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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

#291

Post by qtplatypus »

nvahalik wrote: post #9

This seems like overreach. Clearly the law doesn’t cover websites. Why can’t congress just pass a law to make the ADA apply to websites? It’s not SCOTUS’s job to create law.

That would be a bad way to operate law. Every new technology would have tomget its own law. It makes more sense to pass a law that applies to the entire calls of public accommodations and allow regulations and precedent deal with it.

The SCOTUS isn’t making a new law. What they are saying is that the law as written covers websites as well. The law says you can’t discriminate against a person with a disability and the courts job is to work out what constitutes discrimination.

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

#292

Post by pakitan »

aaomidi wrote: post #86
edoo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is being forced at gunpoint to build services into your business.

This isn't an issue, its a feature. You live in a society so you plan around to serve that society. If you're not serving a large portion of your population then you're going to be forced to. This is no different than outlawing racial discrimination.

> This is no different than outlawing racial discrimination.

Yes, it is. Racial discrimination requires a special effort not to serve specific part of the population. Accessibility regulations ask you for investing time and money, that you may not be able to afford, in order to serve a minority of the population, that might not even be interested in your product.

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

#293

Post by esyir »

snek wrote: post #272
esyir wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels very much like a "tyranny of the minority" type situation though, where you have to bend backwards to aid a small subset of the population at the cost of a larger chunk of the same. There's probably a balance somewhere to be found. Not everything should have to be ported across.

In 2010 Google determined that there were more people using the internet with accessibility features than Canadians. I can't find any new data, but I find it hard to assume that has gone down since. On top of that, making your website friendly to navigate with a keyboard doesn't just help people using accessibility features, lots of people use the keyboard to quickly navigate.

We have ~4.77 billion people on the internet. Assuming all of Canada was blind, that's 0.77% of total users. Under most circumstances, I get that some level of accessibility is reasonable, but if you're expecting the same level of UI investment there for <1% of the population, I'd call that insane. Here, he can still call in and order the pizza.

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

#294

Post by ibeckermayer »

aaomidi wrote: post #86
edoo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is being forced at gunpoint to build services into your business.

This isn't an issue, its a feature. You live in a society so you plan around to serve that society. If you're not serving a large portion of your population then you're going to be forced to. This is no different than outlawing racial discrimination.

You've asserted several things but haven't made an argument as to why those assertions are justified. At the end of your first paragraph, you've jumped from making assertions to making violent threats.

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

#295

Post by AgentME »

mwcampbell wrote: post #185
mattl wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac OS X has one built in, if you are looking to play around with one.

Specifically, you can turn on VoiceOver on Mac with Command+F5. Windows also has a built-in screen reader called Narrator. On Windows 10 version 1703 or later, you can turn it on with Control+Windows+Enter. As of version 1903, it works reasonably well with Chrome, Edge (both Chromium-based and legacy), and IE. Another popular option on Windows is the open-source NVDA ( https://www.nvaccess.org/ ). Disclosure: I'm a d…

A lot of people in this thread and others have recommended devs to try out screen readers to get familiar with developing for them, and I added to my mental checklist "look up screen readers and try to find a good one to try out eventually", which really I'm not sure I'd ever get around to, and even if I did, I'd probably get distracted from choice paralysis because I wasn't sure which screen reader is worth trying.

Immediately after reading your post, I pressed a key combo and started playing with it. I would not have guessed that getting started was literally just a key combo away. Thanks.

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

#296

Post by pakitan »

julianozen wrote: post #245

How could this lawsuit cost less then just fixing the website?

Because currently there is no accepted definition of "fixed" (accessible) site and if they caved, people could come after them for various technicalities forever.

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

#297

Post by dorgo »

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…

> it really is just setting tab indexes in correct order, as well as making sure items have alt and title tags

Sounds like it could be part of SEO effort. If it can be checked programmatically then search engines should add accessibilty to their ranking algorithms. It worked for mobile.

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

#298

Post by downtide »

mlang23 wrote: post #284
carlmr wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are CLI tools inherently accessible?

I guess 99.9% are. However, it is pretty hard to order a pizza or buy your weekly load of groceries with a CLI tool :-) If you want to interact with the rest of the world, you will likely need to use the web...

I often use w3m.

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

#299

Post by qtplatypus »

robomartin wrote: post #224

What happens to every game on Steam, every app in the two main app stores, websites and software for 3D mechanical CAD (Solidworks, Fusion 360), ECAD, etc? Just trying to understand this. Where are the boundaries, limits and rules? What happens if you use web technologies to control equipment, say, 3D printers, robots, etc. To clarify, this isn’t to say I have a problem with this ruling. Not at all. Just trying to un…

IANAL but games are not public accomodations/commercial facilities in terms of the ADA. There has been very strong law that restaurants are such a thing.

The act basically requires companies to make "readily achievable" changes. So if it would bankrupt the company then it is not required. However you can’t just sleep on the issue and pocket the profits for not putting in the effort.

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

#300

Post by downtide »

acqq wrote: post #287
Dylan16807 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Then make your window less wide. It's not the writer's problem. Exactly. Not all we want and need to tell other people can be reduced to tweets. whoever has the windows maximised on a desktop has another option, and the paragraph was never a 140 character slogan.

Problem is that tabbed interfaces make window resizing harder.

Bring back MDIs (maybe)!

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