3 ms·

The quoted statement above is blatant discrimination and incriminates the company who wrote it. I'm surprised the company's lawyers allowed it. Much of the le

The quoted statement above is blatant discrimination and incriminates the company who wrote it. I'm surprised the company's lawyers allowed it. Much of the legal system in the US says that you cannot ignore the needs of minority groups just because it's not profitable.

dsacco 10y ago
How is the statement discriminatory? If a company decided to start a sharing economy-based babysitting service, but doesn't have the requisite resources (or training/certification among workers) to look after special needs children, it's okay for them to not cater to those individuals. It's not as though they have the ability and are denying service - they are choosing not to develop a product or service with accessibility features. I can entertain a normative argument that it's ethically wrong to allow companies to operate in this way, but this is not legally considered discrimination. I do think that a certain critical mass requires this to be reconsidered, because private companies without as much regulation could displace people who enjoyed accessibility features under older, more established and regulated companies. That said, there are many products and services on the market today which simply cannot be used by handicapped individuals, and for many companies making these products it would be strictly impossible for them to profitably offer a more accessible version. EDIT: Initially I said taxi cabs are not required to be wheelchair accessible and made an Uber/Lyft comparison. After looking into it, it seems I'm wrong - NYC taxi cabs, at least, offer wheelchair accessibility, you just need to call for it through dispatch as not every vehicle is properly equipped.
- umanwizard 10y ago
  > Taxi companies are not required to cater to handicapped individuals who are restricted to wheelchairs. Actually, yes they are. http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/faq/faq_access_veh.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/faq/faq_access_veh.shtml
  - dsacco 10y ago
    Yes, I saw that right after I made the comment and made an edit :).
  - jcrawfordor 10y ago
    Not just in NYC, this is an almost universal element of taxi regulation. The city will either require that taxi companies operate a certain number of ramp taxis as a condition of their medallions (thus implicitly subsidizing them off other taxi rides) or directly subsidize operators of ramp taxis. The State of California recently required all of the ride-sharing companies to produce reports on how they "planned" to accommodate disabled riders, but so far as I know, nothing has come out of it.
    - drwl 10y ago
      Uber and Lyft both have ways for physically handicapped people to get a ride (the cars have wheel chair carrying devices attached to them)
- geofft 10y ago
  > It's not as though they have the ability and are denying service - they are choosing not to develop a product or service with accessibility features. I can entertain a normative argument that it's ethically wrong to allow companies to operate in this way, but this is not legally considered discrimination. The same reasoning would apply to "It's not as though we have an elevator and are denying service - we are choosing to only install a staircase."
ptero 10y ago
The author gave this (notional) example to simply point out that such users present a very different use case for the original company and are likely to be a huge distraction. And undeflected distractions are bad for a startup. If it were a real example and you needed a legal way out (what country / jurisdiction?), maybe referring those cases to another service that is specifically set up to serve their needs would be sufficient.

dsacco 10y ago

How is the statement discriminatory? If a company decided to start a sharing economy-based babysitting service, but doesn't have the requisite resources (or training/certification among workers) to look after special needs children, it's okay for them to not cater to those individuals. It's not as though they have the ability and are denying service - they are choosing not to develop a product or service with accessibility features. I can entertain a normative argument that it's ethically wrong to allow companies to operate in this way, but this is not legally considered discrimination. I do think that a certain critical mass requires this to be reconsidered, because private companies without as much regulation could displace people who enjoyed accessibility features under older, more established and regulated companies. That said, there are many products and services on the market today which simply cannot be used by handicapped individuals, and for many companies making these products it would be strictly impossible for them to profitably offer a more accessible version. EDIT: Initially I said taxi cabs are not required to be wheelchair accessible and made an Uber/Lyft comparison. After looking into it, it seems I'm wrong - NYC taxi cabs, at least, offer wheelchair accessibility, you just need to call for it through dispatch as not every vehicle is properly equipped.

umanwizard 10y ago
> Taxi companies are not required to cater to handicapped individuals who are restricted to wheelchairs. Actually, yes they are. http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/faq/faq_access_veh.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/faq/faq_access_veh.shtml
- dsacco 10y ago
  Yes, I saw that right after I made the comment and made an edit :).
- jcrawfordor 10y ago
  Not just in NYC, this is an almost universal element of taxi regulation. The city will either require that taxi companies operate a certain number of ramp taxis as a condition of their medallions (thus implicitly subsidizing them off other taxi rides) or directly subsidize operators of ramp taxis. The State of California recently required all of the ride-sharing companies to produce reports on how they "planned" to accommodate disabled riders, but so far as I know, nothing has come out of it.
  - drwl 10y ago
    Uber and Lyft both have ways for physically handicapped people to get a ride (the cars have wheel chair carrying devices attached to them)
geofft 10y ago
> It's not as though they have the ability and are denying service - they are choosing not to develop a product or service with accessibility features. I can entertain a normative argument that it's ethically wrong to allow companies to operate in this way, but this is not legally considered discrimination. The same reasoning would apply to "It's not as though we have an elevator and are denying service - we are choosing to only install a staircase."

ptero 10y ago

The author gave this (notional) example to simply point out that such users present a very different use case for the original company and are likely to be a huge distraction. And undeflected distractions are bad for a startup. If it were a real example and you needed a legal way out (what country / jurisdiction?), maybe referring those cases to another service that is specifically set up to serve their needs would be sufficient.