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

Post by robin_reala » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 9:21 AM UTC

chaboud wrote: post #281

SilasX wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not blind. But I would be furious if I had to call to place an order rather than submit a web form, merely because the site couldn’t be bothered to adhere to basic standards and instead used meth-addled “code artisans” practicing resume-driven development.

What standards should those sites adhere to? Are those standards sufficiently complete as to be referenced by regulatory agencies? If so, what's keeping us from adopting standards or at least recommendations for legal compliance? I think that Domino's assertion is that the current framework is too vague, but I regularly see the argument that there are standards to follow. So... What are those standards, and why aren'…

Post by robin_reala » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 9:23 AM UTC

gremlinsinc wrote: post #236

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 oth…

Post by coldtea » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 9:25 AM UTC

jdnenej wrote: post #316

mlang23 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Have you tried Emacs?

Post by foldr » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

pakitan wrote: post #354

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Would a blind person be interested in a painting or car insurance? Another reason I'm sure about it is if there was genuine interest, there would be calls from blind people - "Hey, I'm interested in your products but I'm blind, can you help me with figuring out some things on your site?" or "Hey I'm blind and I have problem accessing certain features on your site, can you please fix those issues?". We haven't got one…

Post by wallace_f » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 9:31 AM UTC

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #338

pakitan wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 lega…