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Yeah. There was one recently around Domino's and accessibility that made me cringe so hard. But the general sentiment from HN seemed to be in favor of a new reg

Yeah. There was one recently around Domino's and accessibility that made me cringe so hard. But the general sentiment from HN seemed to be in favor of a new regulation to mandate all websites implement accessibility. Scary.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
This? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20589788#20597127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20589788#20597127 - "Domino’s asks SCOTUS to shut down a lawsuit requiring its website be accessible (theverge.com)". The consensus as I read it was accessibility should be such that no one is disadvantaged by disabilities unnecessarily and that means that they should make online discounts accessible to all by making their website accessible [according to WCAG standards]. In the UK this is required by the Disability Discrimination Act, companies have to make "reasonable" adjustments to enable access (where reasonable is inter alia a function of the costs and business size too). I understand that USA have a DDA too with a very similar requirement and so it appears that no new legislation is required to get Domino's to act, just a court order or someone at Domino's deciding they care about accessibility.
- squirrelicus 7y ago
  Have fun making the "unnecessarily" argument to a judge when you do your startup.
  - dictum 7y ago
    It takes a rare degree of micromanaging to run a $10b startup (for an appropriate comparison to Domino's) and worry when it's sued for some accessibility issue.
    - squirrelicus 7y ago
      Okay. What's the boundary between those that have the right to not spend money implementing accessiblity in their website and those that don't have that right? Seriously, what's the boundary? What is the fundamental ethical reasoning that got you there?
      - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
        It's not a boundary of "fundamental ethical reasoning". It's a balance of societal desire and available resources. If your startup has assessed the question of accessibility, documented it, not actively worked against accessibility, done whatever internal leads consider reasonable within its cost constraints (eg, where costs allow asking/employing experts), then you're on track. Same goes for having a store with a step at the front. If you're making millions in revenue [through your website] but won't create an accessible colour scheme, or provide Aria tags, skip links, image descriptions, and such that are pretty much standard boilerplate nowadays then you deserve to be hauled up on it, IMO.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  This reminds me of the situation where video games now require that if you add text chat to a game, then you also need to add voice-to-text and text-to-voice to accommodate people with disabilities. Then you need to also test it with a bunch of people that suffer from these disabilities. There are some exceptions, but you need to at least document that you assessed whether you can afford to add this feature or not before release. [0] Accessibility is important, but things like this can easily overstep their bounds to the degree that it can stifle competition. It would've made far more sense to work towards some unified OS features that would allow for such functionality, instead of putting the burden onto the application developer. [0] https://www.3playmedia.com/2019/03/18/the-cvaa-video-game-accessibility/ https://www.3playmedia.com/2019/03/18/the-cvaa-video-game-ac...
  - hirsin 7y ago
    Those OS features do largely exist (speech to text slightly less so) and are readily available for developers to interact with, often worked into the framework of choice already. Except Electron, where you get to reimplement everything.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

This? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20589788#20597127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20589788#20597127 - "Domino’s asks SCOTUS to shut down a lawsuit requiring its website be accessible (theverge.com)". The consensus as I read it was accessibility should be such that no one is disadvantaged by disabilities unnecessarily and that means that they should make online discounts accessible to all by making their website accessible [according to WCAG standards]. In the UK this is required by the Disability Discrimination Act, companies have to make "reasonable" adjustments to enable access (where reasonable is inter alia a function of the costs and business size too). I understand that USA have a DDA too with a very similar requirement and so it appears that no new legislation is required to get Domino's to act, just a court order or someone at Domino's deciding they care about accessibility.

squirrelicus 7y ago
Have fun making the "unnecessarily" argument to a judge when you do your startup.
- dictum 7y ago
  It takes a rare degree of micromanaging to run a $10b startup (for an appropriate comparison to Domino's) and worry when it's sued for some accessibility issue.
  - squirrelicus 7y ago
    Okay. What's the boundary between those that have the right to not spend money implementing accessiblity in their website and those that don't have that right? Seriously, what's the boundary? What is the fundamental ethical reasoning that got you there?
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      It's not a boundary of "fundamental ethical reasoning". It's a balance of societal desire and available resources. If your startup has assessed the question of accessibility, documented it, not actively worked against accessibility, done whatever internal leads consider reasonable within its cost constraints (eg, where costs allow asking/employing experts), then you're on track. Same goes for having a store with a step at the front. If you're making millions in revenue [through your website] but won't create an accessible colour scheme, or provide Aria tags, skip links, image descriptions, and such that are pretty much standard boilerplate nowadays then you deserve to be hauled up on it, IMO.
Mirioron 7y ago
This reminds me of the situation where video games now require that if you add text chat to a game, then you also need to add voice-to-text and text-to-voice to accommodate people with disabilities. Then you need to also test it with a bunch of people that suffer from these disabilities. There are some exceptions, but you need to at least document that you assessed whether you can afford to add this feature or not before release. [0] Accessibility is important, but things like this can easily overstep their bounds to the degree that it can stifle competition. It would've made far more sense to work towards some unified OS features that would allow for such functionality, instead of putting the burden onto the application developer. [0] https://www.3playmedia.com/2019/03/18/the-cvaa-video-game-accessibility/ https://www.3playmedia.com/2019/03/18/the-cvaa-video-game-ac...
- hirsin 7y ago
  Those OS features do largely exist (speech to text slightly less so) and are readily available for developers to interact with, often worked into the framework of choice already. Except Electron, where you get to reimplement everything.