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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

#471

Post by windsurfer »

couchand wrote: post #456
rimliu wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's where you enter the woods. There is no "the screenreader". There are different screen readers, and each my interpret your site differently.

The same is true of mainstream browsers. Would you not bother testing in even a single browser just because there are too many options?

The differences between mainstream browsers are like different models of bicycles. The differences between screen readers are like all the varieties of two-wheeled vehicles, from segways to hoverboards to scooters.

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

#472

Post by couchand »

alkonaut wrote: post #308

I wonder if there is a good rule of thumb for what software and features are acceptable to not be accessible? What does it mean for a drawing program to be accessible by the legally blind? You can follow accessibility guidelines (for UI navigation and so on) but does that mean you made the program accessible if the bulk of the operations you can actually do in the software - draw - still requires seeing what you are…

Well, the law provides for a number of balancing tests to ensure that a court will respect the rights of all parties. A rule of thumb is unlikely to be specific and precise enough for any practical use. For specific details, consult an attorney.

Since it only applies to "public accommodations", it's highly unlikely that a drawing program will be covered, unless it's tied to a good, such as if you can have the drawing printed up for you.

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

#473

Post by Filligree »

coldtea wrote: post #355
jdnenej wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried Emacs?

Emacs is a GUI tool using curses (or similar). That it runs on a terminal doesn't make it a cli app in any of the regular sense...

Huh. This makes me wonder how many blind people prefer using ed.

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

#474

Post by patentatt »

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…

There are zero inferences that can be drawn from the Supreme Court not granting cert on an appeal. The Supreme Court denies the vast majority of appeals they receive, and only take a case in a narrow and not always intuitive set of circumstances. Headline is very misleading.

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

#475

Post by sn »

cwkoss wrote: post #228
cwkoss wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

On a related note, our app has a lot of charts. What are the best practices for making time-series graphs accessible? I'd imagine just listing the values wouldn't be particularly helpful for graphs with hundreds or more points - and being able to programmatically summarize the interesting takeaways from an arbitrary chart would probably be useful for our sighted customers as well.

Sarah Newman from prgmr.com here. It's funny you should ask this - we just kicked off an effort a week ago to work on this problem. We don't even have a website yet for the software, but please feel free to watch audiplot.org for future developments.

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

#476

Post by not_a_cop75 »

dorgo wrote: post #297
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 really is just setting tab indexes in correct order, as well as making sure items have alt and title tags Sounds like it could be part of SEO effort. If it can be checked programmatically then search engines should add accessibilty to their ranking algorithms. It worked for mobile.

Honestly, if accessibility like this was one of the higher scoring mechanisms for SEO in web sites, not only would screen readers work better, but any kind of automated parsing would be orders of degrees easier.

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

#477

Post by PhasmaFelis »

pakitan wrote: post #354
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.

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…

You seem to be under the impression that all blindness is exactly the same. There are people who have serious difficulties reading at normal screen distances, but still have enough sight to appreciate a painting.

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

#478

Post by zarro »

The ADA law actually doesn't make sense to me. I get they are trying to stop discrimination, but the means they take is misguided and an encroachment on peoples rights.

If you have a business and are offering a service, you are doing so at-will. Your not obligated to provide anyone with any product or service, if you were, how is that not slavery? The law forces you to provide a product or service without allowing you use your own judgement.

The law itself is unconstitutional. How did it even pass?

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

#479

Post by CathedralBorrow »

pakitan wrote: post #470
CathedralBorrow wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "he's completely right in saying he should have no obligation" Is he right because you agree with him? I don't think he's right. The law also doesn't think he's right. There's also quite a few assumptions that you seem to have made in not very good faith, because how could you know how much effort it would take to fix accessibility for a website that you don't even know what sells? You've also assumed some exaggera…

OK, here is a case that we do know something about: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/why-uc-berkel... Is that frivolous enough for you? That's the same law you're defending here and when that article came out, it was universally decried here on HN. Funny how things change, huh? But I guess it's not ok for someone to sue UC-Berkley for providing free non-accessible lectures, while it's totally ok for a p…

You are moving goalposts here, are we now debating whether any ADA-related lawsuit ever has been frivolous?

I also have a hard time answering for an anonymous group of people, as I am not HN.

You seem very eager to assign very clear and simple intentions to large and complex groups of human beings. Blind people don't like this kind of stuff, these lawsuits are frivolous, HN had this collective opinion on X but has now changed its mind.

For the record, I think it's fine for someone to sue UC-Berkeley and other private businesses for not following the law. Do you have a labeled box for me?

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