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> 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

> 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.

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.