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

#381

Post by Mirioron » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 10:37 AM UTC

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #378

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…

An unlicensed image is something you consciously include - every image you don't explicitly have the license for is considered unlicensed. You can then get a guarantee in writing when you buy a license for an image. Nothing like that exists for accessibility. There is no 30 second test that will guarantee you that you are not going to get sued over accessibility problems on your website. Now imagine if that even has the possibility of bankrupting you. Would you even consider the risk of making a website? Now it's not just the people with disability that can't use the website - nobody can, because the website doesn't exist.

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

#382

Post by foldr » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 10:40 AM UTC

pakitan wrote: post #364

foldr wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Would a blind person be interested in a painting or car insurance? Sure, why not? But I'm confused here. Does your website somehow feature both paintings and car insurance?

No, these were obviously examples. Our site sells expensive products that require a certain level of "visual appreciation", just like paintings. No one would buy something like that, without being able to see it.

I mean, you're not making a very good case for yourself here. You won't say what your product is, and the examples you give are things that blind people would in fact be interested in.

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

#383

Post by Mirioron » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 10:40 AM UTC

diffeomorphism wrote: post #372

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 pro…

So, are you going to argue that the developer needs to now be held legally responsible for this? Because I can foresee how this makes lots of front end devs stop providing services.

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

#384

Post by Mirioron » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 10:41 AM UTC

diffeomorphism wrote: post #374

miracle2k wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Because the actual outcome isn't that you now have a website that's accessible. The actual outcome is that you now don't have a website at all. I suppose that does mean that everybody has equal accessibility - none.

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

#385

Post by NeedMoreTea » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 10:43 AM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #381

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

An unlicensed image is something you consciously include - every image you don't explicitly have the license for is considered unlicensed. You can then get a guarantee in writing when you buy a license for an image. Nothing like that exists for accessibility. There is no 30 second test that will guarantee you that you are not going to get sued over accessibility problems on your website. Now imagine if that even has…

This has always applied in the UK since the disability act.

The chain of liability is similar, the requirement for clause in supplier contract is similar. Yet the third-party (OpenCart) appears to be where liability rests. So she needs to counter sue her supplier. That's just how it works.

So I see no difference at all for an aware store owner who wants a website.

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

#386

Post by Mirioron » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 10:46 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #151

tibbon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a myth that reasonable accommodations are too much of a burden for a small business to handle. Having a menu made into Braille for example isn’t going to cost a ton. On the upside, they would also now have business available that they didn’t have in the past.

Most likely, a large part of it is the extra burden involved in trying to understand what you actually need to do in order to be in compliance -- what's actually required and what's not. I'm handicapped and also a freelancer and I have six years of college and I worked for a Fortune 500 company at one time. I feel I'm better positioned than a lot of individuals to figure out what I need to do without an accountant an…

>because our highly regulated world sometimes seems like it is actively designed to make it impossible for people to make their lives work (without being part of a megacorp -- and what if that doesn't work for you?).

I thought that everybody being part of megacorps was the intended outcome of a lot of regulations. Isn't that why there are no clear guidelines and limits to a lot of regulation? It's particularly ironic that the government themselves can't even seem to keep up with a lot of regulations (reminds me of GDPR and how the EU commission's websites didn't follow them).

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

#387

Post by pakitan » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 10:46 AM UTC

diffeomorphism wrote: post #369

pakitan wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but that is the system the people have decided they want The people haven't decided anything. As usual, someone comes up with an absurd law, or an absurd interpretation of the law and there are not enough people affected to bother challenging it. But that doesn't mean "the people have decided".

"The people have decided not to bother to do anything about it" sounds like the same thing to me.

On the contrary, the power dynamics is completely different. It's one thing to come up with a ridiculous policy (which is easy for a politician to do) and put the onus on minority of affected people to fight it, while the majority is neutral. And it's another thing to ask everyone to vote on the policy before it's enacted.

Fighting the status quo is immensely more difficult than keeping it, even if the effect of that status quo is provably harmful.

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

#388

Post by Mirioron » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 10:49 AM UTC

weberc2 wrote: post #28

yostrovs wrote: post #12

Does the ADA really apply and enforced at all publicly available businesses? Does every Chinese restaurant in Chinatown have a Braille menu? If we really start enforcing this, only larger businesses will survive.

I’m not usually one for more regulation, but I think this is a good thing. As far as regulations go, this is one of the cheaper ones, or at least it will be when developers are properly trained in accessibility and every serious CMS supports accessibility out of the box.

Properly trained in accessibility is basically impossible. Freelancers are not going to be trained in it nor are people from all across the world.

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

#389

Post by im3w1l » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 10:56 AM UTC

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #385

Mirioron wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An unlicensed image is something you consciously include - every image you don't explicitly have the license for is considered unlicensed. You can then get a guarantee in writing when you buy a license for an image. Nothing like that exists for accessibility. There is no 30 second test that will guarantee you that you are not going to get sued over accessibility problems on your website. Now imagine if that even has…

This has always applied in the UK since the disability act. The chain of liability is similar, the requirement for clause in supplier contract is similar. Yet the third-party (OpenCart) appears to be where liability rests. So she needs to counter sue her supplier. That's just how it works. So I see no difference at all for an aware store owner who wants a website.

Seems like an undue burden to place on a small business owner. Having to both defend in one lawsuit and sue another party when they likely aren't knowledgeable or willing to take the risk of either.

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

#390

Post by CommieDetector » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 10:57 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…

Beeing blind does not give you the right to force to make there websites accessible for you.