Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 620 posts

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

#331

Post by ltbarcly3 »

esyir wrote: post #258
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…

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.

I think this is a symptom of providing a legal remedy of 'you can sue'. There are dishonest lawyers with no interest in helping people with disabilities and they will sue you if they think you have enough money to make it worthwhile.

This is also the reason many of us have to step over used needles on the way to work every day, there are people who are going to die very soon from using heroin on the sidewalk, and there are lawyers lining up to sue if anything at all is done to discourage them from shooting up and passing out on the sidewalk.

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

#332

Post by jameslk »

jdnenej wrote: post #319
rednixion wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A counter to that analogy is that where/when ramp access is needed and how one should be built in order for it to be usable is defined by building codes and the concept is well understood. Without what clear definition or a method to get a website's accessibility "certified" makes it seem like allowing litigation is not going to be produce meaningful results and could be easily abused.

This could easily be solved by requiring that the disabled person first contact the company and explain how the site is not accessible and if the company refuses to provide a solution then you can sue. The idea being that it never gets to the legal part because the company knows it is much cheaper to fix their website.

This was already attempted: https://www.newsweek.com/house-republicans-americans-disabil...

And blocked: https://rewire.news/article/2018/04/03/sen-tammy-duckworth-s...

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

#333

Post by acqq »

downtide wrote: post #300
acqq wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)!

It’s the opposite: if you insist on keeping your browser maximized that can mean that you probably need all the width on some other site which scales poorly.

I never keep my browser maximized.

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

#334

Post by tluyben2 »

exclusiv wrote: post #267
gremlinsinc wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah but my point being if half the team is uk and half is U.S. and you have a blind programmer on each team. You could see where there could be some major nomenclature issues. Of course a good design policy could help, but someone still can mis-spell something, or even just caps in the wrong place. Someone might make: const Sidebar and someone else calls it SideBar. My main question is how do blind programmers deal…

I once inherited code written in Spanish and I knew just enough to figure out how to maintain it. Definitely slowed me down a ton but I learned more of a real language while coding! I wouldn't recommend it though for any serious application haha. Back in the day it was on Flash and classic ASP which were both new to me too. Back then you didn't handpick your projects. You just took them and figured them out. I'd attr…

Yeah, I worked a lot on software written by russians, ukrainiens and chinese; basically the software has no usable comments for me (translation software was not helpful back then) and a lot of variable and method names were wrongly spelled english or ascii (not cyrillic etc) written russsian etc. It had a solid feeling of being obfuscated code a lot of the time. Fun times.

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

#335

Post by ptest1 »

miki123211 wrote: post #235

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 fro…

I think accessibility is very important, but I share your worry about the future for very small startup projects. I think it’s already almost impossible.

I worry about it getting much worse, especially with the animosity the larger tech companies face from the public. What people don’t understand is that those big companies will weather any of these regulations, and that they will stop smaller startups from ever happening.

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

#336

Post by maigret »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #186
mrep wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically (I cannot seem to word this in my mind without sounding like an ass so please don't take offense), your comment is about 10 lines long on my 15 inch laptop making it somewhat difficult to read for us vision readers. A double new line every few sentences which causes a paragraph on hacker news makes it much easier.

Mildly amusing. I definitely find this a little annoying too. If you make the browser window narrower the eye has a lot less trouble moving from the end of one line back to the start of the next. I like wide screens because they make it better for having two apps side by side, rather than one app full width .

Hacker News could easily set a max-width on the problematic items. Every designer (and so should every web developer) knows that the sweet spot for reading is around 60 characters and a column of text if readable between 40 and 60 characters. Check for example the free course from https://betterwebtype.com/

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

#337

Post by 9HZZRfNlpR »

sgustard wrote: post #179
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…

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…

Well, I don't know if that helps them from legal perspective, but I'm sure many disabled (and non) wouldn't mind if there was an alternative super simple text based version (but equal) on the web that they can lead their disabled customers on every platform needed.

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

#338

Post by Mvandenbergh »

pakitan wrote: post #273
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…

> It's really not hard to make your websites accessible at a basic level. Follow the standards. Do you follow the standards? If you show me a web site that you've developed I'll show you a site with multiple violations of WCAG 2.0. Hell, JAWS' own site is littered with WCAG violations! Yes, "accessibility at the basic level" is easy but WCAG 2.0 is not "accessibility at the basic level". It's a huge set of rules that…

That is a natural consequence of the way in which the United States chooses to enforce rules like this. In some other countries, there are regulators who do this kind of thing and issue relatively small fines and compliance notices. Since the regulator itself is publically funded, it does not need to live off the fine income.

In the US, the choice was made instead to create a private right of action and to allow legal fees to be recovered. That means that lawyers who make this their business have to aim high to cover their costs (including from cases they lose) and are no incentivised to let a company off with a compliance notice and a deadline to improve.

As a result, there are a certain percentage of ADA cases which are not brought in good faith but that is the system the people have decided they want.

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

#339

Post by CathedralBorrow »

pakitan wrote: post #273
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…

> It's really not hard to make your websites accessible at a basic level. Follow the standards. Do you follow the standards? If you show me a web site that you've developed I'll show you a site with multiple violations of WCAG 2.0. Hell, JAWS' own site is littered with WCAG violations! Yes, "accessibility at the basic level" is easy but WCAG 2.0 is not "accessibility at the basic level". It's a huge set of rules that…

> Our site is of zero interest to them.

How do you know? It's not like blind people are all the same. They're just people with the same wide range of interests as everyone else.

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

#340

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

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%?

Not only that but Domino's "look forward to presenting our case at the trial court."

Rather than working with community groups to help each other find a workable solution.

Post reply on HN