’ll be curious to see – assuming that Robles eventually wins – if this case is ever used to argue that an online-only business is subject to Title III. It doesn’t seem like a slam dunk connection.
(Not a lawyer, but I do enjoy reading court documents.)
Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the Domino's site didn't have "labels on forms," it was a whole goofy animated game where you'd drag ingredients on a pizza to order. There's no way to make that accessible without building a whole separate web app. You can argue that goofy animated games are a dumb way to run a pizza website, and I can agree with you, but we all know the web is full of that kind of thing which is now waiting to be a lawsuit magn…
I assume it's making REST calls behind the scenes. It's probably not too difficult to make a text based version of this system.
Indeed, they (sort of) already did; their mobile app includes a gimmicky "chatbot" feature.
Admittedly, I don't think the chatbot can actually do everything the website can. But it's a start!
Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible
#216In fear of sounding insensitive, what if a business has decided that their website is just one way that customers can engage with them (much like their physical storefront is another), and that there are other ways as well that customers can purchase from them -- such as via phone (, etc). They can handle anyone's needs over the phone (, etc) if they can't use the website... much like the website enables them to engage with customers who can't visit their physical location, which could be in a different state or country. Can't visit our location? We still want your business, buy from our website. Having trouble using our website? We still want your business. Here, give us a call (, etc) and we can take your order. Once we have your order ready, we'll give you a secure PCI-compliant interface to enter your payment info for the order, that's totally accessible in whatever form it is, but is certainly separate from the rest of the not-so-accessible site, since your primary means of interaction with our business for this purchase is via [phone call or some other accessible interface separate from the website].
I say this after watching my mother struggle using the IRS' website this Sunday. Even though she is not blind or otherwise physically disabled (she doesn't use a screen reader, for example), she isn't the most tech savvy person. While searching for a form she clicked on a link then scrolled down straight to the footer, thinking the footer was the page's unique content, and already starting to click on links in the footer, which wouldn't have gotten her where she needed to go since what she needed was above the footer but she missed it. If she had someone she could call she would have gotten done what she needed to do faster than using the website. I helped her out, of course, but it was still helpful to watch how she used the site on her own before offering assistance.
So what if a company acknowledges that not everyone will be able to use their website and provides alternate ways for customers to engage with them that can still accomplish the same thing? When you define a business as more than just a website, is having multiple different interfaces (physical location for those nearby, website, voice call, etc) for a customer to purchase from a business not one way to provide accessibility?
If Domino's will take my order over the phone and deliver it and I can pay at the door, is that not accessible for me, even if their website isn't?
Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible
#217Blind 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…
I'm sure a bunch of people have inundated you with other questions, but what other pain points do you have? How are Docx and PDF to deal with?
Microsoft Word is fully accessible. As for PDFs, as long as they are not scanned, most likely they are accessible. Sometimes forms in PDF files are not very accessible.
And also every now and then I need to read a science paper in PDF format - somehow they still haven't figure out how to make accessible formulas in Latex-generated PDFs, so I'd have to use an OCR called InftyReader to OCR this PDF to get the formulas.
In my experience the worst offenders are drivers for printers and scanners. Every time my printer runs out of ink on my computer it'll show me a dialog, that my screenreader doesn't recognize at all. So by the presence of empty window I'll have to deduce that it's running out of ink. Scanner driver is completely inaccessible, so I had to get a linux box just to use my scanner - at least all the command-line tools are accessible.
Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd like to make sure I'm testing more of the website that I work on to make sure they're as accessible as possible. I want to do more than just run sites through validators. Is JAWS still a good accessibility program to test with? Are there other major accessibility programs I should be testing with?
The big three are Jaws and NVDA for Windows and VoiceOver for Mac. You probably don't need to test with all three every time since they are similar in terms of what kind of content they can access on the pages. But each of them has its own quirks, there are web-pages that only one of them can read.
That's great. I can push to rotate between those three on deployments.
I've typically only tested with one, so it'd be good to ensure there's nothing weird with others.
Thanks!
Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't get (or use) Rewards points unless you order online. They also have online coupons and discounts. They actively encourage customers to order online, pick up in person and do carry out. Most locations have minimal seating and minimal staff. Some don't even bother to have bathrooms for their customers. Their business model actively tries to reduce the amount of overhead for the business by promoting online or…
> Some don't even bother to have bathrooms for their customers. At least in California, any business with eat-in food services is required (by law) to provide restrooms. If a Domino's franchise does not offer eat-in service, it's entirely reasonable (and legal) they don't have public restrooms.
This is a state-by-state thing. In Michigan, restrooms are required if dine-in is available. In NYC and Boston, there are numerous eat-in places with no bathroom. Good luck washing your hands before eating.
Re: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you need more line spacing, then you can tell your browser to do that. Either a few minutes with userContent or an extension like https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/line-height-adjust... And long lines are trivially helped by making the window less wide. So you've provided a good demonstration about how vastly easier things are to adjust for someone that can see.
The problem isn't line spacing whatsoever, it's tracing which one of the 10 lines you are reading from one side of a screen to another as your read it. Did you make your comment 3 paragraphs ironically?
> The problem isn't line spacing whatsoever, it's tracing which one of the 10 lines you are reading from one side of a screen to another as your read it.
Then make your window less wide. It's not the writer's problem.
> Did you make your comment 3 paragraphs ironically?
No, but I don't think it would be hard to read if it was one paragraph. That formatting is to add in small pauses, not to make it easier to read when lines wrap.