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Your argument here applies against all services which provide access to people with disabilities at increased expense, and is furthermore highly dependent on ho

by ahelwer 10y ago

Your argument here applies against all services which provide access to people with disabilities at increased expense, and is furthermore highly dependent on how you define net effect. Disability advocacy groups have pursued this cause through other channels, to no effect. This lawsuit is a last resort. The institutions have had a long time to get it together; as the article says, a letter was sent by the DOJ way back in 2010.

jasode 10y ago
>Your argument here applies against all services [...] No, not all. I was restricting my argument to things given away for free with no commercial gain. As society, we've agreed that making commercial entities like restaurants install wheelchair ramps is good. However, if we see a soup kitchen feeding the hungry poor and notice that the building they use doesn't have a wheelchair ramp, we should threaten them with a lawsuit?!? (Yes, the hungry poor can be wheelchair bound too.) It seems means-spirited and a misguided use of the ADA.
- ahelwer 10y ago
  Okay. So your argument is if a service is provided for free and there is no commercial gain for the provider, it should be exempt from accessibility requirements. Furthermore, you argue free online courses satisfy these two tests and thus should be exempt from accessibility requirements. There are several lines of attack on this argument. The first is against your contention that these institutions enjoy no commercial gain. There are clear PR gains from offering these courses, both through engendering goodwill and increasing prestige. I am not saying these courses are offered only for PR reasons, but it is difficult to deny their effect. The second line of attack is against your belief that free goods & services should not be subject to accessibility requirements. You use the example of a soup kitchen. Here I will digress for a moment and say I believe analogies are an exceptionally poor form of argument in civil rights contexts, which operate on abstract principles such as the value of equality. Thus an emotional appeal to our intuition about what is mean-spirited is unlikely to be useful. Returning to the argument at hand, we can question what is special about a free good or service which enables its exemption from accessibility requirements while remaining consistent with our principles of equality. So, I pass the ball back to you - what is your answer for this question?
  - x3n0ph3n3 10y ago
    How is someone supposed to respond to an abstract question without analogy to similar questions? The ADA only demands "reasonable accommodation," and frankly that's what we are arguing about: what is "reasonable?" Our law provides many special cases when the entity is engaging in non-profit activities: taxes, labor requirements, among others. So you ask why non-commercial should entities be excluded from accessibility requirements: because they already get excluded from other onerous requirements we place on businesses, and it seems like a "reasonable" line to draw. Maybe you don't find it reasonable, but now it's up to a court decide.

by ahelwer 10y ago

jasode 10y ago

>Your argument here applies against all services [...] No, not all. I was restricting my argument to things given away for free with no commercial gain. As society, we've agreed that making commercial entities like restaurants install wheelchair ramps is good. However, if we see a soup kitchen feeding the hungry poor and notice that the building they use doesn't have a wheelchair ramp, we should threaten them with a lawsuit?!? (Yes, the hungry poor can be wheelchair bound too.) It seems means-spirited and a misguided use of the ADA.

ahelwer 10y ago
Okay. So your argument is if a service is provided for free and there is no commercial gain for the provider, it should be exempt from accessibility requirements. Furthermore, you argue free online courses satisfy these two tests and thus should be exempt from accessibility requirements. There are several lines of attack on this argument. The first is against your contention that these institutions enjoy no commercial gain. There are clear PR gains from offering these courses, both through engendering goodwill and increasing prestige. I am not saying these courses are offered only for PR reasons, but it is difficult to deny their effect. The second line of attack is against your belief that free goods & services should not be subject to accessibility requirements. You use the example of a soup kitchen. Here I will digress for a moment and say I believe analogies are an exceptionally poor form of argument in civil rights contexts, which operate on abstract principles such as the value of equality. Thus an emotional appeal to our intuition about what is mean-spirited is unlikely to be useful. Returning to the argument at hand, we can question what is special about a free good or service which enables its exemption from accessibility requirements while remaining consistent with our principles of equality. So, I pass the ball back to you - what is your answer for this question?
- x3n0ph3n3 10y ago
  How is someone supposed to respond to an abstract question without analogy to similar questions? The ADA only demands "reasonable accommodation," and frankly that's what we are arguing about: what is "reasonable?" Our law provides many special cases when the entity is engaging in non-profit activities: taxes, labor requirements, among others. So you ask why non-commercial should entities be excluded from accessibility requirements: because they already get excluded from other onerous requirements we place on businesses, and it seems like a "reasonable" line to draw. Maybe you don't find it reasonable, but now it's up to a court decide.