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I own a website development company with 180 employees and sadly the ADA has been very abused by ambulance chasing attorneys. I have had several of my customers

by joelx 7y ago

I own a website development company with 180 employees and sadly the ADA has been very abused by ambulance chasing attorneys. I have had several of my customers receive scammy demand letters for missing minor alt tags and things like that.

api 7y ago
It should not be enforced through the civil court, or at least not at first. This is actually a case where a new bureaucracy may be needed to handle reports of non compliance in a standardized way. The civil courts should pretty much never be society's "first line tech support" for the reason you cite as well as high cost and lack of consistency. Of course this would never happen because of regulatory capture in the US by lawyers in this case. The US is far more corrupt than most people think.
- jimktrains2 7y ago
  It's corrupt in ways that are different than most people think when they hear "corrupt". The us largely isn't a place where people in power (e g. Police) extort people to do their job nor does paying the right (low level) people (directly) get you something that would otherwise be held up. The US is corrupt in its complacency. Most people are fine with most things and largely don't have the time or ability to care about the rest. It's easy for regulatory bodies to turn to the industries they regulate for expertise, and it's easy for that to turn into the turnstile we have today. It's also easy for this not to matter to most people until it becomes a problem, and at that point it's hard to fix without political will.
- siruncledrew 7y ago
  I agree that it would be less-ambulance-chase-y if there was a compliance agency (such as the FTC or some other bureau) where websites could be "neutrally audited" for ADA compliance and then presented with a list of priority action items to fix. I believe it would be possible to mostly automate audit-report generation as well, since there are already ADA-checker browser extensions and tools. A "one-strike, warning-first" system is less punitive-focused than the current system, and less likely to be abused by law firms for the goal of a quick cash grab. Personally, I would prefer to be informed and given a chance to fix something before being punished and branded as someone who hates the disabled by a law firm. How many of their websites are 100% ADA-compliant? Obviously, it's important to be considerate about providing usable online experiences for the disabled. That should be a common goal. However, I've seen ADA lawsuit letters as ridiculous as the DCMA Youtube ones. There's an entire shitty industry centered around mailing out thousands of these letters per week hoping to collect back enough bribes to not go to court. These law firms are just like other corporations looking for a revenue stream to pad their bottomline. Contrary to their ads, they are not fighting for others or pursuing justice for society, they are trying to get rich.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    We tried self regulation. We saw it being ignored widely. See for example universities not making their material accessible. People on HN lost their minds when video material was taken down for violating accessibility standards. What people failed to realise was that the universities imposed a condition (that the videos had to be accessible); they provided advice and help to make the video accessible; they asked professors to sign off that the videos were accessible; and those professors lied and said "yep no problems" even when no work had been done on accessibility. The courts are the only way to drive change.
- DanBC 7y ago
  A bunch of people in this thread are suggesting that courts are being used as the first method of requesting accessibility, but this is untrue. Accessibility is a basic human right, recognised by the UN. It's somewhat unfortunate that Americans don't bother to learn about these rights, but they exist and have done for some time. CRPD was adopted in 2006. https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities/article-9-accessibility.html https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-... Disabled people have been asking web-designers to fix their websites for longer than many HN readers have been alive. The ADA law was introduced in 1990. W3C have been banging on about accessibility for many years. They formally took on accessibility in 1996. https://www.w3.org/WAI/history https://www.w3.org/WAI/history It's frustrating that web designers chose to blame people with disabilities for not being able to access web sites, rather than accepting that the blame lies with their both their low level of skill in creating accessible site and also their total indifference to disabled people.

by joelx 7y ago

api 7y ago

It should not be enforced through the civil court, or at least not at first. This is actually a case where a new bureaucracy may be needed to handle reports of non compliance in a standardized way. The civil courts should pretty much never be society's "first line tech support" for the reason you cite as well as high cost and lack of consistency. Of course this would never happen because of regulatory capture in the US by lawyers in this case. The US is far more corrupt than most people think.

jimktrains2 7y ago
It's corrupt in ways that are different than most people think when they hear "corrupt". The us largely isn't a place where people in power (e g. Police) extort people to do their job nor does paying the right (low level) people (directly) get you something that would otherwise be held up. The US is corrupt in its complacency. Most people are fine with most things and largely don't have the time or ability to care about the rest. It's easy for regulatory bodies to turn to the industries they regulate for expertise, and it's easy for that to turn into the turnstile we have today. It's also easy for this not to matter to most people until it becomes a problem, and at that point it's hard to fix without political will.
siruncledrew 7y ago
I agree that it would be less-ambulance-chase-y if there was a compliance agency (such as the FTC or some other bureau) where websites could be "neutrally audited" for ADA compliance and then presented with a list of priority action items to fix. I believe it would be possible to mostly automate audit-report generation as well, since there are already ADA-checker browser extensions and tools. A "one-strike, warning-first" system is less punitive-focused than the current system, and less likely to be abused by law firms for the goal of a quick cash grab. Personally, I would prefer to be informed and given a chance to fix something before being punished and branded as someone who hates the disabled by a law firm. How many of their websites are 100% ADA-compliant? Obviously, it's important to be considerate about providing usable online experiences for the disabled. That should be a common goal. However, I've seen ADA lawsuit letters as ridiculous as the DCMA Youtube ones. There's an entire shitty industry centered around mailing out thousands of these letters per week hoping to collect back enough bribes to not go to court. These law firms are just like other corporations looking for a revenue stream to pad their bottomline. Contrary to their ads, they are not fighting for others or pursuing justice for society, they are trying to get rich.
- DanBC 7y ago
  We tried self regulation. We saw it being ignored widely. See for example universities not making their material accessible. People on HN lost their minds when video material was taken down for violating accessibility standards. What people failed to realise was that the universities imposed a condition (that the videos had to be accessible); they provided advice and help to make the video accessible; they asked professors to sign off that the videos were accessible; and those professors lied and said "yep no problems" even when no work had been done on accessibility. The courts are the only way to drive change.
DanBC 7y ago
A bunch of people in this thread are suggesting that courts are being used as the first method of requesting accessibility, but this is untrue. Accessibility is a basic human right, recognised by the UN. It's somewhat unfortunate that Americans don't bother to learn about these rights, but they exist and have done for some time. CRPD was adopted in 2006. https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities/article-9-accessibility.html https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-... Disabled people have been asking web-designers to fix their websites for longer than many HN readers have been alive. The ADA law was introduced in 1990. W3C have been banging on about accessibility for many years. They formally took on accessibility in 1996. https://www.w3.org/WAI/history https://www.w3.org/WAI/history It's frustrating that web designers chose to blame people with disabilities for not being able to access web sites, rather than accepting that the blame lies with their both their low level of skill in creating accessible site and also their total indifference to disabled people.