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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

#421

Post by lallysingh »

mltony wrote: post #153
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…

I work in a big IT company and often times internal tools are not very accessible. Sometimes when I talk to their respective maintainers, they are willing to help me, but they don't know what is accessibility and what is screenreader. Is there a good document on how to make web sites accessible that I can show them?

We had a "professionalism" class in my CS undergrad program. A day using the web with a screen reader would do wonders, I think, for awareness of the issue.

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

#422

Post by finnthehuman »

krick wrote: post #410
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 st…

>and I honestly care for them

Caring happens with actions, not words.

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

#423

Post by diffeomorphism »

Mirioron wrote: post #384
diffeomorphism wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is needlessly black and white and hyperbole. Out of 100 websites you will have now, some of them are currently discriminatory. Some of them will shutdown, some will stop discriminating, some never discriminated to begin with.

Instead of going for the hyperbolic "none" put an actual number to it. Is not discriminating worth it if we then only have 99 websites? 95? 50? 20?

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

#424

Post by magashna »

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…

Why wouldn't a blind person just call for a pizza?

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

#425

Post by non-entity »

krick wrote: post #410
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 st…

> So, while it might be cumbersome, but doable for, let's say, Amazon, it could be a real problem for a new small business.

Not to mention even larger non-tech businesses often see tech as a cost center and probably don't want to pay to fix things until it's too late. Though, I wonder if this could be an interesting consulting angle. Sell yourself to businesses as someone who can help bring business's website to up standard

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

#426

Post by bluGill »

marktangotango wrote: post #397
dansingerman wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great comment. Imagine the investment that would suddenly start in accessibility if Google publicly announced it was an important part of search engine rankings.

These scanners exist, and they can serve a dual purpose; scan the web for websites to sue. And yes this is happening. It's important to note that not every site on the web falls under ADA. The crucial part of this issue is that the business must have a physical “brick and mortar” location to fall under the ADA. Presumably purely online retail businesses are not affected.

IF google would make it part of their rankings it doesn't matter if you could be sued or not - you will make sure you are accessible to avoid being not found.

I wonder if google can be sued for not making it part of the ranking thus misleading blind users... Interesting angle for a lawyer. I hope someone at google is reading this and mitigates that risk.

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

#427

Post by DoreenMichele »

concordDance wrote: post #306
DoreenMichele wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have such bad eyesight that I gave up my driver's license. I didn't find it that burdensome to read the comment in question. You might want to get your eyes checked or read up on other disabilities that can impair reading ability even if your eyesight is fine. If you feel so impinged upon that it makes sense to you to ask a blind person to accommodate your needs and problems, you may have an unidentified handicap.…

> so impinged upon I greatly doubt it was anything more than mildy irritating and the grandparent never implied otherwise. It's annoying for me to read and I have perfect vision. Being blind doesn't make you immune to an expectation to be accomodating to others.

So the GP volunteers unasked for feedback and that's cool. I do the exact same thing they did and somehow that makes me the asshole?

I already covered the fact that tracking problems can be due to reasons other than poor eyesight. I even provided supporting links for that assertion.

Part of my background is working for an educational organization that catered to the needs of gifted kids, including twice exceptional kids. It was common for early readers to have tracking problems and for parents to share practical tips on how to cope, as well as talk about at what point to get concerned and get the kids checked for something else.

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

#428

Post by lallysingh »

Angostura wrote: post #343
playpause wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one problem with that approach is that blindness isn’t binary. Many registered blind people are partially sighted and use screen readers and other assistive tech to supplement low vision. Another concern: as someone working on a large web development team, I think that maintaining a separate “non-visual” site would entrench a two-tier approach to quality and completeness (noticing and fixing issues, adding ne…

It seems to me that if this ruling is enforced and becomes accepted we may see a welcome move towards 'accessibility first' design - which would be an interesting paradigm shift for many devs.

That kind of markup may also be useful for software analysis. Parsing prose is becoming tractable. Maybe Alexa or the (nameless) Google Assistant will be able to order the pizza for you. They're supposed to be able to do it over the phone.

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

#429

Post by akavi »

mch82 wrote: post #322
mltony wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in a big IT company and often times internal tools are not very accessible. Sometimes when I talk to their respective maintainers, they are willing to help me, but they don't know what is accessibility and what is screenreader. Is there a good document on how to make web sites accessible that I can show them?

Consider installing a screenreader and the Lynx web browser so you can demonstrate what it’s like to access internal apps/websites with those tools. It might help to record your experience so people can watch the demo at their convenience. Lynx... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_%28web_browser%29?wprov...

What does lynx have to do with anything? No blind person I know browses the internet without JS, and every major screen reader supports it.
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