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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

#401

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

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/

We use WAVE tool internally, but it may not be the 'coolest'

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

#402

Post by enlyth »

foldr wrote: post #399
pakitan wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're really intent to get me on a technicality. Fine, I'll concede - somewhere out there, there is a blind person whose pride in life is finding the best auto insurance deals for his relatives. And somewhere out there, there is a blind person who buys random paintings online and hangs them on his walls just so he can have fun conversations about them over dinner with friends. But by and large, blind people don't bu…

> I'm not going to say what we sell because it's not important It seems to me that what you sell is the central issue here, as you're claiming that blind people wouldn't be interested in it. I'm not really willing to take your word for it, given the other examples you've used. In the case of car insurance, it's obvious that people don't only buy insurance for cars that they drive. Consider e.g. an employee of a compa…

You're ignoring most of what OP is saying, he's completely right in saying he should have no obligation to dedicate huge resources to a potential 0.00001% of his customers which may or may not even exist, when the only benefit will be not getting hit by frivolous lawsuits.

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

#403

Post by foldr »

enlyth wrote: post #402
foldr wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not going to say what we sell because it's not important It seems to me that what you sell is the central issue here, as you're claiming that blind people wouldn't be interested in it. I'm not really willing to take your word for it, given the other examples you've used. In the case of car insurance, it's obvious that people don't only buy insurance for cars that they drive. Consider e.g. an employee of a compa…

You're ignoring most of what OP is saying, he's completely right in saying he should have no obligation to dedicate huge resources to a potential 0.00001% of his customers which may or may not even exist, when the only benefit will be not getting hit by frivolous lawsuits.

I'm not ignoring it. I simply don't believe that he/she is selling a product which would be unusually uninteresting to blind people. People with visual disabilities are a few percent of the population.

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

#404

Post by skywhopper »

Hitton wrote: post #352
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.

Is stargazing popular among blind people?

I'm going to bet a nontrivial number of visually impaired folks are very interested in tools that provide better views of the night sky and in sites with details about how to find and view celestial objects. You seem to be very lacking in imagination here. Anyway, it's not up to you to decide what they can or should be interested in, just because they experience the world differently than you do.

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

#405

Post by downtide »

acqq wrote: post #333
downtide wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nope, problem is each window may need a different sizing. With a tabbed interface you resize the lot.

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

#406

Post by enlyth »

foldr wrote: post #403
enlyth wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're ignoring most of what OP is saying, he's completely right in saying he should have no obligation to dedicate huge resources to a potential 0.00001% of his customers which may or may not even exist, when the only benefit will be not getting hit by frivolous lawsuits.

I'm not ignoring it. I simply don't believe that he/she is selling a product which would be unusually uninteresting to blind people. People with visual disabilities are a few percent of the population.

Who has got more information here, you, who has no idea what the OP is selling, or OP who is actually selling the thing?

"I simply don't believe" is not a great argument, when the previous car insurance and painting analogies proved to me that you can conjure up a hypothetical interest of a blind person about anything.

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

#407

Post by weberc2 »

Mirioron wrote: post #388
weberc2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One of two scenarios will happen depending on how easy it is to retrofit an existing website for accessibility. If it is easy, some subset of developers will specialize in retrofitting. If it is not easy, all developers who want to compete for contracts that require ADA accessibility will have to do so. If some freelancers here or internationally refuse to learn for whatever reason, then they will not be eligible for those contracts, plain and simple.

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

#408

Post by m-p-3 »

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…

Thank you for a glimpse into your perspective.

What do you think of the multiple voice assistants out there? Do you think that would be an acceptable alternative or tradeoff if Domino made a bot to take orders?

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

#409

Post by jcranmer »

gnicholas wrote: post #167
jcranmer wrote: post #47

Some clarity on the matter: The Supreme Court didn't say anything. All they did was decline to hear the appeal. From skimming the petition and responses, it looks like the situation is that the 9th Circuit is allowing the case to go ahead to determine whether or not Domino's website is violating accessibility requirements, which means that there's not a lot of facts and administrative record for SCOTUS to attempt to…

This is actually a big deal because what was ruled on was the legal matter of whether a business could be sued based on their website . The facts of what constitutes a sufficiently-accessible website necessarily have not been discussed, because Dominos was trying to boot the case before any factual determinations were made. Their argument was that, as a matter of law, they could not be sued under the ADA based on the…

> was unanimously declined to be heard at SCOTUS

We don't know that. It takes 4 votes for SCOTUS to agree to hear a case, and the voting breakdown is usually not revealed unless some justice decides to write an opinion disagreeing with the decision.

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

#410

Post by krick »

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…

No, it would be silly for a web developer to complain, because they are paid for it. But, yeah, some additional work — non trivial amounts of it — must be done. By designers, developers, QA. And all of them are paid for it. So all this costs money. Non-trivial amounts of it.

So, while it might be cumbersome, but doable for, let's say, Amazon, it could be a real problem for a new small business. Consider this: as a startup, you always wish you can satisfy all you customers. But you cannot. So you make sacrifices, trying to satisfy the customer base that brings to most money first. You always discriminate, even while US Supreme Court may not be able to see it. And there is no other way.

So what this law really means: there still will be commercial web-sites, that are not accessible for some customers. But they can be sued for it. And while it won't drastically improve lives of many of disabled customers, it will improve lives of some lawyer firms, that can use blind people to sue businesses. This won't happen to everyone, but this is one more additional risk, that every entrepreneur will have to consider

I always tend to support blind/deaf/etc people as much as I can, and I honestly care for them. But I don't feel I must be legally obligated to target my services to anyone. And I think this is a stupid law.

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