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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

#371

Post by oarsinsync »

pakitan wrote: post #292
aaomidi wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When the web and HTML pages first started up, they were all designed in such a way that accessibility software would have been able to navigate.

Since, a lot of time and money has been invested in making the web less accessible.

Not all discrimination requires a special effort to not serve a specific part of the community. See Google Photo's gaffe identifying a black skinned person as a gorilla. This is discrimination through a lack of consideration or effort.

A similar process has occurred with accessibility (and more) on the web. A lot of time and investment has occurred to 'improve' the web for specific groups and interests, without considering the impact on others.

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

#372

Post by diffeomorphism »

litoE wrote: post #210

I know the owner of a small brick and mortar store in California. She decided to create a web site to sell her products on line. She got a domain name and a hosting account and installed a canned platform (OpenCart) which allowed her to create her own web site and started to try and sell. Total sales on the web site over three years: about $3,500. Then she received a letter from a lawyer in Florida,telling her that a…

That doesn't sound like a problem with a) or b) at all but purely with c).

Also, something is wrong with your example. Cost of buying the original platform is $X, sales (not revenue) for multiple years is $3,500, fixing it or replacing it by a compliant platform is $Y. A "fix" is clearly not more expensive than $X and that was much, much less than the revenue from the sales.

Also, it seems to me that the original product was defective (illegal), so why should she have to pay for the fix?

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

#373

Post by progval »

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…

> 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.

I've ordered a couple dozen of times on Domino's, mostly custom(ized) pizzas, and never seen a drag and drop on their website; possibly because I use their French website. Instead it's pressing buttons to add or remove ingredients. So it's possible and they already have the code to do it.

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

#374

Post by diffeomorphism »

miracle2k wrote: post #363
chillacy wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like whoever sold her the theme didn't bother with accessibility. I think laws like this are good, but at the same time they will end up pushing people to stick to larger sites like shopify or just listing on ebay/amzn to avoid all this.

If the case the GP described is an intended outcome of the law working as designed, I don't think it is a good law.

What is wrong with a) and b)? Remove c) and this sounds like a great intended outcome: "Notice stuff is broken. Notify. Stuff gets fixed".

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

#375

Post by Mirioron »

snek wrote: post #304
esyir wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Making a website accessable isn't hard. there's a plethora of tooling available to help and most of it comes down to aria roles and color selection. It really is a bare minimum sort of task imo.

And then you get sued for $100k over your "bare minimum". This just makes front end dev seem dangerous, because you can never be sure that you meet absolutely all the guidelines without being a lawyer.

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

#376

Post by mdrachuk »

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…

To be honest, Domino’s pizza ain’t good. You probably better off this way.

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

#377

Post by chippy »

cwkoss wrote: post #213
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…

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? https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/

A Chrome extension I've used is Siteimprove Accessibility Checker https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/siteimprove-access...

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

#378

Post by NeedMoreTea »

litoE wrote: post #210

I know the owner of a small brick and mortar store in California. She decided to create a web site to sell her products on line. She got a domain name and a hosting account and installed a canned platform (OpenCart) which allowed her to create her own web site and started to try and sell. Total sales on the web site over three years: about $3,500. Then she received a letter from a lawyer in Florida,telling her that a…

Alright. How about:

"Then she received a letter from a lawyer in Florida,telling her that a) one image web site is not licensed; b) If she doesn't fix it, they'll file a law suit; and c) She needs to pay the lawyers $4,000 to "cover the unauthorised use of the single image without license"."

That happens all the time. Enough that it's fairly well known now. I think few would just lift an image off another site these days.

If this is required to get sites to give a shit about accessibility once again, great! A few headline cases of huge, crippling fines, and few would just put out a site without accessibility, or give a tender to developers without a contract section covering it.

So the only remaining issues are whether $4k is a reasonable sum or just a lawyer trying it on, and whether she can sue OpenCart for providing a non-accessible platform.

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

#379

Post by Mirioron »

freeone3000 wrote: post #75
ccleve wrote: post #58

On the surface, this sounds like a fine thing. Who doesn't want accessible websites? But it really opens a can of worms. What's a place of public accommodation? With brick-and-mortar, it's easy; if you have a physical location open to the general public, it probably qualifies. But on the web? Does my personal website count? What if I sell t-shirts on it? What if I don't sell anything, but have forums where the public…

No, your personal website does not count. Yes, it does if you sell t-shirts. No, a forum is insufficient, it needs to actually be a business. Yes, aria labels are compelled speech, but they're upheld[1]. There would be an exemption if the burden was "undue", but you're not going to meet that by claiming it's a few extra hours of work. If accessibility standards change, you are compelled to upgrade your site if you're…

>No, a forum is insufficient, it needs to actually be a business.

But this means that almost every forum does count.

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

#380

Post by quickthrower2 »

litoE wrote: post #210

I know the owner of a small brick and mortar store in California. She decided to create a web site to sell her products on line. She got a domain name and a hosting account and installed a canned platform (OpenCart) which allowed her to create her own web site and started to try and sell. Total sales on the web site over three years: about $3,500. Then she received a letter from a lawyer in Florida,telling her that a…

Pure shakedown
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