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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

#481

Post by mwcampbell »

lallysingh wrote: post #421
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?

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.

I'm extending a standing offer to come in and give a guest lecture on accessibility, focusing on blind and low-vision users, for any university or high school in the Seattle metro area, free of charge. I've done this a few times already. My presentation would have a mix of concepts, demos (both good and bad), and practical advice. My email is in my profile if anyone is interested.

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

#482

Post by CathedralBorrow »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #468
couchand wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Fortunately, in America we don't believe discrimination is acceptable, and we've codified that principle in the law.

Ha. The ADA has been put into law, yes. The result was reduced employment opportunities for disabled people. Because the cost of conforming to the law is prohibitive. Apparently, in America, its more important to appear to be virtuous than to actually do good. The law of unintended consequences.

Can you source your claim? I am genuinely interested in reading it.

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

#483

Post by CathedralBorrow »

gabaix wrote: post #461
pakitan wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The racket goes like this - a lawyer firm, specialized in this type of "work", finds a token blind person and sends you a letter to the tune of "On date such and such, our client visited your site and it wasn't accessible. Based on such and such precedent, we're not required to give you advance notice and can to sue you for $100K. However, we're reasonable people and we're willing to settle out of court for $10K, as…

did you end up settling?

Also, did they end up fixing?

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

#484

Post by Tyr42 »

tekkk wrote: post #367
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…

Hey, thank you for your insight into the life of blind users. I have often wondered if my sites that I've been part of building have been accessible but without proper guidance or customer requirements, nobody has really cared that much to check out. Lately I have been part of building a quite popular website in my native country, and this time, as I have had more autonomy than before, decided to go ahead and add as…

Not GP, but dev learning a11y too.

I'm just going though a web course on this which is pretty good.

https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891

I think moving focus into the modal is pretty helpful

Here's the video on focus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoAsayPVogE&t=65

You can set tabindex="-1" on the header of the dialog, and move focus to that. (Also set outline: none on the dialog, but not anything else). Then you can just call focus() on it, which isn't too hard.

I think it's okay if you don't remove the ability to focus on all the background stuff if the focus is at least moved into the modal.

I think for aria-labels for buttons, the best way to check this is to either use chromevox/ a screenreader and see what it says for the button. You can also inspect element, and go to the aria tab in chrome dev tools, and see what aria name is computed. You can see the order it takes them from, with aria-labelledby, aria-label, then contents.

If the name is reasonable, then you don't need a aria-label at all.

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

#485

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

downtide wrote: post #300
acqq wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then make your window less wide. It's not the writer's problem. Exactly. Not all we want and need to tell other people can be reduced to tweets. whoever has the windows maximised on a desktop has another option, and the paragraph was never a 140 character slogan.

Problem is that tabbed interfaces make window resizing harder. Bring back MDIs (maybe)!

Tree-Style-Tabs (Firefox extension) prevents this issue.

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

#486

Post by litoE »

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…

The "original product" is OpenCart. As the name implies, its open source. If it's defective, who are you going to sue?

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

#487

Post by Tyr42 »

magashna wrote: post #424
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?

There was also special deals which promoted the use of the online form.

Fewer errors from people mishearing you too.

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

#488

Post by pakitan »

gabaix wrote: post #461
pakitan wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The racket goes like this - a lawyer firm, specialized in this type of "work", finds a token blind person and sends you a letter to the tune of "On date such and such, our client visited your site and it wasn't accessible. Based on such and such precedent, we're not required to give you advance notice and can to sue you for $100K. However, we're reasonable people and we're willing to settle out of court for $10K, as…

did you end up settling?

Yes, of course.

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

#489

Post by CathedralBorrow »

im3w1l wrote: post #464
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

shrug That's the legal system. I didn't make it. A clause in supplier contract guaranteeing whatever - accessibility or all images being licensed covers you.

Cicrcling back to > If this is required to get sites to give a shit about accessibility once again, great! Given how enforcement works, I can't share your enthusiasm, and in fact I will oppose accessibility regulation.

Well, for the sake of people who need accessibility I hope you won't be successful with that.

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

#490

Post by kls »

34679 wrote: post #420
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?

I made $250 an hour, I could do a small website in 2 hours. I had more people beating down my door than I could service and I found the work to be mind numbing, because I like to write code and create things so I stopped doing it.
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