5 ms·

This is like saying you can't post a poster on a bulletin board if it doesn't follow a specific format. These laws make no sense and are a perfect example of ou

This is like saying you can't post a poster on a bulletin board if it doesn't follow a specific format. These laws make no sense and are a perfect example of out-of-touch policy. It should be my prerogative as to whether or not I care about the disabled market. I _should_ care if I'm a good person, but it shouldn't prevent me from being able to serve other markets.

advisedwang 4y ago
> It should be my prerogative as to whether or not I care about the disabled market In general, being accessible is expensive, time consuming and requires care and forethought. Back in the days when businesses did get to decide whether or not they cared about the disabled (pre ADA in the us, for example) they largely decided they did not. This created a class of people shut out of the world. This is a bad outcome. Accessibility laws need to be well crafted (which the israeli one may not be) and carefully balanced, but many societies decided to reduce the absolute freedom of choice for business owners in order to prevent a poverty stricken and secluded underclass of disabled people. I think that was a wise choice.
- invalidname 4y ago
  The failure in these laws is the freedom to sue. That removes the burden from the government and places it on lawyers who try to capitalize on it. A lawyer can then use this as a money making scheme regardless of the size of an individual. This is the failure of the ADA too. This works well for large, well established businesses. Businesses with big turnover and investment. They also have the financial ability to add accessibility. Unfortunately it doesn't work well for small businesses who are left defenseless against threats from lawyers.
  - advisedwang 4y ago
    On the other hand, we can't rely on state attourneys to protect the rights of minorities. Many would, but they can just as easily not enforce such a law. In fact, because disabled people are a small voting block, elected state attourneys really are not incentivised to do so. (This is why we need rights in a democracy - protecting minority interests that a government representing majority interests is not incentivised to care about). In general, giving government more power without strong guardrails about how it's used it isn't very effective at making people's lives better. You could imagine ways to make the private right of action work. Perhaps penalties and remedies for frivolous lawsuits like anti-SLAPP statutes. Or make it so that you can take a product/building/whatever through some approval process with some regulatory agency after which the product/building/whatever is presumed to be accessible and lawsuits have a higher burdern.
BoorishBears 4y ago
One Saturday morning 3 months ago I got on my bike like I had the week before, and the week before that. Less than 30 minutes later I was splayed out on the ground with my lower right leg broken clean in half and my tibia sticking out of my shin while an onlookers called me an ambulance. For 2 months afterwards I was confined to wheelchairs and walkers, and I only just recently was able to start walking independently again. - People make comments like this because they think it's a disabled market with disabled people, and another market beside... it doesn't work like that. No matter how young you are, how careful you are, how healthy you are, we are all one bad morning away from being disabled for an indeterminate amount of time. And we all benefit from accessibility because at any time we might need to rely on it. There's this mentality of seeing accessibility as an overpriced nice to have that's akin to seeing insurance as an overpriced nice to have just because you haven't made a claim yet We need laws like what the ADA affords to back accessibility because (for the vast majority of businesses) it will never be profitable to cater to the disabled at a high level of quality. I mean look at the OP. They pivoted to being a paid product yet still they're saying that they want to skirt the law by limiting the class size instead of paying some transcribers to add subtitles that would honestly benefit everyone (especially for technical content) The disabled deserve to be catered to regardless of profitability because the inverse is unjust: that they'd live with greatly reduced access to goods and services based on something completely out of their control
- bombcar 4y ago
  There's a vast difference between "businesses should have wheelchair ramps and accessible bathrooms" and "everything possible must be done for the disabled and borne by the people providing it". The US ADA has struck a pretty decent balance, few people are actively against wheelchair ramps, and elevators do add to the cost of a building but most buildings of that size are moderately expensive anyway. But imagine if it was determined that the ADA required wheelchair ramps be installed at any house that was offering candy for trick-or-treating. The result would be entirely predictable; trick-or-treating would die out. Much of this (and perhaps this case here) could be solved by forbidding the lawyers from profiting from it - you can sue someone for violating the ADA but you can't "win damages" - any such damages won would go to the state to help provide ADA accessibility.

advisedwang 4y ago

> It should be my prerogative as to whether or not I care about the disabled market In general, being accessible is expensive, time consuming and requires care and forethought. Back in the days when businesses did get to decide whether or not they cared about the disabled (pre ADA in the us, for example) they largely decided they did not. This created a class of people shut out of the world. This is a bad outcome. Accessibility laws need to be well crafted (which the israeli one may not be) and carefully balanced, but many societies decided to reduce the absolute freedom of choice for business owners in order to prevent a poverty stricken and secluded underclass of disabled people. I think that was a wise choice.

invalidname 4y ago
The failure in these laws is the freedom to sue. That removes the burden from the government and places it on lawyers who try to capitalize on it. A lawyer can then use this as a money making scheme regardless of the size of an individual. This is the failure of the ADA too. This works well for large, well established businesses. Businesses with big turnover and investment. They also have the financial ability to add accessibility. Unfortunately it doesn't work well for small businesses who are left defenseless against threats from lawyers.
- advisedwang 4y ago
  On the other hand, we can't rely on state attourneys to protect the rights of minorities. Many would, but they can just as easily not enforce such a law. In fact, because disabled people are a small voting block, elected state attourneys really are not incentivised to do so. (This is why we need rights in a democracy - protecting minority interests that a government representing majority interests is not incentivised to care about). In general, giving government more power without strong guardrails about how it's used it isn't very effective at making people's lives better. You could imagine ways to make the private right of action work. Perhaps penalties and remedies for frivolous lawsuits like anti-SLAPP statutes. Or make it so that you can take a product/building/whatever through some approval process with some regulatory agency after which the product/building/whatever is presumed to be accessible and lawsuits have a higher burdern.

BoorishBears 4y ago

One Saturday morning 3 months ago I got on my bike like I had the week before, and the week before that. Less than 30 minutes later I was splayed out on the ground with my lower right leg broken clean in half and my tibia sticking out of my shin while an onlookers called me an ambulance. For 2 months afterwards I was confined to wheelchairs and walkers, and I only just recently was able to start walking independently again. - People make comments like this because they think it's a disabled market with disabled people, and another market beside... it doesn't work like that. No matter how young you are, how careful you are, how healthy you are, we are all one bad morning away from being disabled for an indeterminate amount of time. And we all benefit from accessibility because at any time we might need to rely on it. There's this mentality of seeing accessibility as an overpriced nice to have that's akin to seeing insurance as an overpriced nice to have just because you haven't made a claim yet We need laws like what the ADA affords to back accessibility because (for the vast majority of businesses) it will never be profitable to cater to the disabled at a high level of quality. I mean look at the OP. They pivoted to being a paid product yet still they're saying that they want to skirt the law by limiting the class size instead of paying some transcribers to add subtitles that would honestly benefit everyone (especially for technical content) The disabled deserve to be catered to regardless of profitability because the inverse is unjust: that they'd live with greatly reduced access to goods and services based on something completely out of their control

bombcar 4y ago
There's a vast difference between "businesses should have wheelchair ramps and accessible bathrooms" and "everything possible must be done for the disabled and borne by the people providing it". The US ADA has struck a pretty decent balance, few people are actively against wheelchair ramps, and elevators do add to the cost of a building but most buildings of that size are moderately expensive anyway. But imagine if it was determined that the ADA required wheelchair ramps be installed at any house that was offering candy for trick-or-treating. The result would be entirely predictable; trick-or-treating would die out. Much of this (and perhaps this case here) could be solved by forbidding the lawyers from profiting from it - you can sue someone for violating the ADA but you can't "win damages" - any such damages won would go to the state to help provide ADA accessibility.