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Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible

• mlang23 7y ago
  This would be wonderful news. I am blind, and can report that accessibility on websites is getting worse and worse with every new web framework invented. Accessibility is usually bolted on as an afterthought, with all the quality issues implied. However, I only believe this headline when I see the first lawsuits being won. Lets hope this is no clickbait.
  • voltagex_ 7y ago
    Can you provide any examples of sites that might be using particular frameworks that are inaccessible? If open source, I reckon I could raise an issue or two on your behalf if that's OK.
    • mlang23 7y ago
      I am sorry, but I dont believe that casually raising an issue here or there will actually change anything. My experience is that it either gets ignored, or you outright receive an aswer that explains to you that your needs are not important. Example 1: Reddit is on GitHub. At the time when I was still using Reddit, I was pretty pissed with its lack of helpful accessibility. So I went on GitHub, and wrote a PR which would wrap individual articles on a page in a so-called "region" so that the screen reader could easily jump to the next article. The PR was ignored for several months. After a while, I simply closed it out of frustration. Example 2: When I read about Bitwarden on HN, I tried it. As I am an iPhone user, the iOS app was interesting, so I installed and tested it. No surprise, almonst no button was labeled correctly, or labeled at all. So I opened an issue on GitHub. The answer I got was: "Yes, we know we are not accessible, but we are planning a rewrite anyway, so we will not change anything in the existing code". Thanks for nothing. We are not talking about rocket science here, just adding a text label to a handful of buttons. But yes, thanks, I got the message. Nobody really cares about people with disabilities.
      • voltagex_ 7y ago
        Yep. I get it. I'm in a wheelchair. But I can't not try, at least in some small way. It's really frustrating that these projects don't take this stuff seriously.
• golemotron 7y ago
  I wonder why having having a voice ordering system by phone wouldn't be a valid defense for Dominos. Should the ADA apply to every channel of sales if there are supported alternatives by the same company.
  • conception 7y ago
    While on the surface that seems like a good argument, wouldn’t that mean that as long as they had Braille and a wheelchair ramp at their stores they’d be compliant? Etc etc
    • sb8244 7y ago
      I don't think that's a fair conclusion to reach. One channel can reasonably be done from home while the other requires going to the store. I believe web accessibility is net good, though.
    • golemotron 7y ago
      It would need a usability measure. For instance, are accessibility features for the blind on the web better, worse or exactly equivalent to using a voice menu on a phone?
  • rlayton2 7y ago
    and probably a can of worms if VR becomes a "normal" platform for this type of thing
    • XorNot 7y ago
      Wouldn't VR be a lot better for a lot of these things? A huge amount of VR innovation is focused on non-sight feedback mechanisms. Implementing braille via VR interfaces would be actually be a lot easier since you're always using your hands to interact.
      • freeone3000 7y ago
        It's an interesting idea but it's actually harder, due to the low resolution of physical feedback currently available through VR devices. VR remains mostly visual, with input devices either approximate and 3d-spatial, or having physical input devices (in which case VR doesn't help)
• JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  Sounds like a great start-up opportunity. Turnkey and ongoing accessibility compliance.
  • mrsmee89 7y ago
    Check out userway.org
  • MagnumPIG 7y ago
    I don't think that's a new market actually. But I guess startups can be anything now.
    • adventured 7y ago
      A start-up is nothing more than a new business. Has no relationship with market segment or particular technology or whether that tech is new or old.
      • hkchad 7y ago
        All new business are not startups, a startup is a new business but primarily focused on finding a repeatable business model. A new business might not be a startup because they are executing an existing proven business model.
  • CaliforniaKarl 7y ago
    I really hope not. I don’t think “X compliance” is a good idea for a startup, because of trust and liability. Whomever does the compliant would either need a ton of liability insurance, or would need contract language that actually gets them out of responsibility (similar to the language in many travel insurance and point-of-dale service plans). The former would be expensive, so you’d probably end up with the latter. Web accessibility compliance does require a human to look at (and interact with) a site, and it requires people who either have training, or experience. That costs more. I really hope we don’t end up with “Uber for accessibility compliance”, with testers who aren’t paid enough, and who don’t get enough time to test a site.
• harmlessposter 7y ago
  This decision will invite tons of frivolous litigation.
• nvahalik 7y ago
  This seems like overreach. Clearly the law doesn’t cover websites. Why can’t congress just pass a law to make the ADA apply to websites? It’s not SCOTUS’s job to create law.
  • 0xEFF 7y ago
    The law has covered websites for decades. It used to be not that much of a problem because screen readers worked well enough with plain html.
    • zaroth 7y ago
      Pretty sure the law doesn't say anything in particular about websites. I don't usually find myself scratching my head at SCOTUS. Full and equal enjoyment of the goods and services is the pizza, not the website. The website is just one means of obtaining said pizza.
      • jerf 7y ago
        As I said in another comment about another case that didn't make it, the acceptance rate of the Supreme Court is single-digit percentages. Don't overinterpret them not accepting a case. They have to not accept a lot of cases. It may not be entirely meaningless, but it isn't very meaningful either. There will be another case about this in the future if they do choose to take it up. I'm sure this is a perennial topic.
      • pseudalopex 7y ago
        Robles claims Domino's wouldn't sell the same goods for the same price over the phone.
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
    • tomnipotent 7y ago
      > The law has covered websites for decades. Except it hasn't. The U.S. legal system is based on precedence (common law), and other than a scattering of local Title III judgements (Long v. Live Nation Worldwide, Inc., Haynes v. Hooters of America, LLC, Winn-Dixie, Blick Art) there is no concrete or shared understanding of how ADA applies to e-commerce. I welcome all these lawsuits, for no other reason that we'll reach a consensus sooner-than-later on compliance.
• yostrovs 7y ago
  Does the ADA really apply and enforced at all publicly available businesses? Does every Chinese restaurant in Chinatown have a Braille menu? If we really start enforcing this, only larger businesses will survive.
  • Retric 7y ago
    Restaurants don’t need a Braille menu to accommodate blind customers, a sighted employee can walk them through the ordering process. With websites that’s not always an option, which is legally and morally an issue.
    • diebeforei485 7y ago
      But you can call your local Domino's on the phone.
      • DoreenMichele 7y ago
        You can't get (or use) Rewards points unless you order online. They also have online coupons and discounts. They actively encourage customers to order online, pick up in person and do carry out. Most locations have minimal seating and minimal staff. Some don't even bother to have bathrooms for their customers. Their business model actively tries to reduce the amount of overhead for the business by promoting online ordering and carryout service. So, no, ordering by phone isn't the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.
        • tomnipotent 7y ago
          > Some don't even bother to have bathrooms for their customers. At least in California, any business with eat-in food services is required (by law) to provide restrooms. If a Domino's franchise does not offer eat-in service, it's entirely reasonable (and legal) they don't have public restrooms.
          • DoreenMichele 7y ago
• Meekro 7y ago
  If you're blind, can't you just call up a Dominos to order your pizza? "Talk to a human and order your pizza" sounds like a friendlier approach than the automated screen reader or whatever they'll come up with to resolve this litigation.
  • toomim 7y ago
    Maybe they can just add a "screenreader" version that erases the whole page and replaces it with the string: "Call (510) 420-1155 to order a pizza!" And then they'd be compliant.
    • codyogden 7y ago
      Be aware that not everyone who uses a screen reader is blind or visually impaired. People with processing disorders like dyslexia or reading comprehension disorders may use screen readers in order to intake the content/information in a way they can understand.
  • colejohnson66 7y ago
    Some deals were online only. Presumably to encourage people to use the website and not bother employees with having to answer the phone.
    • Meekro 7y ago
      That's a fair point. Sounds like this can be resolved with a simple new rule: if you're blind, you can get online-only deals over the phone.
      • verroq 7y ago
        So now everyone can pretend to be blind to take advantage of online only deals on the phone?
        • Pinckney 7y ago
• Causality1 7y ago
  I'm in favor of requiring that all deals and coupons be available via all methods of ordering, with things such as app-required deals only being legal if the app is accessible to the blind. Other than that, I fail to see how having phone ordering doesn't completely cover the accessibility requirement. It's very easy to get silly with these requirements. Should comedians be required to provide transcripts for deaf people? Should paintings come with exhaustive descriptions attached to their frames?
  • wbl 7y ago
    They already are on TV.
• brickpaste 7y ago
  Target.com is accessible because of a similar case from 2006. This appears to be a decent summary: https://www.jimthatcher.com/law-target.htm https://www.jimthatcher.com/law-target.htm
  • zaroth 7y ago
    Are screen readers still as terrible as that article makes them sound? Regretfully, I've never actually tried to use one, nor worked with anyone who needed one. I imagine they are basically horrific to use on almost any modern website. My inexpert suspicion is that investment in better screen reading technology could make millions of sites accessible which currently are not, and that there should be some way to meet in the middle -- perhaps companies funding a consortium to push screen reading tech forward while at the same time making it an order of magnitude easier for a site to be accessible.
    • mattl 7y ago
      Mac OS X has one built in, if you are looking to play around with one.
      • mwcampbell 7y ago
        Specifically, you can turn on VoiceOver on Mac with Command+F5. Windows also has a built-in screen reader called Narrator. On Windows 10 version 1703 or later, you can turn it on with Control+Windows+Enter. As of version 1903, it works reasonably well with Chrome, Edge (both Chromium-based and legacy), and IE. Another popular option on Windows is the open-source NVDA (https://www.nvaccess.org/ https://www.nvaccess.org/). Disclosure: I'm a developer at Microsoft, on the Narrator team, but as usual, I'm posting on my own behalf.
        • AgentME 7y ago
          A lot of people in this thread and others have recommended devs to try out screen readers to get familiar with developing for them, and I added to my mental checklist "look up screen readers and try to find a good one to try out eventually", which really I'm not sure I'd ever get around to, and even if I did, I'd probably get distracted from choice paralysis because I wasn't sure which screen reader is worth trying. Immediately after reading your post, I pressed a key combo and started playing with it. I would not have guessed that getting started was literally just a key combo away. Thanks.
• anonytrary 7y ago
  Then the Supreme Court is wrong (which isn't impossible, by the way). If I draw on my street with chalk, should I also be compelled to play a cassette on repeat outside my driveway describing what the picture is? This is absurd.
  • dexwiz 7y ago
    Your street chalk is art, and isn’t required by anyone. But if you want to order online, then you increasing often have to interact with a website. Brick and mortar have employees that could help you, websites do not. The reverse of this situation would be telling people with wheelchairs that they should only shop online instead of expecting accessible stores.
    • anonytrary 7y ago
      If modifying your shop to be accessible to everyone is not profitable for you, then you shouldn't be doing it. All this law does is require businesses to spend more money before they can operate. For now, this will hurt the economy more than it helps it.
      • freeone3000 7y ago
        It's not profitable. It will never be profitable. The entire point of antidiscrimination legislation like the ADA is to make things that "profit" will not cause to happen, happen, because the alternative is to exclude people based on traits they cannot change.
  • cochne 7y ago
    This would not apply to your street art. Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990: "No individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation." "a failure to take such steps as may be necessary to ensure that no individual with a disability is excluded, denied services, segregated or otherwise treated differently than other individuals because of the absence of auxiliary aids and services, unless the entity can demonstrate that taking such steps would fundamentally alter the nature of the good, service, facility, privilege, advantage, or accommodation being offered or would result in an undue burden;" Are you arguing that the Americans with Disabilities Act is wrong, or that making a website accessible is an undue burden? (while say, ramps for wheelchairs is not)
• jasonhansel 7y ago
  There has been a long standing precedent around the ADA requiring web accessibility: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_the_Blind_v._Target_Corp. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_the_B.... A number of companies have been (more or less) blatantly violating the law in this area. Framework authors in particular have often ignored the value of accessible, semantic markup. Many devs come to the web knowing only frameworks (and not the underlying web technologies), which is dangerous if those frameworks aren't accessibility-focused. Hopefully this decision finally scares companies into action, and inspires a lot of valuable future litigation on behalf of the visually impaired.
  • supernova87a 7y ago
    I hope you know that's not a very strong legal precedent, which is why it keeps getting appealed to the Supreme Court from various jurisdictions. You speak (or seem to hope) as if the law is clearly on one side, which it isn't, at least not that strongly. There is contradictory case law (like Southwest Airlines 2002) that says the ADA does not extend to virtual / online stores. Companies are policing themselves on this issue out of liability to be sued, which is a far cry from a declarative right to have accommodations online. It is not that certain.
    • belltaco 7y ago
      I guess a lot of things going online and some going online-only in the intervening 17 years since 2002 has redefined "place of public accommodation" to include cyberspace.
• aldoushuxley001 7y ago
  Truly we live in insane times.
• chrisco255 7y ago
  According to the article, the Supreme Court did not rule on the case, the 9th Circuit did. Sometimes the Supreme Court will turn down a case on a technicality while still leaving open the possibility for future ruling on a matter.
• Pinckney 7y ago
  Here's the ruling from the 9th circuit: http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/01/15/17-55504.pdf http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/01/15/17... A denial of cert doesn't mean the supreme court necessarily has an opinion on the merits of the case. Courts in other circuits can still rule otherwise, and SCOTUS might eventually decide to hear such a case at a later time.
• jcranmer 7y ago
  Some clarity on the matter: The Supreme Court didn't say anything. All they did was decline to hear the appeal. From skimming the petition and responses, it looks like the situation is that the 9th Circuit is allowing the case to go ahead to determine whether or not Domino's website is violating accessibility requirements, which means that there's not a lot of facts and administrative record for SCOTUS to attempt to decide if the reasoning as to how to determine how the ADA applies here. In other words, this does feel like a case that SCOTUS rejected in large part because the petition is way too premature--the respondent's brief definitely feels far more persuasive to me than the petitioner's (Domino's) briefs.
  • gnicholas 7y ago
    This is actually a big deal because what was ruled on was the legal matter of whether a business could be sued based on their website. The facts of what constitutes a sufficiently-accessible website necessarily have not been discussed, because Dominos was trying to boot the case before any factual determinations were made. Their argument was that, as a matter of law, they could not be sued under the ADA based on their website. This argument prevailed at the District Court, lost at the Ninth Circuit, and was unanimously declined to be heard at SCOTUS. That sends a loud and clear message, and this will essentially become the law of the land for at least the next few decades. Note: I have not deeply read all the opinions, but I am a lawyer who is familiar with appellate procedure and the ADA.
    • BurritoAlPastor 7y ago
      It’s a little more tightly scoped than that. From what I’m seeing, no parties are arguing that websites are themselves Title III “public accommodations”. Rather, the 9th circuit held that the Domino’s websites were part of the Domino’s services at their brick & mortar restaurants. In other words, this case only directly applies to physical businesses with an online component (buy-online-pick-up-in-store or similar). I’ll be curious to see – assuming that Robles eventually wins – if this case is ever used to argue that an online-only business is subject to Title III. It doesn’t seem like a slam dunk connection. (Not a lawyer, but I do enjoy reading court documents.)
• dexwiz 7y ago
  I see a lot of negativity in the comments. I imagine much of that is gut reactions of web developers hearing they need to do more work. As a web developer that has had to pass an accessibility review from a person who is actually blind each release for the last two years, I can tell you it’s not that hard. Make sure you have a sensible tab order and labels on forms and you are 80% there. The hard issues are creating hidden buttons for drag and drop interactions and announcing changes in the view. Honestly it’s more keyboard nav than label work anyways. For as many vim lovers as I meet, many developers seem to falsely believe you need a mouse to use the web.
  • notyourwork 7y ago
    The key is actually using a screen reader and better yet having someone with accessibly needs provide feedback. Following guidelines is great but usability is only great when you actually see how someone interacts with your site. Again though, it’s not that hard.
    • tyingq 7y ago
      On the other hand, there's probably two goals here. Making it work well, and avoiding a lawsuit. I imagine the latter involves a lot more work.
      • rhizome 7y ago
        There are two goals only if you don't do the first one. It's like saying the two biggest goals in owning a knife: not stabbing people and staying out of prison.
        • tyingq 7y ago
          Surely you don't think I meant something that simplistic. Of course the first goal is what matters. However, pretending there aren't people that will hunt for technicalities is naive.
      • freeone3000 7y ago
• rudolph9 7y ago
  I would consider this a good thing. It really doesn’t require very much effort to be compliant and it ultimately results in UI that are more easily accessible by not only bling people, among other disabilities but also encourages better extensibility for creative purposes https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/ https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/
• rblatz 7y ago
  I’m a bit shocked that the Dominos CLI wasn’t brought up as a defense. https://github.com/freecode/dominos-cli https://github.com/freecode/dominos-cli Or https://github.com/jkereako/dominos-pizza-cli/blob/master/dominospizza/urls.py https://github.com/jkereako/dominos-pizza-cli/blob/master/do...
  • austincheney 7y ago
    That does not in any way appear to be associated with, or endorsed by, the Dominoes business, which is likely why it was never mentioned.
• ccleve 7y ago
  On the surface, this sounds like a fine thing. Who doesn't want accessible websites? But it really opens a can of worms. What's a place of public accommodation? With brick-and-mortar, it's easy; if you have a physical location open to the general public, it probably qualifies. But on the web? Does my personal website count? What if I sell t-shirts on it? What if I don't sell anything, but have forums where the public can discuss things? What about a site which is primarily about communications, i.e. speech? Does a requirement that you put ARIA labels on things amount to compelled speech? What if accessibility standards change? Am I compelled to upgrade my site? This issue is a lot hairier than the court imagines. Does the court really want to get into the issue of which websites need to comply and which don't?
  • freeone3000 7y ago
    No, your personal website does not count. Yes, it does if you sell t-shirts. No, a forum is insufficient, it needs to actually be a business. Yes, aria labels are compelled speech, but they're upheld[1]. There would be an exemption if the burden was "undue", but you're not going to meet that by claiming it's a few extra hours of work. If accessibility standards change, you are compelled to upgrade your site if you're under the ADA. And yes, courts really do want to get into the issue of which businesses need to comply and which don't, regardless of whether they exist physically or as a website. [1] https://www.ada.gov/briefs/uc_berkley_lof.pdf https://www.ada.gov/briefs/uc_berkley_lof.pdf
    • gtfratteus 7y ago
      Nice opinions you got there, but unless you become dictator of the US, they are completely worthless and irrelevant to this conversation.
    • Mirioron 7y ago
      >No, a forum is insufficient, it needs to actually be a business. But this means that almost every forum does count.
      • oblio 7y ago
• grayed-down 7y ago
  Another good day for trial lawyers...
• chrischen 7y ago
  Is there a checker to see if a website is accessible, and how to make it accessible (like the ones for SEO and site-speed optimizations)?
  • scottshamus 7y ago
    There’s a javascript library called aXE that’s pretty good at catching the major things. There’s also a browser plugin to check a site by hand.
  • couchand 7y ago
    Lighthouse is pretty good: https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/ https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/
• csande17 7y ago
  The issue here appears to be whether or not it's Domino's legal (and moral) obligation to make their website compatible with some specific piece of screen-reader software. To me, it seems like they probably should; the APIs are relatively clear, standardized, and easy to use, and there are quite a few people who can't use the website otherwise. I do wonder how far this argument goes, though. Say someone creates a new device that allows people with some incredibly rare motor impairment to access the Internet. Is it now the responsibility of everyone in the world to add support for that device?
  • freeone3000 7y ago
    "Undue burden" is the test used. Essentially, how much work is it to create an accessible website? Websites are navigable by screen readers and tons of other accessibility software by default. Hacker News is completely usable in JAWS. It's the things Domino's layered on top that broke it, so it's Domino's's job to fix it. Having domino's create a new web browser for physical accessibility devices would be an undue burden. Having domino's fix their aria tags and tab order is not.
    • csande17 7y ago
      That makes sense, thanks!
• mltony 7y ago
  Blind programmer here. Just a glimpse of my life. Blind people have to live in an environment where X% of web sites and programs are not accessible, where X varies somewhere from 20% (for web sites) to 50% (for desktop applications). That's just my approximation of the state of accessibility these days. Now imagine that you live in the world where you don't know which printer or wi-fi router to buy, since maybe half of them you won't be able to use. Imagine that you cannot order from some online stores. You cannot fly certain airlines. And apparently you cannot order some pizza online. Worst of all you don't magically know whether a web site is accessible or not. You just go to web site and try it, spend some time to learn the layout - it typically takes blind peple longer to familiarize with new web sites, spend thirty minutes to fill out the details of your order and then when you try to click the submit button, you figure out that it wouldn't click for some reason. Being a developer you open HTML code just to realize that this is some weird kind of button that can only be clicked with the mouse, but not a screenreader. But hey, your screenreader can route the mouse cursor to this button and simulate a click. So you try a real mouse click and it still doesn't work for some reason, and I have no idea why. Finally, you give up. I hope I managed to convey a typical sense of frustration with a web-site that is not that accessible. I do get arguments of other people that it might be hard for small businesses to make their web sites accessible. and I don't know where to draw a line, but I need to say that Domino's is a large enough company and even though I hate counting other companies' money, I must say they're big enough to be able to afford to make their web-site accessible.
  • drewmol 7y ago
    I'm not blind but I'm laughing from reading your annecdote because: I'm a developer with typical accessability requirements who has a similar experience ordering pizza online and winds up calling ;-)
    • downtide 7y ago
      Easy to read/follow menu, and a phone call isn't that hard, with front door payment. Online shopping experiences vary widely. I love it when the interface isn't even noticed/gets out of your way.
  • 7y ago
• couchand 7y ago
  Despite the somewhat misleading headline, the Supreme Court didn't really say anything new here. They declined to hear Domino's appeal of the Ninth Circuit's (unanimous and clearly correctly decided) reversal of the District Court's absurd dismissal. Domino's tried to claim that their due process rights were being violated since there is no federally-mandated standard for accessibility. But the ADA is clear: businesses have a legal requirement to ensure that disabled customers have "full and equal enjoyment" of their goods and services. Domino's made the tenuous argument that the lack of a specific standard meant that they didn't receive fair notice. Robles, the plaintiff, argued that the appropriate standard to apply was WCAG 2.0. Instead of offering a different possible standard (which would have been a defensible legal rationale), Domino's position was basically, "fuck off". It's really not hard to make your websites accessible at a basic level. Follow the standards. Make sure your content and markup are reasonably semantic. Use standard form components for data entry. Where more complex, visual-first designs are employed, make sure there are text-based fallbacks. If you are a professional software developer, doing this is not just your legal responsibility, it's your moral responsibility.
  • calvinmorrison 7y ago
    And at the end of the day developers worldwide like all humans choose to keep a job, maintain their livelihood and avoid getting fired. What I find appauling is I need to be disabled to demand a website that doesn't require font.js and 600 trackers to run, that doesn't intercept my scroll wheel or make me use a Google product for captcha. hyper text mark up language is dead. Long live the world wide web.
    • ncallaway 7y ago
      > And at the end of the day developers worldwide like all humans choose to keep a job, maintain their livelihood and avoid getting fired. Well, now, as developers we have more ammunition to backup the moral obligation. Now we can demand the time to validate that a site is compliant with WCAG 2.0, and point to this ruling as a legal mandate to do so.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• aaomidi 7y ago
  This is such a good plan. So many developers don't care about a11y. This just adds a cost to actually start caring and planning your code around it.
  • postalrat 7y ago
    Most only care to make it look like the mockup. And the people making the mockups only care that the site looks like their design.
• gtfratteus 7y ago
  A despicable ruling that will only make it harder for start-ups to unseat established players.
• throwaway_bad 7y ago
  Rather than crippling the rest of the world for the blind, why not improve the tools for them instead? Screen readers that are limited to structured inputs can't be the end-all final solution right? It would be shortsighted to set this tech in stone with legal precedents. Do we seriously want to require every blind person to be fluent in reading html/React as the default way to consume sites? We should be trying to improve the tech so they can consume the world just like sighted people. There are already apps that can use computer vision to caption and describe images. It can even connect you with real people if the AI sucks. I think pouring investments into those technologies might be cheaper relative to the amount of work added to the industry as a whole.
  • thomasedwards 7y ago
    React/Vue/etc are all accessible. Almost all web technology that exists is accessible. The trouble is you can’t just do what you want, and you have to test it to ensure it’s accessible. Most companies put it to the bottom of the list or forget about it. It really isn’t that hard, no new tools are required, everything is already there: you just have to do it.
    • throwaway_bad 7y ago
      You are thinking of the most trivial of apps. For example I have worked on a web-based image editor that is practically impossible to make accessible to the blind. Not with current screen reader technology. Another example is Reddit, where a good chunk of their content is just text memes overlaid on images. For compliance, would you force people to describe their images with an alt text before submission? The better solution would be to do what Facebook does and have builtin tools that will annotate a OCR/description with ML or crowdsourcing. In an ideal world these tools would be available to everyone with no extra work. Don't settle for making the blind wade through a pile of HTML and call that accessible. It would be a travesty if it became law to use alt tags, because that is so far from the best we can do. Don't lock the world into dead technologies.
      • qtplatypus 7y ago
• westurner 7y ago
  "a11y": Accessibility https://a11yproject.com/ https://a11yproject.com/ has patterns, a checklist for checking web accessibility, resources, and events. awesome-a11y has a list of a number of great resources for developing accessible applications: https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y In terms of W3C specifications [1], you've got: WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative: Accessibile Rich Internet Applications) [2], and WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines [3]. The new W3C Payment Request API [4] makes it easy for browsers to offer a standard (and probably(?) already accessible) interface for the payment data entry screen, at least. There are a number of automated accessibility testing platforms. "[W3C WAI] Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List" [5] lists quite a few. Can someone recommend a good accessibility testing tools? Is Google Lighthouse (now included with Chrome Devtools and as a standalone script) a good tool for accessibility reviews? [1] https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y/blob/master/topics/specification.md https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y/blob/master/topic... [2] https://www.w3.org/TR/using-aria/ https://www.w3.org/TR/using-aria/ [3] https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/ https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/ [4] https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/ https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/ [5] https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/ https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/
• coreyp_1 7y ago
  Small personal story: My father is an amazing salesman. He used to sell for Schwan's food in the 90's (those big yellow trucks that delivered frozen food to your door every 2 weeks). He had a blind couple (husband and wife) that were on one of his routes, and they bought a little bit of food every time he came by. But they could never read the menu, because Schwan's only had printed brochures. One day, he had me and my siblings record on audio cassette the entire menu and their prices. His sales from that couple shot through the roof! All of the sudden, there were all of these options for sale that they didn't even know about before, and now they wanted to try them. From that time forward, they were very faithful and consistent customers. And, of course, they were very appreciative of the gesture! Every 6 months or so, when Schwan's updated their menu and/or pricing, we would re-record the menu, until Schwan's finally figured out an audio offering of their own. A few years ago, my father ran into the couple when he happened to pass through their town (my father no longer sells for Schwan's, but now sells insurance and investments). The couple remembered and asked about each of us children by name, these decades later. It's neat to see how just a little consideration (and a bit of extra work) can make a huge impact on someone else's life!
  • bwb 7y ago
    Great story! Thx for sharing :)
  • debt 7y ago
    Awesome story. Very touching.
  • mruts 7y ago
    Is this argument for government regulation or against? I see ss an argument against, but I’m sure most people disagree.
    • lucasmullens 7y ago
      It's just a nice story.
    • coreyp_1 7y ago
      I actually thought about this very question when I was writing the story. Truthfully, I don't have an agenda. I can see, though, how easy it would be for someone to use this story to back up their particular viewpoint, when, in fact, it was just a memory about an experience that I had as a child... A memory that I didn't realize had such a big impact until decades later.
• kls 7y ago
  So somehow along my career I fell into accessibility dev for a while. Funny enough it was one of the most lucrative dev jobs I did and there was always plenty of work. It is easily outsourced to a remote developer because all you really need is a browser and a screen reader. In my opinion there really is no reason for even mom and pop sites to not provide even a base level of accessibility, it really is just setting tab indexes in correct order, as well as making sure items have alt and title tags so that the readers can pick them up and actively describe the page. No I am not saying that this provides a great experience for the blind but it at least helps them to be able to get around the site. I personally an color blind, which is not a disability but it is a pain in the ass at times, especially give that color has the ability to convey data visualization in a rapid manner that is subconsciously parsed by the user. It's extremity effective if one can see color. It is kind of how I got into accessibility for a time. By simple adding a secondary reference of iconography for the color blind a site can convey the same info. (e.g if you show red put a small stop sign on it, yellow use a triangle etc.) I see no reason why even the smallest sites should not be able to provide access to the blind, whereas larger sites should be striving to go the extra mile to make it accessible and easy to parse for everyone.
  • mltony 7y ago
    I work in a big IT company and often times internal tools are not very accessible. Sometimes when I talk to their respective maintainers, they are willing to help me, but they don't know what is accessibility and what is screenreader. Is there a good document on how to make web sites accessible that I can show them?
    • kls 7y ago
      The W3C preliminary check is a great document to get you to at least usable: https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/preliminary/ https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/preliminary/
    • carlmr 7y ago
      Are CLI tools inherently accessible?
• JJMcJ 7y ago
  I live to use keyboard shortcuts, mostly TAB. It's amazing how many websites don't even have that working correctly. Or a page has exactly one text entry box and it doesn't have focus when page first renders. That's just sloppy. And for those with vision problem a major problem.
• jakeogh 7y ago
  hiQ vs Linkedin was a Heller vs DC. This feels congruent.
• FakeComments 7y ago
  There’s some perverse outcomes to the ADA, like a few percentage of the population being disabled costing access to tens of thousands of college lectures for everyone else — because making the videos compliant all the ways required was too expensive. https://reason.com/2017/03/07/berkeley-deletes-200000-free-online-vide/ https://reason.com/2017/03/07/berkeley-deletes-200000-free-o...
• neonate 7y ago
  http://archive.is/RGxKw http://archive.is/RGxKw
• ixtli 7y ago
  This is a just outcome. The disabled have a right to access society.
• mrtweetyhack 7y ago
  Willing to bet the blind can legalize prostitution. Be the hero we need.
• jameslk 7y ago
  Is there really any requirement to make a website accessible if you could provide "full and equal enjoyment" via old fashioned phone support? I see this being vastly cheaper and less risky to provide for most non-"web app" websites (e.g. retail websites) for the smaller number of users who need it. Edit: Found a source that seems to discuss it but it seems it hasn't been tested in court: https://www.adatitleiii.com/2017/10/telephone-access-might-be-valid-alternative-to-accessible-website-but-court-needs-more/ https://www.adatitleiii.com/2017/10/telephone-access-might-b...
• litoE 7y ago
  I know the owner of a small brick and mortar store in California. She decided to create a web site to sell her products on line. She got a domain name and a hosting account and installed a canned platform (OpenCart) which allowed her to create her own web site and started to try and sell. Total sales on the web site over three years: about $3,500. Then she received a letter from a lawyer in Florida,telling her that a) her web site is not ADA compliant; b) If she doesn't fix it, they'll file a law suit; and c) She needs to pay the lawyers $4,000 to "cover their time in handling this unfortunate situation". With her sales, she can't justify spending an additional few thousand to pay a programmer to fix or redo her web site to be ADA compliant. Her only option is to just shut down the web site. The only winners here were the lawyers.
  • chillacy 7y ago
    Sounds like whoever sold her the theme didn't bother with accessibility. I think laws like this are good, but at the same time they will end up pushing people to stick to larger sites like shopify or just listing on ebay/amzn to avoid all this.
    • esyir 7y ago
      This just sounds to me like "I like regulation, but hate over-regulation". Except that here, like potentially many other cases, there weren't any sane bounds on said regulation.
      • CathedralBorrow 7y ago
        Sometimes I think it's "I like regulation, but I hate regulation that puts a burden on me."
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
        • esyir 7y ago
          To be fair, proposing regulation on people is really easy if you're not affected. And individual rules can often sound nice at first glance, only to have disastrous consequences in practice. Add in the fact that repeal of regulation is an... onerous process, and things get even more tricky.
• DoreenMichele 7y ago
  FYI for those interested, there is a Google Group called blind dev works: https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!forum/blind-dev-works https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!forum/blind-... It's a small, low traffic group. I'm one of the admins.
• mygo 7y ago
  In fear of sounding insensitive, what if a business has decided that their website is just one way that customers can engage with them (much like their physical storefront is another), and that there are other ways as well that customers can purchase from them -- such as via phone (, etc). They can handle anyone's needs over the phone (, etc) if they can't use the website... much like the website enables them to engage with customers who can't visit their physical location, which could be in a different state or country. Can't visit our location? We still want your business, buy from our website. Having trouble using our website? We still want your business. Here, give us a call (, etc) and we can take your order. Once we have your order ready, we'll give you a secure PCI-compliant interface to enter your payment info for the order, that's totally accessible in whatever form it is, but is certainly separate from the rest of the not-so-accessible site, since your primary means of interaction with our business for this purchase is via [phone call or some other accessible interface separate from the website]. I say this after watching my mother struggle using the IRS' website this Sunday. Even though she is not blind or otherwise physically disabled (she doesn't use a screen reader, for example), she isn't the most tech savvy person. While searching for a form she clicked on a link then scrolled down straight to the footer, thinking the footer was the page's unique content, and already starting to click on links in the footer, which wouldn't have gotten her where she needed to go since what she needed was above the footer but she missed it. If she had someone she could call she would have gotten done what she needed to do faster than using the website. I helped her out, of course, but it was still helpful to watch how she used the site on her own before offering assistance. So what if a company acknowledges that not everyone will be able to use their website and provides alternate ways for customers to engage with them that can still accomplish the same thing? When you define a business as more than just a website, is having multiple different interfaces (physical location for those nearby, website, voice call, etc) for a customer to purchase from a business not one way to provide accessibility? If Domino's will take my order over the phone and deliver it and I can pay at the door, is that not accessible for me, even if their website isn't?
• robomartin 7y ago
  What happens to every game on Steam, every app in the two main app stores, websites and software for 3D mechanical CAD (Solidworks, Fusion 360), ECAD, etc? Just trying to understand this. Where are the boundaries, limits and rules? What happens if you use web technologies to control equipment, say, 3D printers, robots, etc. To clarify, this isn’t to say I have a problem with this ruling. Not at all. Just trying to understand if this is a massive world-wide hammer anyone can wield against any website and tangentially related technologies or if the range, domain and impact have certain limits. Put a different way: Should Mom and Pop lose sleep over the possibility of being sued out of business any given Monday or sleep well knowing the process is sensible enough to allow for a reasonable ramp to adoption? There’s even stuff like, for example, if you have 200 domains parked with a registrar who puts-up a non-compliant page on all of them. Are you exposed?
  • qtplatypus 7y ago
    IANAL but games are not public accomodations/commercial facilities in terms of the ADA. There has been very strong law that restaurants are such a thing. The act basically requires companies to make "readily achievable" changes. So if it would bankrupt the company then it is not required. However you can’t just sleep on the issue and pocket the profits for not putting in the effort.
    • robomartin 7y ago
      I need to do a bit more research on this. I live in a world where it is hard to imagine blind people being able to perform. I say this admitting I might be truly ignorant about this. This is a world where we exist and do our work both in front of our screens and in the physical domain. In this world we use tools such as Fusion 360, Solidworks and online services such as Vention to design physical parts, products, machines, tooling. Altium Designer and other EDA tools to design electronics. We use both online and offline tools to manage manufacturing workflow, quality, schedules, client interaction and more. We use online and offline tools to program and manage our CNC machines, quote and manage aspects of the transition from digital to real object in your hand. I look at this ecosystem and peripheral elements to this and I am not sure I truly understand both this decision and the context. Do you have to be a blind person to truly understand it? Can a blind person design mechanical parts using Fusion 360 or Solidworks? Or electronics using EDA tools? Again, exposing my obvious ignorance on the subject here. Happy to do so too, as I am sure some of the contributions to this thread will serve to educate me as to some of the nuances, needs and issues in this domain. What I fear with some of this stuff --and again, this could be truly ignorant in this case-- is that these rulings will serve ambulance-chaser type attorneys who, with a juicy new vector for revenue generation, will file a massive number of lawsuits, extract blood from small and large companies and individuals and, in the end, not necessarily serve the blind community all that well. In other words, the lady who owns a little knitting blog will be extorted out of a few hundred bucks. After that she will either shut down the site --which means everyone loses-- or she will deploy the crappiest minimal compliant modification she can find, maintain it badly but still be in compliance...which means her blind visitors lose. The lawyers, however, will do very, very well, as they file thousands of these cases and rake-in the profits. If you can't tell, I've dealt with lawyers enough over the last three decades to have a very dim view of a certain subclass among their ranks. I firmly believe they make things worse for society rather than the opposite.
• miki123211 7y ago
  Blind person here. While I definitely appreciate any efforts towards accessibility, I believe this is not the way. What people don't realize is that, at a certain point, most companies do accessibility anyway. Some of them, like Apple or Microsoft, even turn it into a marketing advantage. There are exceptions, sure, but this doesn't justify government regulation. I believe the days of John and Chuck, two dropouts from MIT making a tech startup and becoming billionaires are almost over. There's more and more regulation introduced around technology, first the absolutely ridiculous COPPA, then GDPR, then California's privacy initiative and now this. I believe that, in five to tech years, our tech landscape will consist of a few big companies who will have the resources to comply, and many walled gardens, as each country will have their own laws, wildly different from any others. The UK is already starting to go this way, i.e. with the proposal to ban Facebook likes for users under 18 and introduce mandatory age verification. I think that a small company making a website in 2030 is as likely as a small company making their own car or drug now. Some groups might benefit from this, but, ultimately, we, as a society, will be worse off. This one particular case seems beneficial when consideret in separation from anything else. The wider trend is not.
  • ptest1 7y ago
    I think accessibility is very important, but I share your worry about the future for very small startup projects. I think it’s already almost impossible. I worry about it getting much worse, especially with the animosity the larger tech companies face from the public. What people don’t understand is that those big companies will weather any of these regulations, and that they will stop smaller startups from ever happening.
• julianozen 7y ago
  How could this lawsuit cost less then just fixing the website?
  • pakitan 7y ago
    Because currently there is no accepted definition of "fixed" (accessible) site and if they caved, people could come after them for various technicalities forever.
    • julianozen 7y ago
      This is not true. There are lots of agreed upon standards (in this case the plaintiff wants WCAG 2.0) and dominos needs to meet one of
• randyrand 7y ago
  Would a chat bot interface to order pizza's count as blind accessible? Or even a live person on a phone?
• etaioinshrdlu 7y ago
  Accessibility seems to be thrown under the bus under MVP style thinking. You are trained not to focus on issues that only affect a small number of users. I know I do this all the time. The reason is money. At what point do we just accept that security, accessibility, and similar properties are actually important, and that we shouldn't accept half baked products anymore? I don't have a clear answer. But regulating the software industry is just going to make running a startup almost impossible. No more jobs for self taught hackers. All platforms will be a walled garden, including the web. I'm leaning towards the viewpoint that companies (or anyone) should not be responsible for accessibility problems.
  • tremon 7y ago
    MVP is primarily a development strategy, not a lifecycle strategy. I see no conflict here. Your product owner should include legal requirements in the project scope, it's not something individual developers should have to prioritize themselves.
    • etaioinshrdlu 7y ago
      And what about individual developers who own their own projects? Open source projects? They typically have no warranty.
• aitchnyu 7y ago
  Is there a EU/Australian/British equivalent? I'm an Indian employee developing for EU and want to scare people into cutting back the design madness that makes sites unreadable and slow.
  • pmyteh 7y ago
    The UK has the Equality Act 2010 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents) particularly parts 2 and 3. There is a private right of enforcement through the county court. I have a friend who is a wheelchair user who has been trying to get ramp access to the shops where she lives. First avenue is a friendly chat, second is a letter before action, third is court. She would much rather it was enforced by the government like most other regulations - in addition to being draining to go to court to argue for her rights, it leaves those who ignored their obvious legal responsibilities, and the friendly chat, and the letter, personally furious that she took them to court. So even victory is fairly Pyrrhic.
• jamisteven 7y ago
  This is the most PC shit ive read about this year.
• kd5bjo 7y ago
  > The ADA mandates that places of public accommodation, like Domino’s, provide auxiliary aids and services to make visual materials available to individuals who are blind I haven’t read the actual ruling, but Domino’s provides a phone number that you can call, and a person will tell you any of the information on the website and can perform all of the services the website can perform. How is this not a sufficient “auxiliary service to make visual materials available to individuals who are blind”?
  • dawnerd 7y ago
    Don’t they also have voice ordering via amazon echo / google home? Then again pizza websites are pretty garbage from the get go. Not sure why they make them so damn convoluted.
  • qtplatypus 7y ago
    There where web only deals you couldn’t get via making a call.
• Seb-C 7y ago
  As someone now living in Japan, I think I can understand how frustrating the user experience is for disabled people. While not disabled, I often need to use Google translate or lookup for Kanjis/Words in a dictionary. There are a crazy amount of websites (and mobile applications) where text selection is disabled or where text is written inside images, which often completely prevents me from using the website... I'm not even counting the number of websites breaking the system scroll speed of forcing a custom mouse cursor. I may be too sensitive here, but it is very annoying so I now just close the tab whenever it happens.
• on_and_off 7y ago
  Good. Part of my work is to make the service I work on accessible so I follow this topic. I find it absolutely disgusting that Domino would rather drag their case to the supreme court than make their site accessible. Anecdotally, while making an app or website accessible is not particularly easy, I have found that there are some good benefits. At least on mobile, it pushes you to avoid relying on hacky solutions and to make clear layouts instead. This also makes your code more maintainable.
• alkonaut 7y ago
  I wonder if there is a good rule of thumb for what software and features are acceptable to not be accessible? What does it mean for a drawing program to be accessible by the legally blind? You can follow accessibility guidelines (for UI navigation and so on) but does that mean you made the program accessible if the bulk of the operations you can actually do in the software - draw - still requires seeing what you are doing? Are you expected to invent workarounds that allows people to use your software, or can you assume that "nah, no blind person is likely to be drawing anyway"? It seems there is a gray area where it's just not economically feasible to add some extreme bespooke types of accessibility, but at the same time not doing it will make it self fulfilling - of course no blind people will draw in drawing programs so long as they don't get the tools.
  • couchand 7y ago
    Well, the law provides for a number of balancing tests to ensure that a court will respect the rights of all parties. A rule of thumb is unlikely to be specific and precise enough for any practical use. For specific details, consult an attorney. Since it only applies to "public accommodations", it's highly unlikely that a drawing program will be covered, unless it's tied to a good, such as if you can have the drawing printed up for you.
• sgjohnson 7y ago
  Misleading title. SCOTUS refused to hear the case, not ruled in favour of the cause.
• bronz 7y ago
  what is a retailer? does this mean that if i make a website to sell my small indie game, i have to follow all the ephemeral accessibility rules or else be sued?
• traderjane 7y ago
  Because there are a myriad of perceptual issues and the idea of reporting specific perceptual needs is likely an unnecessarily severe data disclosure, wouldn't it be best for non-app websites to have their content mapped out according to some standardized API for consumption by their client?
• sabujp 7y ago
  I just became an a11y programmer :)
• trashtester 7y ago
  The sum of all kinds of regulations like this one is great news for mega-corporations. Economies of scale mean that the costs are small for them, and proportonaly much bigger for smaller companies. While I think it is a great goal that services should be accessible by people with special needs or restrictions, would it not be better if this could be achieved by incentives instead of hard regulation? Perhaps as follows. 1) Create a registry for companies to self-declare that they are accessible for a given user segment by some given standard. (For essential utilities and government agencies, compliance can still be made mandatory) For registered entities, make this statement binding, and follow up breaches with fines that are sufficiently stiff that only companies that comply will register. This registry could contain information would contain information about standards that are already regulated, but could also be extended to include other needs (dietary standards, child friendliness, accessible to people with certain mental limitations, etc) 2) Make this information open to the public, and attach a rating service such as TripAdvisor where users can rate the degree of availability. This would make it easy for the beneficiaries to find services suitable for them. The data should also be made accessible through an API, so that special interest groups can mirror it on their own infrastructure. 3) Step 2 will provide an incentive in itself, but where it is not enough, introduce a tax incentive on top. Companies with the necessary accesiblity could be given a tax benefit in the order of 1-5%. This benefit should be on the profit, not the turnover, to avoid putting companies with limited profitablity out of business over this.
  • deleted 7y ago
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• kome 7y ago
  web dev should start using vanilla html + css, following w3c guidelines for accessibility and stop all the fancy js shit.
• slowhadoken 7y ago
  What’s wrong with using a phone to order pizza? Seems like a reasonable alternative.
• chrisweekly 7y ago
  I've read a bunch of comments; surprised not to see mention of DevTools / Lighthouse Audits / Accessibility.
• buboard 7y ago
  I really don’t see anything wrong with this. I blame the modern web a lot for this As javascript hijacks functionality of the browser, and the browser is typically better accessible
  • deleted 7y ago
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• ramoz 7y ago
  I'm not seeing much mention of Net Neutrality or what this means in the grand scheme of open & free web vs Gov't control of it. Any thoughts?
  • deckar01 7y ago
    There are already lots of regulations that target e-commerce [0]. Net neutrality isn't about the freedom to serve any content you want, it's about the discrimination and prioritization of certain types of network traffic [1]. [0]: https://www.justia.com/business-operations/managing-your-business/e-commerce/ https://www.justia.com/business-operations/managing-your-bus... [1]: https://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality https://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality
• archie2 7y ago
  I don't get it. Why can't he just order from someone else that has an accessible website? I choose not to use lousy webapps for all sorts of reasons.
  • Forge36 7y ago
    Imagine the website is only partially accessible. You jump though the hoops to make your order, make an account, choose your pizza, and enter your credit card info. You click submit. Nothing happens. Did the order go through? Do you call to find out? Wait and hope? Order from someone else? In the future you'll have an answer (or 4 different deliveries because you went somewhere else 3 separate times until you found an accessible website). What if you didn't have another option? Should we prevent the blind from eating pizza?
    • archie2 7y ago
      > You jump though the hoops to make your order, make an account, choose your pizza, and enter your credit card info. You click submit. Nothing happens. Did the order go through? Do you call to find out? Wait and hope? Order from someone else? In the future you'll have an answer I've had this happen to me multiple times, and I'm not even disabled. > What if you didn't have another option? Should we prevent the blind from eating pizza? We are talking about America - the place where people eat themselves to death from over consumption of terrible foods - there is always another option.
• Bostonian 7y ago
  Suppose I can't use a product because of a disability. Do I sue a company for making the product available to others who can use it? The ADA says I have the legal right to do so, but the mentality that "if I can't enjoy something, nobody should" is immoral.
• zarro 7y ago
  The ADA law actually doesn't make sense to me. I get they are trying to stop discrimination, but the means they take is misguided and an encroachment on peoples rights. If you have a business and are offering a service, you are doing so at-will. Your not obligated to provide anyone with any product or service, if you were, how is that not slavery? The law forces you to provide a product or service without allowing you use your own judgement. The law itself is unconstitutional. How did it even pass?
  • gamblor956 7y ago
    That is literally the opposite of the truth. If you have a business in the US, you have a duty not to discriminate against protected classes that trumps free speech rights. Under the ADA, only new businesses (post ADA) are/were required to build accessibility into their business. Older businesses were grandfathered in and didn't have to make changes to existing facilities until they renovated them. In terms of websites, this means only the oldest websites would have been grandfathered in.
    • zarro 7y ago
      I don't see how its acceptable to use coercion to enforce an opinion of "duties that trump free speech rights" that don't involve force, fraud, or defamation.
      • gamblor956 7y ago
        In the US, more than two centuries of jurisprudence holds that commercial activity is not speech, and is thus is not generally subject to the protection of the Constitution. Moreover, the Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to regulate Commerce. Doing business thus is validly subject to government regulations mandating that businesses do (or not do) certain things. And some of those things include not discriminating against the disabled, and designing your business facilities to accommodate the disabled.
        • zarro 7y ago
• ashelmire 7y ago
  This sounds like it's great for web developers like myself. We'll have jobs for years to come! And it will force companies to really think about their functionality and ensure that it's easy for common use.
• partiallypro 7y ago
  This opens a huge can of worms, given that there is no clear standard for this. W3C has varying degrees of compliance, some of them near impossible to abide by.
• tyfon 7y ago
  This is already EU law. You can get fined if you don't follow accessibility guidelines on your home page. Usually that also makes for better home pages for other people as you don't get the type of crap "creative" web developers tend to put there to make it flashy but unusable.
• ping_pong 7y ago
  This law is ripe for exploitative lawsuits. Instead of damages going to the plaintiff, of which actual damages are very dubious, it should go to a fund that helps web site developers increase accessibility. Maybe an open source foundation that integrates this into regular HTML. The money should NOT go to lawyers for their fees and plaintiffs. It just creates the wrong incentive system.
• jelder 7y ago
  As a fully sighted person (well, I wear glasses to drive), I'm thrilled about this. Websites that are easier to use for the blind are easier to use for everyone. If your website is a giant picture of text, this is just karma.
• TerminalJunkie 7y ago
  Honest question from a web developer, and I'm ashamed I don't know more, is there a clear concise guide to building accessible websites? I've had to support ARIA for U.S. Government websites, and certain color schemes for color accessibility, but I really don't feel like I know how to build a web product with accessibility in mind. I am genuinely sorry that I haven't developed the skill more, and would like to take this opportunity to learn more.
• 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
  Followup question for those in the know: If domino's hadn't had online-only deals/rewards/etc, would the availability of the phone line have counted as accessible?
• drummyfish 7y ago
  Great, now make it possible to sue owners of sites unusable without JS.
• bocalogic 7y ago
  On another note, there are services that are already scraping thousands of websites and testing them for ADA compliance. If the website fails the test, the website or lead is sold off to an attorney. The attorney will then find or hire a straw client to sue the website and the company. Its very prevalent and lucrative because a lot of the law has yet to be written and the companies being sued are settling very quickly.
  • UncleMeat 7y ago
    So? If lawbreakers can be identified at scale, should that change the situation at all? Imagine if this were changed to tax fraud. Now we have computers that can automatically find discrepancies and we can notify violators at scale. The horror!
• evunveot 7y ago
  I tested the Domino's home page with WAVE (I had to install the browser extension for some reason) and it found no errors and what looks like healthy use of landmarks and ARIA, though I didn't dig too deep. Would any blind HN readers care to comment on to the degree to which https://www.dominos.com/en/ https://www.dominos.com/en/ is accessible to them, personally? The stress around website accessibility comes from the lack of any authority who can tell you you've done enough and you can't be sued, perhaps by someone using an outdated screen reader/browser combination you'd never think to test with. It brings back bad memories of things like trying to support IE5/Mac at the same time as IE6/Windows. (Protip: embrace quirks mode.)
  • lucasmullens 7y ago
    They've likely added accessibility since the lawsuit started. Maybe check archive.org?
• deleted 7y ago
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