Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by Pinckney » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 5:51 AM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #154

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 b…

I don't think we know it was unanimous. The orders list doesn't say anything to that effect, and the justices rarely publicly dissent from denials of cert, so their silence doesn't mean anything.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/100719zor_m6...

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

#232

Post by belltaco » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

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.

Typically suits that do that without warnings or asking things to be changed are thrown out immediately. The plaintiff usually has to show that they tried getting it changed through normal channels before filing a lawsuit.

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

#233

Post by edoo » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #173

edoo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely except for federal buildings. The powers not expressly given to the federal government in the constitution are reserved to the states. At worse it should be a states rights issue with each state deciding their own way.

> The powers not expressly given to the federal government in the constitution are reserved to the states. I don't understand why you're making a legal argument now when the root of your opinion is a moral one ("Being forced to work at gunpoint is known as slavery"). It sounds like the states' rights argument is just a convenient legal pretext for what you really want, which is the freedom to discriminate against dis…

Not going out of your way to accommodate someone is discrimination? Nice newspeak. Where do you draw your arbitrary line of totalitarianism? Are you discriminating against people with ADHD for not having a clean version of the website for them? What about the 33+ languages in this country? Are you discriminating by not supporting them? Do you have to have a website for each religion?

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

#234

Post by jameslk » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

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…

> 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 tab indexes in correct order, as well as making sure items have alt and title tags so that the readers can pick them up and actively describe the page.

Not every disabled person is blind. It's not enough to set some tab indexes, add alt tags and call it a day. It's not a process that can be automated and not a simple matter of turning off your screen and using a screen reader (again not all disabled are blind). And as a small business, even if you think your website is accessible (after paying that accessibility dev who you thought fixed it), if you were pursued by a law firm and your options were to try to fight it in court or pay a settlement, you'll likely only be able to afford the latter.

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

#235

Post by miki123211 » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 5:55 AM UTC

Blind person here. While I definitely appreciate any efforts towards accessibility, I believe this is not the way. What people don't realize is that, at a certain point, most companies do accessibility anyway. Some of them, like Apple or Microsoft, even turn it into a marketing advantage. There are exceptions, sure, but this doesn't justify government regulation. I believe the days of John and Chuck, two dropouts from MIT making a tech startup and becoming billionaires are almost over. There's more and more regulation introduced around technology, first the absolutely ridiculous COPPA, then GDPR, then California's privacy initiative and now this. I believe that, in five to tech years, our tech landscape will consist of a few big companies who will have the resources to comply, and many walled gardens, as each country will have their own laws, wildly different from any others. The UK is already starting to go this way, i.e. with the proposal to ban Facebook likes for users under 18 and introduce mandatory age verification. I think that a small company making a website in 2030 is as likely as a small company making their own car or drug now. Some groups might benefit from this, but, ultimately, we, as a society, will be worse off. This one particular case seems beneficial when consideret in separation from anything else. The wider trend is not.

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

#236

Post by gremlinsinc » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 5:57 AM UTC

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…

I'm curious. How do you handle typos in code? Say you're working on a team, and they've got a lot of foreign devs who mis-spell words like color with o u r.

Or they just mistype something and leave it... but your screenreader reads it and you hear/know how to spell it so you introduce bugs because you're using correct or localized spellings of a variable name when everywhere else in the code uses the incorrect or other-localized version?

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

#237

Post by belltaco » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 6:00 AM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #68

jasonhansel wrote: post #27

There has been a long standing precedent around the ADA requiring web accessibility: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_the_B... . A number of companies have been (more or less) blatantly violating the law in this area. Framework authors in particular have often ignored the value of accessible, semantic markup. Many devs come to the web knowing only frameworks (and not the underlying web technolog…

I hope you know that's not a very strong legal precedent, which is why it keeps getting appealed to the Supreme Court from various jurisdictions. You speak (or seem to hope) as if the law is clearly on one side, which it isn't, at least not that strongly. There is contradictory case law (like Southwest Airlines 2002) that says the ADA does not extend to virtual / online stores. Companies are policing themselves on th…

I guess a lot of things going online and some going online-only in the intervening 17 years since 2002 has redefined "place of public accommodation" to include cyberspace.

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

#238

Post by berbec » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 6:00 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #192

pseudalopex wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Domino's wouldn't give Robles the online price according to other articles.

Did they really go through an expensive legal process defending themselves in court rather than discount a large pizza by 10%?

Stupid franchisee. I kept a coupon active for years after the promo ended for one guy. He liked his $11.99 Veggie lovers. The coupon was hidden, but if you manually typed the code, it worked. I called him personally after he complained to corporate about the promo ending. I walked him through how to get the deal and he ordered weekly until I sold the store. The new owners deactivated all old promos. He had my cell phone number, so I got to find out, after I sold the store, thst he now orders Papa John's.

Source: former multi-store, multi-Rolex winning Domino's franchisee.

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

#239

Post by belltaco » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 6:04 AM UTC

mattl wrote: post #65

chrisco255 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why Domino's having a phone number to call in orders isn't enough of an accommodation in this case?

How do you know what’s for sale at Domino’s?

You can call them and ask?

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

#240

Post by aaomidi » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 6:04 AM UTC

edoo wrote: post #136

lftl wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I take it you're opposed to the ADA in general?

Absolutely except for federal buildings. The powers not expressly given to the federal government in the constitution are reserved to the states. At worse it should be a states rights issue with each state deciding their own way.

Do you have any disability that limits you being able to use services accessible to everyone else?

Do you know anyone close to you that you can comfortably ask what limits and bumps there are out there for them to be able to comfortably use the internet?