4 ms·

You're ignoring most of what OP is saying, he's completely right in saying he should have no obligation to dedicate huge resources to a potential 0.00001% of hi

by enlyth 7y ago

You're ignoring most of what OP is saying, he's completely right in saying he should have no obligation to dedicate huge resources to a potential 0.00001% of his customers which may or may not even exist, when the only benefit will be not getting hit by frivolous lawsuits.

foldr 7y ago
I'm not ignoring it. I simply don't believe that he/she is selling a product which would be unusually uninteresting to blind people. People with visual disabilities are a few percent of the population.
- enlyth 7y ago
  Who has got more information here, you, who has no idea what the OP is selling, or OP who is actually selling the thing? "I simply don't believe" is not a great argument, when the previous car insurance and painting analogies proved to me that you can conjure up a hypothetical interest of a blind person about anything.
  - foldr 7y ago
    > previous car insurance and painting anecdotes proved to me that you can conjure up a hypothetical interest of a blind person about anything. These aren’t hypothetical! Blind people really are interested in both these things, as you can easily find out by googling — or just using your common sense. Like OP, you’re illustrating exactly why we need the ADA. People often have wildly inaccurate perceptions about what people with visual disabilities can or can’t do and about what they may or may not be interested in. If “I don’t think blind people would be into this” were a valid excuse, then virtually nothing would be accessible in practice. As the OP has already demonstrated that they have mistaken ideas about blind people, I’m not willing to take their word for it that they have some kind of special product which couldn’t possibly be of interest to the visually impaired. They are free to reveal what they actually sell, if they think they have a slam dunk case.
    - enlyth 7y ago
      My problem is that everyone in these threads acts like this all takes zero effort. There's no "turn on a11y" switch, you have to dedicate resources, money and time. It's a perfectly valid complaint from someone that sells a product which is generally not interesting to blind people (you seem to think this is an impossibility, or that one edge case outlier invalidates this reality), to not want to do this if it will bring no new business and make no-one's life easier.
      - foldr 7y ago
        Selling stuff requires complying with lots of laws that take time, money and effort to comply with. I don't know why you keep referring to "edge cases" and "outliers". The two actual examples that the OP has given do not meet this description.
      - UncleMeat 7y ago
        Not having security vulns in your software costs money. A large number of users aren't actually harmed by vulns or don't care about them. But if you went around saying that really it isn't important to fix vulns since they don't affect that many people you'd be rightly raked over the coals. "It is expensive" isn't an excuse.
    - CathedralBorrow 7y ago
      > Like OP, you’re illustrating exactly why we need the ADA. Firmly agree. It's amazing to see how many cling to the view that people with disabilities are this alien group of "others" that think differently and are probably only interested in things for disabled people.
    - esyir 7y ago
      Sure, you can find blind people with intense interest in visual media. There have to be a few out there. However, a quick google (as you requested) on the art topic seems to indicate that art targeted at the blind is rarely of the painting variety, but of a more tactile sort. This... would not be appreciated in many museums, where touching the exhibits is typically discouraged (Admittedly, audio enjoyment of visual art does exist). I'm really sick of the argument by outlier where a generally true statement is countered by an outlier case as though that invalidates the whole statement.
  - CathedralBorrow 7y ago
    It's not only the information about the thing OP is selling, it's also the information about blind people OP seems to be lacking. Like, how can anyone state that "blind people aren't interested in this" seriously? Like there exists a bullet list of things that blind people like.
CathedralBorrow 7y ago
> "he's completely right in saying he should have no obligation" Is he right because you agree with him? I don't think he's right. The law also doesn't think he's right. There's also quite a few assumptions that you seem to have made in not very good faith, because how could you know how much effort it would take to fix accessibility for a website that you don't even know what sells? You've also assumed some exaggerated fraction of a percent, and assumed that a lawsuit that you don't know anything about was frivolous. Based on what information did you assume all those things?
- pakitan 7y ago
  OK, here is a case that we do know something about: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/why-uc-berkeley-is-restricting-access-to-thousands-of-online-lecture-videos/2017/03/15/074e382a-08c0-11e7-a15f-a58d4a988474_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/why-uc-berkel... Is that frivolous enough for you? That's the same law you're defending here and when that article came out, it was universally decried here on HN. Funny how things change, huh? But I guess it's not ok for someone to sue UC-Berkley for providing free non-accessible lectures, while it's totally ok for a private business to be sued for having a non-accessible website.
  - CathedralBorrow 7y ago
    You are moving goalposts here, are we now debating whether any ADA-related lawsuit ever has been frivolous? I also have a hard time answering for an anonymous group of people, as I am not HN. You seem very eager to assign very clear and simple intentions to large and complex groups of human beings. Blind people don't like this kind of stuff, these lawsuits are frivolous, HN had this collective opinion on X but has now changed its mind. For the record, I think it's fine for someone to sue UC-Berkeley and other private businesses for not following the law. Do you have a labeled box for me?
    - pakitan 7y ago
      No goalposts were moved by me. In this thread, the only thing I've been saying from the very start is that the majority of these ADA lawsuits are shakedowns and the UC-Berkely case is just one more datapoint. I provided an article with detailed analysis of the practice as well. At the same time, all you've been doing is disingenuous interpretations of my posts and dismissing other reports as "biased", while not providing a single datapoint yourself. "GASP! How dare you say blind people are not interested in paintings! The horror and the arrogance!" Sure, there are blind people buying paintings and interested in art. How does that invalidate anything of what I said? The point is not that there are literally zero blind people buying paintings, the point is that they are very very far from the target audience and hence it's not worth investing a significant effort to cater to those people. People from Africa are not my target market either and I make zero effort to make sure the site is accessible there. Am I now a racist too? > For the record, I think it's fine for someone to sue UC-Berkeley and other private businesses for not following the law. Are you fine with a frivolous suit against UC-Berkeley too? Because it is possible that lawsuit is frivolous and UC-Berkeley is breaking the law. In fact that's exactly what's happened - UC-Berkeley is in technical violation of a botched law, they got threatened with a frivolous lawsuit and decided to just remove the free content. As a result everyone loses but I hope the ADA defenders are happy.

by enlyth 7y ago

foldr 7y ago

I'm not ignoring it. I simply don't believe that he/she is selling a product which would be unusually uninteresting to blind people. People with visual disabilities are a few percent of the population.

enlyth 7y ago
Who has got more information here, you, who has no idea what the OP is selling, or OP who is actually selling the thing? "I simply don't believe" is not a great argument, when the previous car insurance and painting analogies proved to me that you can conjure up a hypothetical interest of a blind person about anything.
- foldr 7y ago
  > previous car insurance and painting anecdotes proved to me that you can conjure up a hypothetical interest of a blind person about anything. These aren’t hypothetical! Blind people really are interested in both these things, as you can easily find out by googling — or just using your common sense. Like OP, you’re illustrating exactly why we need the ADA. People often have wildly inaccurate perceptions about what people with visual disabilities can or can’t do and about what they may or may not be interested in. If “I don’t think blind people would be into this” were a valid excuse, then virtually nothing would be accessible in practice. As the OP has already demonstrated that they have mistaken ideas about blind people, I’m not willing to take their word for it that they have some kind of special product which couldn’t possibly be of interest to the visually impaired. They are free to reveal what they actually sell, if they think they have a slam dunk case.
  - enlyth 7y ago
    My problem is that everyone in these threads acts like this all takes zero effort. There's no "turn on a11y" switch, you have to dedicate resources, money and time. It's a perfectly valid complaint from someone that sells a product which is generally not interesting to blind people (you seem to think this is an impossibility, or that one edge case outlier invalidates this reality), to not want to do this if it will bring no new business and make no-one's life easier.
    - foldr 7y ago
      Selling stuff requires complying with lots of laws that take time, money and effort to comply with. I don't know why you keep referring to "edge cases" and "outliers". The two actual examples that the OP has given do not meet this description.
    - UncleMeat 7y ago
      Not having security vulns in your software costs money. A large number of users aren't actually harmed by vulns or don't care about them. But if you went around saying that really it isn't important to fix vulns since they don't affect that many people you'd be rightly raked over the coals. "It is expensive" isn't an excuse.
  - CathedralBorrow 7y ago
    > Like OP, you’re illustrating exactly why we need the ADA. Firmly agree. It's amazing to see how many cling to the view that people with disabilities are this alien group of "others" that think differently and are probably only interested in things for disabled people.
  - esyir 7y ago
    Sure, you can find blind people with intense interest in visual media. There have to be a few out there. However, a quick google (as you requested) on the art topic seems to indicate that art targeted at the blind is rarely of the painting variety, but of a more tactile sort. This... would not be appreciated in many museums, where touching the exhibits is typically discouraged (Admittedly, audio enjoyment of visual art does exist). I'm really sick of the argument by outlier where a generally true statement is countered by an outlier case as though that invalidates the whole statement.
- CathedralBorrow 7y ago
  It's not only the information about the thing OP is selling, it's also the information about blind people OP seems to be lacking. Like, how can anyone state that "blind people aren't interested in this" seriously? Like there exists a bullet list of things that blind people like.

CathedralBorrow 7y ago

> "he's completely right in saying he should have no obligation" Is he right because you agree with him? I don't think he's right. The law also doesn't think he's right. There's also quite a few assumptions that you seem to have made in not very good faith, because how could you know how much effort it would take to fix accessibility for a website that you don't even know what sells? You've also assumed some exaggerated fraction of a percent, and assumed that a lawsuit that you don't know anything about was frivolous. Based on what information did you assume all those things?

pakitan 7y ago
OK, here is a case that we do know something about: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/why-uc-berkeley-is-restricting-access-to-thousands-of-online-lecture-videos/2017/03/15/074e382a-08c0-11e7-a15f-a58d4a988474_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/why-uc-berkel... Is that frivolous enough for you? That's the same law you're defending here and when that article came out, it was universally decried here on HN. Funny how things change, huh? But I guess it's not ok for someone to sue UC-Berkley for providing free non-accessible lectures, while it's totally ok for a private business to be sued for having a non-accessible website.
- CathedralBorrow 7y ago
  You are moving goalposts here, are we now debating whether any ADA-related lawsuit ever has been frivolous? I also have a hard time answering for an anonymous group of people, as I am not HN. You seem very eager to assign very clear and simple intentions to large and complex groups of human beings. Blind people don't like this kind of stuff, these lawsuits are frivolous, HN had this collective opinion on X but has now changed its mind. For the record, I think it's fine for someone to sue UC-Berkeley and other private businesses for not following the law. Do you have a labeled box for me?
  - pakitan 7y ago
    No goalposts were moved by me. In this thread, the only thing I've been saying from the very start is that the majority of these ADA lawsuits are shakedowns and the UC-Berkely case is just one more datapoint. I provided an article with detailed analysis of the practice as well. At the same time, all you've been doing is disingenuous interpretations of my posts and dismissing other reports as "biased", while not providing a single datapoint yourself. "GASP! How dare you say blind people are not interested in paintings! The horror and the arrogance!" Sure, there are blind people buying paintings and interested in art. How does that invalidate anything of what I said? The point is not that there are literally zero blind people buying paintings, the point is that they are very very far from the target audience and hence it's not worth investing a significant effort to cater to those people. People from Africa are not my target market either and I make zero effort to make sure the site is accessible there. Am I now a racist too? > For the record, I think it's fine for someone to sue UC-Berkeley and other private businesses for not following the law. Are you fine with a frivolous suit against UC-Berkeley too? Because it is possible that lawsuit is frivolous and UC-Berkeley is breaking the law. In fact that's exactly what's happened - UC-Berkeley is in technical violation of a botched law, they got threatened with a frivolous lawsuit and decided to just remove the free content. As a result everyone loses but I hope the ADA defenders are happy.