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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

#411

Post by enlyth »

skywhopper wrote: post #400
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…

Your language here is really insulting. Take a step back and consider maybe you don't know everything there is to know about how visually impaired individuals live their lives. They aren't all (or even mostly) fully blind! They have families which usually include fully sighted individuals! Meanwhile they are also capable human beings who have all the same needs and concerns about day-to-day life as anyone else.

Are you surprised? He's got a product which he believes has no value to blind people and a record of exactly zero people calling to complain, but he's getting shit on by the a11y brigade anyway.

I believe it should be his right to just simply say my product is not for blind people, and dedicate no resources to servicing this hypothetical user base.

It's very easy to tell others to do something a certain way with a condescending tone from behind your screen if you've got no stakes and don't have to do any of the work involved.

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

#412

Post by foldr »

enlyth wrote: post #406
foldr wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> previous car insurance and painting anecdotes proved to me that you can conjure up a hypothetical interest of a blind person about anything.

These aren’t hypothetical! Blind people really are interested in both these things, as you can easily find out by googling — or just using your common sense.

Like OP, you’re illustrating exactly why we need the ADA. People often have wildly inaccurate perceptions about what people with visual disabilities can or can’t do and about what they may or may not be interested in. If “I don’t think blind people would be into this” were a valid excuse, then virtually nothing would be accessible in practice.

As the OP has already demonstrated that they have mistaken ideas about blind people, I’m not willing to take their word for it that they have some kind of special product which couldn’t possibly be of interest to the visually impaired. They are free to reveal what they actually sell, if they think they have a slam dunk case.

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

#414

Post by diffeomorphism »

Mirioron wrote: post #383
diffeomorphism wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The developer sold me a product that is unsuitable for its purpose. Of course they should either fix it or stop selling it.

I don't think that "If they can't sell broken/illegal stuff, they will just sell nothing" is a convincing argument or that nobody will show up to sell non-broken stuff.

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

#415

Post by diffeomorphism »

pakitan wrote: post #387
diffeomorphism wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

The politician is not some random person removed from reality. He/she represents the people, is accountable to them and campaigned on how they want to represent them.

The majority is not neutral but assumed to be in favor of their representative's (!) proposals.

Of course, politicians can and do deviate from this, in particular where legal bribery (lobbying) is involved, but that is the base assumption of representative democracy.

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

#416

Post by enlyth »

foldr wrote: post #412
enlyth wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> previous car insurance and painting anecdotes proved to me that you can conjure up a hypothetical interest of a blind person about anything. These aren’t hypothetical! Blind people really are interested in both these things, as you can easily find out by googling — or just using your common sense. Like OP, you’re illustrating exactly why we need the ADA. People often have wildly inaccurate perceptions about what pe…

My problem is that everyone in these threads acts like this all takes zero effort. There's no "turn on a11y" switch, you have to dedicate resources, money and time.

It's a perfectly valid complaint from someone that sells a product which is generally not interesting to blind people (you seem to think this is an impossibility, or that one edge case outlier invalidates this reality), to not want to do this if it will bring no new business and make no-one's life easier.

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

#417

Post by couchand »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #327
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…

'Full and equal enjoyment' is quoting US code out of context. The law reads "No individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation." There is a clear difference bet…

> I'm not a lawyer, so I probably have this wrong

IANAL, but you definitely have this wrong, in terms of the history of this case, at least. The DOJ has made clear since their first guidance in 1996 and courts have held repeatedly that the ADA applies to websites in the service of public accommodation.

Domino's absolutely has a defense if they are able to demonstrate that their services are "equally" and "effectively" provided to all. The lower court held that they didn't even need to look into the facts at issue, i.e. they don't even need to find out if the phone line provides such service. The court of appeals rightly said that, in fact, it is important to find out if there's evidence of discrimination.

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

#418

Post by mwcampbell »

belltaco wrote: post #239
mattl wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know what’s for sale at Domino’s?

You can call them and ask?

How would you like it if you couldn't thoroughly peruse a restaurant menu and coupons at your own pace, but instead had to call a customer service rep and ask them to talk you through it, knowing that they need to get your order completed and get you off the phone as fast as possible? Putting these things online is really ideal for everyone, as long as the web developer doesn't screw up accessibility.

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

#419

Post by pakitan »

skywhopper wrote: post #398
pakitan wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm really curious why you think a blind person wouldn't be "interested" in car insurance. They may not be able to drive themselves, but that doesn't mean they can't be the person paying the bills in a family that owns cars and thus has to have car insurance. As for paintings... there was really zero information on the site other than pictures of paintings? Nothing about the artist, the size, or the price? You appare…

> It also sounds like you don't really believe that disabled folks deserve any consideration.

No, that's not at all what I believe so let me clarify what my objections are. First, by its very nature "accessibility" is open to interpretation and allowing people to sue companies for non-accessible sites gives way to frivolous lawsuits. As far as I remember, there isn't even an attempt to define "accessibility" in US law. Currently it's something like "Go look at WCAG and see what you can do". This is further exacerbated by the way these lawsuits work - it makes sense to settle even if you think everything is OK with your site. The plaintiff doesn't pay anything, his lawyers work on contingency so even if you "win", you'd spend a fortune on defense and you're not allowed to recoup those expenses from the plaintiff.

Second, these are private businesses we're talking about. They should be allowed to weigh in the ROI of investing in accessibility vs the potential income from disabled customers. I'm a reasonable guy and I was happy to fix some legit issues that the lawyers pointed out. They were relatively easy to fix and I would have done it even without any threats. Not in the least because they could have affected sighted customers as well. Other issues are completely out of whack and could take man-years to sort out fully. I don't have that kind of time. So, let me reverse the question. Do you believe everyone with disability must be able to use any service, no matter the expense to the business? Do you draw the line somewhere? What about people with nut allergies? Should we force restaurants to offer guaranteed nut-free food along with their other products? Why should a blind person be able to enjoy a pizza from Domino's but a person with nut allergy shouldn't?

> I don't disbelieve that shakedowns like you describe happen.

You seem to think that the shakedowns are the minority and most cases are legit. It's the other way around if you do a quick "ADA lawsuits" search. Here is good article about the practice: https://www.city-journal.org/html/ada-shakedown-racket-12494...

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

#420

Post by 34679 »

kls wrote: post #149

So somehow along my career I fell into accessibility dev for a while. Funny enough it was one of the most lucrative dev jobs I did and there was always plenty of work. It is easily outsourced to a remote developer because all you really need is a browser and a screen reader. In my opinion there really is no reason for even mom and pop sites to not provide even a base level of accessibility, it really is just setting…

>it was one of the most lucrative dev jobs I did

>there really is no reason for even mom and pop sites to not provide even a base level of accessibility

Which is it?

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