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Supreme Court Rejects Domino’s on Blind Man’s Website Lawsuit

32 points by vicodin 7y ago

WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
This is actually a plus. While it might be expensive to make a site accessible now given the fact that it must be done due to the legal action the costs will fall since there will be a push to get it done at the lowest cost possible. The more it is done the cheaper it will get.
crb002 7y ago
JAWS is horrid. There needs to be better open alternatives sponsored by Congress.
mikestew 7y ago
If Apple's VoiceOver can't read your website, then yeah, you have some work to do. Because it isn't just visually disabled people who suffer (though they suffer dis-proportionally), it's the rest of us, too, who might benefit from some automation. An Apple Shortcut on my phone to just slam a $MY_USUAL in the queue with a button press or Siri command, for example. And if JAWS can't read it, VoiceOver can't handle it, then I'll bet Selenium doesn't have much of an easier time with it, so how much did you really test this, and how much ongoing testing is there? I could go on but at the end of the day, JFC, Domino's would rather let this go to court than add some alt-text? (Which all it would have taken to shut this guy up and made him go away.) I hope they lose just on the principle of their stubbornness.
- vicodin 7y ago
  fyi,"just add alt-text" doesn't come as good comment as there is already too less awareness about accessibility related practices in web community but I guess you already knew it.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    You're absolutely right in that it is not an educational comment. I guess I was considering that I was "preaching to the choir", or plainly, speaking to those who already knew what needs to be done.
londons_explore 7y ago
It's time some big companies donated tech and resources to screen reader software. Today's software is terrible, and there are certainly massive improvements that could be made. For one thing, a screen reader should actually read the screen like a sighted person would. It shouldn't say text outside the viewport, hidden text, or 0 sized text. It should read text in images (central to memes, adverts, photos of roadsigns, maps). It should understand common layouts, styles, and able to summarize verbose text. A bit of machine learning could easily make a screen reader say "You are on BBC.com, the news headlines are X, Y, and Z, and each has more detail. There is a navigation menu at the top with links to Sport, Weather, and Local News."
- farisjarrah 7y ago
  CNN and NPR actually do a pretty good job of your final suggestion on their respective Lite and Text only sites: https://lite.cnn.io/en https://lite.cnn.io/en https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/
- m-p-3 7y ago
  The web change extremely fast, with all those shiny new frameworks coming in and old frameworks going out, compounded with the lack of awareness by web developers to accessibility.
Waterluvian 7y ago
My first thought was how such a large chunk of your web development resources now need to satisfy such a small population of pizza eaters. But I quickly realised, beyond the morals and ethics, this is just practically a good idea. An interface that works for a blind person could be the same interface fundamentals that allow me to order a pizza while driving. That also got me wondering: what if the Domino's site just led blind people to finding the right phone number to call? (I thought about this because naturally, if I was driving, I'd just say, "Hey Stupid Phone, call Domino's Pizza")
- dessant 7y ago
  Or, hear me out, you shouldn't order pizza while you're driving. :)
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    Then what am I going to eat while enjoying this ice cold beer?
    - dessant 7y ago
      I guess this is a lesson for all user interface designers, you never know how many lives your streamlined pizza ordering funnel might save.
- rozab 7y ago
  The basis of the lawsuit was that there was some submit-your-ow-pizza contest thing that you could only do on the website, not on the phone.
- m-p-3 7y ago
  This could be a good opportunity to leverage voice assistants for that kind of disability.

32 points by vicodin 7y ago

This is actually a plus. While it might be expensive to make a site accessible now given the fact that it must be done due to the legal action the costs will fall since there will be a push to get it done at the lowest cost possible. The more it is done the cheaper it will get.

crb002 7y ago

JAWS is horrid. There needs to be better open alternatives sponsored by Congress.

mikestew 7y ago

If Apple's VoiceOver can't read your website, then yeah, you have some work to do. Because it isn't just visually disabled people who suffer (though they suffer dis-proportionally), it's the rest of us, too, who might benefit from some automation. An Apple Shortcut on my phone to just slam a $MY_USUAL in the queue with a button press or Siri command, for example. And if JAWS can't read it, VoiceOver can't handle it, then I'll bet Selenium doesn't have much of an easier time with it, so how much did you really test this, and how much ongoing testing is there? I could go on but at the end of the day, JFC, Domino's would rather let this go to court than add some alt-text? (Which all it would have taken to shut this guy up and made him go away.) I hope they lose just on the principle of their stubbornness.

vicodin 7y ago
fyi,"just add alt-text" doesn't come as good comment as there is already too less awareness about accessibility related practices in web community but I guess you already knew it.
- mikestew 7y ago
  You're absolutely right in that it is not an educational comment. I guess I was considering that I was "preaching to the choir", or plainly, speaking to those who already knew what needs to be done.

londons_explore 7y ago

It's time some big companies donated tech and resources to screen reader software. Today's software is terrible, and there are certainly massive improvements that could be made. For one thing, a screen reader should actually read the screen like a sighted person would. It shouldn't say text outside the viewport, hidden text, or 0 sized text. It should read text in images (central to memes, adverts, photos of roadsigns, maps). It should understand common layouts, styles, and able to summarize verbose text. A bit of machine learning could easily make a screen reader say "You are on BBC.com, the news headlines are X, Y, and Z, and each has more detail. There is a navigation menu at the top with links to Sport, Weather, and Local News."

farisjarrah 7y ago
CNN and NPR actually do a pretty good job of your final suggestion on their respective Lite and Text only sites: https://lite.cnn.io/en https://lite.cnn.io/en https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/
m-p-3 7y ago
The web change extremely fast, with all those shiny new frameworks coming in and old frameworks going out, compounded with the lack of awareness by web developers to accessibility.

Waterluvian 7y ago

My first thought was how such a large chunk of your web development resources now need to satisfy such a small population of pizza eaters. But I quickly realised, beyond the morals and ethics, this is just practically a good idea. An interface that works for a blind person could be the same interface fundamentals that allow me to order a pizza while driving. That also got me wondering: what if the Domino's site just led blind people to finding the right phone number to call? (I thought about this because naturally, if I was driving, I'd just say, "Hey Stupid Phone, call Domino's Pizza")

dessant 7y ago
Or, hear me out, you shouldn't order pizza while you're driving. :)
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  Then what am I going to eat while enjoying this ice cold beer?
  - dessant 7y ago
    I guess this is a lesson for all user interface designers, you never know how many lives your streamlined pizza ordering funnel might save.
rozab 7y ago
The basis of the lawsuit was that there was some submit-your-ow-pizza contest thing that you could only do on the website, not on the phone.
m-p-3 7y ago
This could be a good opportunity to leverage voice assistants for that kind of disability.